J'AIME NOVEMBER 2020

F O O D & D R I N K
Honey I’ve made bee-autiful gin
A LICHFIELD FAMILY HAVE CREATED A NEW BRAND OF GIN USING HONEY
FROM THEIR OWN GARDEN. JENNY AMPHLETT WENT TO MEET THEM
Alex and Natalie Conti usually spend
their days running a business that
involves the arts and travel, so they’ve
ended up with rather a lot of time on
their hands this year.
The couple, who live in a rural spot
between Shenstone and Stonnall,
have been spending their days in the
garden with children Leo, six, and
Isabella, three.
Keen beekeepers for the past two
years, they installed a vast new apiary
as a lockdown project which left them
with kilos of surplus honey. Then they
had an inspired idea.
“My wife and I run a company
that specialises in making travel arrangements for
international art exhibitions, mostly for clients in
the US,” said Alex, 39. “We’ve been in business for
10 years and have been the market leader in a very
small niche for the last couple of years.
“We both usually travel
a lot and will be away
from home for around
four months of the
year or so. But then
COVID-19 happened.
“As of March the
company has been in
stasis because none of
our clients are travelling
and everything has
been postponed. So
we’ve been spending
more time than usual
with the kids and more
time than usual in the
garden.
“It’s a great way to
teach the kids about
nature and also to help
pollinate the fruit trees
that we have here,” said Alex. “It helps the local
environment and we get honey too.”
Early into lockdown he and Natalie, 38,
commissioned a local craftsman to build a large new
hive to their own specifications.
“Our first lockdown project was to get that built,
then we expanded the colony which meant we had
lots of honey.”
They eventually hit on the idea of using it to make a
honey gin - and worked out that their surplus honey
could create a 90 bottle batch.
Rather than setting up their own distillery at home
the Contis worked with Fifth Spire in Lichfield to
create the debut batch of The Apiarist Gin.
“We’ve been buying Fifth Spire’s gin for years.
They said they’d be happy to make something new
and different using our honey to infuse gin. We’ve
brought this to market together.”
Around four and a half kilos of the Contis’ honey
has gone into the first 90 bottles of gin. Alex has
worked out that equates to the nectar from 200,000
flowers in each bottle.
The family are reinvesting any profits they make into
their apiary. They now have two colonies and have
two more hives on the way.
It’s a fledgling business with the potential to expand
quickly, but Alex is keen to stress that it was really
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