Raising a glass to micro-breweries(2)
This upmarket version of a local off licence aims to put beer and cider into the same premium bracket as wine.
Adnams’ newest venture, about a year old, is a micro distillery that is already producing some high-quality spirits to put the leading brands to shame.
In an impromptu tasting session at the firm’s Cellar & Kitchen shop in Store Street, East London, Adnams shows off some of his latest concoctions.
The distilling process means that, unlike 99pc of vodkas, including the leading brands, theirs is not made from white spirit alcohol and then filtered, but starts its life in a fit state to drink.
The vodkas are subtle with a mule-like kick, while a sweet but very palatable sloe gin benefits from being made with fresh herbs and berries.
The festive Winter Spice drink slips down particularly easily and a spirit made from beer, and even a whisky, are both on the cards for the next few years.
The move into spirits could be hugely lucrative, particularly for the export market where the smaller ratio of liquid to glass makes the stronger stuff a higher margin product. Even that small piece of entrepreneurship required a waiver to an arcane law that banned brewing and distilling on the same site.
But Jonathan Adnams fears it will be present-day regulations that hamper the company’s further progress. In October, the Confederation of British Industry chose the Store Street shop to launch a drive to promote medium-sized businesses as the UK’s answer to the phenomenally powerful German ‘Mittelstand’.
But Adnams feels such businesses are not on a level playing field, as things stand.
‘There’s been a lot of help for small cap companies, and the bigger ones already have scale on their side,’ he says. ‘Maybe the medium-sized companies have been ignored.’
Like many running smaller business, he would like to see capital allowances restored and red-tape reduced. The Chancellors’ ‘credit easing’ initiative – broadly bonds for smaller businesses – would also come as welcome relief given the cost of fundraising for smaller firms such as Adnams, which employs 420 workers.
Most exasperating of all is he is not entitled to tax relief on a supergreen warehouse built from sustainable materials.
As he points out, a polluting industrial plant using heavy machinery would enjoy such tax breaks, while his more sustainable model does not.
It has been nearly ten years since the change in duty on small breweries opened the floodgates for the best of British to develop a thriving industry.
But regulation is still a hindrance, and the small to medium-sized firms such as Adnams still find that their needs are largely overlooked.
For all the talk of a British Mittelstand , the rebalancing of the economy has a long way to go.
