Husband and wife team Giles and Jodie Stagg are raising a glass to celebrate after their own brand of gin garnered a highly-prized silver medal at the prestigious International Wine and Spirit Competition.
Despite only launching Stag Gin late last year, the pair who also run the successful Stratford-upon-Avon based Sip ‘n’ Swig mobile bar company, have been overwhelmed with the response to their own brand of London dry gin. Already preparing their third batch of Stag Gin after the first two sold out within weeks, the award of the silver medal has proved just the tonic after months of tweaking and testing before they achieved the product they wanted. It is also the culmination of a long-held ambition for Giles, a mixologist who trained at London’s Savoy Hotel and worked at the renowned Simpson’s in the Strand cocktail bar.
A unique blend of botanicals including juniper, kumquat, coriander, sweet orange peel, fresh pink grapefruit, nutmeg, orris root and lemon grass, Stag Gin also features rosemary grown in the Stagg family garden. As Giles says “we wanted to put our own very personal stamp on our gin, and including an ingredient we grow ourselves seemed the ideal way to do it!”
Achieving the impressive score of 94% at the International Wine and Spirit Competition, Stag Gin was only one percentage point away from a gold medal, and Giles has already set his sights on next year’s competition. “The IWSC has the highest medal boundaries of all wine and spirit competitions”, he says, “and we will continue to tweak the recipe to improve the product even more- we’ll be back next year fighting for the gold!”
While Stag Gin has proved enormously popular with both corporate and private clients of Sip ‘n’ Swig mobile bars, it is also establishing a foothold in bars, restaurants and wine and spirit merchants across the Stratford, Warwick and Leamington districts. Working with the NatWest Business Accelerator Scheme and the assistance of Coventry and Warwickshire Chamber of Commerce’s ‘Project Warwickshire’, plans are afoot for Stag Gin to be on sale further afield in the coming months. The growth potential won’t stop there, though, and the Staggs are already planning another gin brand along with their own bespoke vodka and rum labels. It’s only a matter of time before they are toasting yet more success, and they have just the drink for the job!
