Ben Branson, founder of Seedlip non-alcoholic spirit

THE ART OF THE NON-ALCOHOLIC DRINK

Ben Branson, founder of non-alcoholic global spirit brand, Seedlip, is young, affable, passionate and very British, in a good way. He loves a yarn and has a great story to tell about how he built a global brand from a second-hand still found on the internet. He spoke candidly with Drinks Trade about his distilling journey before sharing his secrets to wide-eyed would-be distillers at a Worksmith event in Melbourne.

By Melissa Parker

Tell us about Ben Branson before Seedlip?

I come from this farm and design background.

My mother’s family has been farming for 320 years, nine generations of everybody working for themselves.

Dad set up a design company nearly 30 years ago.

I grew up doing a mixture of work experience in the school holidays sitting on a tractor and then being in London learning about brands. They were completely different worlds.

When I left school I entered the design world. Back in the summer of 2013 I had my own design agency.

We were a small team working with luxury brands, perfumes, fashion brands, and we were about a year old – happy days, nice and busy, lovely clients, no plans to do anything else.

Then my world changed.

I was trying to work out what I could grow at home so I was trawling the internet. I came across all these old cookbooks.

Growing up, I learnt about grain – we grew grain, peas, potatoes, carrots but I had no idea about this world of botany. Suddenly this world opened up before my eyes - apothecaries, silk routes, botanists.

If you look up The Art of Distillation PDF you will find what I found.

Whoever they were, thank God, had scanned this book.

There are 200 ingredients mentioned in it and they are recipes for non-alcoholic medicine and alcoholic medicine using herbs and spices with distillation as the method of extraction. I just remember thinking – woah, this is really cool.

I bought a two-year-old copper still on the internet and started playing around on evenings and weekends, aimlessly amateur.

I’ve got pictures of hotplates balanced on books, taps and tape and I loved it!

How did you get from there to selling a million bottles of Seedlip?

A few months later I was in London not drinking on a Monday night and asked a waitress if they had anything good that was nonalcoholic.

Typically if I wasn’t drinking I would probably drink tonic water but this time she came back with this disgusting mocktail.

It wasn’t a lightning bolt moment, but I definitely remember I felt like an idiot. I didn’t want to finish it. It didn’t go with the food and it didn’t fit the ambience. I just didn’t feel good about it.

I guess I left and the dots started to join.

I started thinking maybe there is something in what I am doing at home.

Two years later, I am not with the design agency anymore. I am not at the Farmers Market. I am standing in Selfridges in London. Where do you launch a drinks brand in London that gives really good credibility?

Selfridges, Selfridges, Selfridges.

My friend launched her rum brand there called the Duffy Share and she said, I can put you in touch with the buyer.

So I thought, OK, let’s do this. I emailed; she emailed back. She said she doesn’t like anything without alcohol but would give me 15 minutes.

I had never pitched Seedlip to anyone; it wasn’t really finished. I had liquid in a bottle.

I thought I had a world first, I wanted to keep it under wraps; this is a great acid test, if this top buyer gets it, then maybe we are onto something.

I spent an hour with her and she was pulling people into the office to taste it.

She said she wanted it as an exclusive with Selfridges.

Overnight I had my first retail listing and route to market for launch.

She introduced me to the five best bartenders in London and then I hit the streets.

I got embroiled in the lovely drinks trade|27

competitive nature of bartenders wanting to know about things first, so I just rode it, and met as many of them as I could.

I doubled the first production run to 100 bottles because I thought the feeling was good.

I hired a small production unit to do the bottling.

I got another still. I can’t take all the credit. I counted 55 people that helped me get to launch - the guy that made the bottles, the guy that made the labels, speaking to botanists, distillers, historians, my brothers sticking on labels. That was just over three years ago.

Is this category a flash in the pan?

Look at health and wellness trends and how much that has grown over the last ten years. Sugary soft drinks have declined and alcohol volume sales have decreased yet the value has increased. People are looking for both better soft drinks and better alcoholic drinks and a healthier, more aware, world. I think that is incredibly exciting in terms of offering a great drink regardless of whether you are drinking alcohol or not. We have become more mindful about what we are drinking. There are now 30 to 40 other non –alcoholic spirits in the world that have launched in the last “This art of alchemy is that solary art which is more noble than all the other six arts and sciences, and if it did once thoroughly shine forth out of the clouds whereby it is eclipsed, would darken all the rest (as the sun does the other six planets) or at least swallow up their light.” The Art of Distillation, John French, 1651

six months. I feel like we are just getting started.

I have heard you have some famous Seedlippers around the world.

Yes, I just heard the other day that Ronaldo likes Seedlip and he was drinking it in a bar in London.

Then I spent two hours making cocktails with Kate Moss one on one, that was pretty nuts.

Elton John drinks it. Prince Andrew likes it which included a pretty amazing visit to Buckingham Palace. I’m overwhelmed by it all.

Are any big drink companies knocking on your door?

Diageo have a minority stake in the business. It’s public knowledge. It’s a small amount. Getting the backing of the biggest spirit company in the world in terms of that belief and support has been a huge help; and the freedom to still run the business and be in control. We announced it in the summer of 2016, so really early on. It was growing, we needed money, I had put my life savings into it and we wanted to take it to the next level because we knew we were onto something. I wanted a strategic partner involved that understood the global business.

For the full interview visit drinkstrade.com.au