Conkering The Coast

A coastal lifestyle was all the inspiration rupert holloway needed to found conker spirit, dorset’s first gin distillery.

- Madeleine Barber

It’s atop the undulating cliffs of Bournemouth that Rupert Holloway, founder of Dorset’s first gin distillery, forages for sunny gorse flowers to help flavour his sea-inspired spirit. ‘It pops up here and there, so I have to hunt out a thick, yellow blossom, pull my rubber gloves on and get stuck in before it turns,’ he says. the wild flower is known for sweet notes of honey, nectar and camomile that exude post-distil, so it gives the dry gin real individuality. Marsh samphire and elderberries are also wild botanicals that Rupert targets during foraging trips on the shoreline and in the New Forest, which is an area he’s lived in for almost all his existence.

From Mudeford to southbourne to Christchurch, Rupert’s life has always been anchored to the coast of Dorset, bar four university years in surrey and Nottingham. today he’s living with his fiancée Emily and their daughter Beau on the river just north of Christchurch. their home is a ‘jammy gig’, Rupert explains, as the family can take a boat straight down the river to their beach hut at Mudeford sand bank, where Rupert spent his childhood summers from the age of seven. ‘I was feral – I didn’t put a pair of shoes on for six weeks,’ he says. Now 25 years later, Beau loves to swim and mess about on the same stretch of sand. Even in the winter the family head down to the hut for a hot chocolate in front of a cosy fire. ‘I love that our children will grow up here,’ says Emily, and Rupert couldn’t agree more: ‘I really do appreciate how special this lifestyle is. I feel very lucky.’

GIN O’CLOCK