Once dubbed 'mother's ruin', gin's image has come a long way since William Hogarth portrayed it as the scourge of working-class London in the 18th century. These days, few things could be more civilised than a sunlit gin and tonic, and premium gin brands abound. Now Charles Rolls, 51, is doing the same thing for tonic. His company, Fever Tree, is growing at 300% a year, as drinkers take to his premium range of natural mixers even in the downturn.
The grandson of a South African immigrant "who got torpedoed off Southampton and swam to shore in his pyjamas", London-born Rolls was chief executive at Plymouth Gin in the early 2000s. He was on the lookout for tonics to go with the 200-year-old premium brand. But when he went to New York to try some American tonics, "they were no good at all. They all tasted far too sweet, were very sickly, and for some reason all had a taste of grapefruit about them." What was the point, he thought, of companies going to extraordinary lengths to make premium gin when most of the glass was filled with sickly, syrupy tonic?
So, along with Tim Warrillow, a marketing man, he set up Fever Tree in 2004, using £1m raised by Rolls and an outside investor. Their aim was to make a tonic water using only the very best ingredients. A botanist "who looks for plants on his holidays" tracked down bitter oranges for them in Tanzania, to which they added quinine sourced in Uganda, and British spring water. It all sounds a bit grand, but Rolls insists it was only "about getting the ingredients right". That also involved pasteurising the tonic, instead of adding preservatives.
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The initial production runs resembled a bombardment at the Somme, he says, because "the pressure in the bottles went ballistic". So they outsourced bottling to a plant in Yorkshire. "It's very important in business that you stick to your strengths. And my experience at Plymouth Gin told me that bottling is not something that you should get into on your own." They launched in March 2005, and soon got into Selfridges and a few upmarket bars. But it was only after hiring a public relations agency that things really began to take off. After a sympathetic piece in The Times, they got a call from Waitrose, who put in an order for 6,000 bottles in autumn 2005. "That was something that never happened when I was at Plymouth Gin, that a company like Waitrose would call us."
Sales hit £100,000 in the first year, rising to £1m in 2006 as they launched new lines, including bitter lemon and ginger ale. In 2008, the company won a £750,000 deal to supply Tesco across 400 stores, with Sainsbury's following soon after. They now have seven products, including soda water and lemonade, and sales are expected to hit £4m this year as they look for avenues into the US market.
But isn't Rolls crazy to keep launching premium brands in the downturn? "I think what's happened in the UK over the past 15 to 20 years is that the quality benchmark has risen. We've proved that there really was a group of consumers who cared that they didn't have artificial flavours in their drinks. That's a trend we've latched onto."
