ARDGOWAN Distillery’s team were in high spirits as they launched the first drink distilled at their under-construction Inverkip site.

The multi-million-pound project marked another major milestone as its new ‘Clydebuilt Scottish Dry Gin’ hit shelves at the Wyllieum gallery in Greenock’s cruise ship terminal.

The launch came in the same week that the first large piece of distillery infrastructure – a grist case – was installed at the Bankfoot site.

Ardgowan Distillery CEO Martin McAdam told the Telegraph he was delighted to have a locally inspired and distilled drink on offer.

(Image: George Munro) (Image: George Munro)

He said: “We’ve got an amazing product which we created specifically just for the local area.

“What we wanted to have is a strong flavoursome gin and we’ve got some botanicals from the estate in it.

“We wanted something that was quite special and it’s available here in Wyllieum and over time we hope to get it into some of the other retailers in the local area.

“We are manufacturing gin on behalf of other companies, including our partners Blackwoods, and we’re in negotiations with a couple of other people to manufacture gin for them.

“We wanted to use the Clydebuilt gin as a statement of how we can create almost anything that somebody’s looking for in a gin.”

(Image: George Munro)

Mr McAdam said the distillery had chosen to launch the drink at the Wyllieum, which opened earlier this year, because of its important location in Inverclyde and on the river.

He added: “We’re sponsoring the gallery, and this is part of our reach out into the community, we want to try and work with local people and local companies as much as we can.

“We’re working with the Wyllieum and Ardgowan Hospice as well, and where we can we employ people from the local area to work on the distillery.”

The distillery chief executive also gave an update on the progress of the distillery and said he was looking forward to the firm’s second open day event on September 7.

(Image: George Munro) (Image: George Munro)

He said: “We’ve always said we’d be commissioning by the end of this year and that’s still the plan.

“The first of the equipment has been installed and now we have a programme of install over the next eight weeks where we’ll be putting in the various tanks and so on and then the stills will be the last to go in.

“They’ll go in roughly September time and then we’ll start finishing out the pipework, commissioning, first running of the distillery and then production starting in quarter one next year.

(Image: Ardgowan Distillery)

“We’ve got our 2024 open day coming up which we hope will be bigger and better than last year.

“We believe we had around 4,500-5,000 people there last year, which caused some congestion, but we’re going to have a new traffic management plan, more bars, more food, a bigger shop area and hopefully it’s all going to work well.

“We have to say a big thank you to everyone who supported us last year and hopefully they’ll all come along again.”