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Video 📹 Forget Me Not Gin Instagram 14 August 2020 (Caitríona posted it 11 August 2020)

The Staff Canteen GrilledLIVE Podcast, streamed 11 April 2023, recorded 8 March 2023 in Glasgow Apple Spotify

Cara Bouchon, Host: We’ve been drinking some lovely wine whilst we’ve been sat here, but Caitríona, you have your own gin, just staying on tipples, Forget Me Not Gin, correct? What made you want to do that, and you’ve done a batch, are you doing another?

Caitríona Balfe, Guest: Yeah, we did one batch. We are in the process of getting it up and running again. Obviously the pandemic happened and Brexit happened… when we did our first batch… Why did I want to do it in the beginning? We were talking, me and my husband*and a friend** of his who’s in the hospitality and drinks business, and we were talking about the Arts and how it’s been so underfunded here, abroad, everywhere I travelled. Governments are slashing support for the Arts left, right, and centre, and we were talking about “what if we did something where we could use a percentage of the profits to give back, and that the whole ethos of the brand would be that it’s about getting artists to help?” We would fund them, we would support them, and in their turn we could have artists use their art and promote it.

We were just riffing and we were “let’s try one batch and see what happens.” We did something like 2000 bottles and it sold within a day, and were were “that’s kind of cool, let’s go and do more of this.” And when we did that, were were able to take the order, ship it, get it to anywhere in Europe within two days. And then Brexit happened, and it was like, “well you can’t do that.” And then to ship to the U.S. there’s a lot of complicated loopholes because there’s a very strange system in the U.S. that still exists since prohibition. And then I got pregnant, so you can’t really be flogging booze when you’re pregnant, so we just put a pause on everything. And we’re about to launch… well, I don’t want to give a time because there’s still stuff we’re sorting out, but we’re going again. It’s coming soon. Forget Me Not is not (forgotten).

Cara: Why gin? Is gin your favourite drink?

Caitríona: Look, I’m somebody who likes a lot of drinks, but gin is something I think you can play around with the flavours in a really interesting way within a very short space of time. Obviously, if you want to do a real whisky or things like that, that takes a long time to get them aged and all of that.

I love a gin during the summer. So it’s about being able to… hopefully we do this one, our staple, and then I would like to do interesting flavours. The idea is to build special batches and stuff like that, make it something that’s a little bit more unique and have artists come in, or have people come in, to put their stamp on it as well, and work in conjunction with people.

And we’re working with SWG3***, we’re going to fund artist spaces. We’ve done it with our last batch. We’re going to do that continuing, and we hope to do those projects in various different countries as well.

It’s to do something fun. I like to do things like this in terms of it’s an interesting outlet for me in a different type of creative way, and it’s also something where I can invest in stuff I’m interested in and help in a way.

I’m not necessarily… I’m not going to take over the gin business for the rest of the world. It’s fun.

FMN DRINKS (UK) LIMITED, incorporated 14 December 2022. Directors: Caitríona Mary Balfe, Duncan Glen Frew**, Anthony Gerard McGill*

SWG3 Studio Warehouse***, Glasgow