Mentioned alongside Cartier and Bentley, the drink with 'a little bit of Lancashire in every drop'

Butter pies, rag pudding, Blackpool rock, parched peas. There are loads of delicacies that roll off the tongue when you think of Lancashire and food.

But in a county fond of its traditions, there is one more unusual spot bucking the trend on the Fylde coast. Despite starting in a garage, its name is now mentioned alongside the likes of Bentley and Cartier.

And it has ‘a little bit of Lancashire’ inside every drop.

Fronted by husband and wife team, Sara and Paul Dewhurst started Lytham Gin in 2018 when Sara was looking for a career change. A Chemistry graduate, she worked in the industry for a while before becoming a Chemistry teacher at Lytham High School. She then moved on to another in Blackpool, where she became Assistant Headteacher.

But eventually, Sara realised she didn’t want to “do that forever” and her attention was directed elsewhere. For a couple of years, she ran a delicatessen in Lytham before continuing the obvious trajectory and moving on to try creating her own gin. Within months, it had become her full-time job.

“I’ve always liked gin so I thought, let’s have a crack at making it and we’ll call it Lytham Gin,” Sara told LancsLive. “Within two months, I had to pass the delicatessen on to a manager to manage it full time and then sold it because the gin just took over. It quickly became a full-time job.”

Sara first started the brand to compliment her delicatessen and combine her love for chemistry. Seeing the brand grow and grow, Sara also works with her husband Paul who was incidentally a former specialist in manufacturing processes and systems having worked at Heinz.

Sara picking Lytham samphire for use in her gin

The entrepreneur explained the journey from a couple of bottles in her delicatessen, to becoming a local success story started with chance. Sara said: “I thought, let’s go and see who else will stock us.

“So I boldly walked in to Royal Lytham Golf Club with a bottle of gin and asked to speak to the hospitality manager. He was really pleased to see me and said he was waiting for someone to walk in with a local bottle of gin.

“They really took it on board and that was the springboard really to being as successful as we are. That was in 2018 and they held the Ladies’ Open that year, so the people visiting the Open couldn’t get enough of the gin.

“We were distilling in our garage at home at the time and at night, because we were only making 40 bottles at a time and they would ring asking for 30, 40 bottles.”

Reflecting on the journey so far, Sara said: “The last six years have been a rollercoaster, because obviously a couple of those years were the Covid years which were interesting. So we have done well to still stay here for the past six years.”

She added: “A surreal event was when in 2019, we sponsored the British Seniors Open at Royal Lytham. In the programme, I’ve still got it, where they share the logos and sponsors.

“There’s Bentley, Cartier and Lytham Gin! So that’s quite a surreal thing to have.”

“I use marsh samphire which you can find on the Ribble Estuary, and this gives a lovely silky mouthfeel and freshness.”

One of the interesting things about the brand is its unique offerings that separates it from other gin manufacturers on the market. Lytham Gin uses samphire as a botanical, which Sara explains not many gins use.

Picked from near Lytham’s iconic windmill on Lytham Green, it shows the passion Sara has for using local produce in every bottle she creates.

In a long list of accolades over their six-year existence, Sara and Paul are celebrating their recent award, winning the Taste Lancashire Producer at the Lancashire Tourism Awards last Tuesday (January 6). “It’s very exciting, we were absolutely thrilled to win,” Sara said.

“We weren’t expecting to win, there were some really strong finalists in the same category as us, so we didn’t expect to win. It was a complete surprise, really great and wonderful.”

Introducing the overarching brand name of Sandgrown Spirits, the business also offers rum as well as tasting experiences and distillery tours.