There are very few people who can claim to have started a revolution. Lesley Gracie is one of them.
In Episode 3 of Season 4 of BITE BIG, Amber Bonney travels to Girvan on the southwest coast of Scotland, and into one of the most extraordinary creative spaces in the world, The Gin Palace, to sit down with Lesley Gracie, Master Distiller and the pioneering creator of Hendrick's Gin.
Lesley's story is one of the most unlikely in business. A Hull chemist who started her career making medicine taste less awful. A woman who moved to Scotland in 1988 to marry her husband (always called 'the current husband') and walked into a job that, twenty-something years later, would change the way the world drinks gin. Inspired by her dad's lifelong advice, 'if you want it, go for it', Lesley has spent 38 years at William Grant & Sons building something that simply didn't exist before she made it.
In this episode, Lesley and Amber get into the real story behind Hendrick's, the vague brief ('make something totally different'), the months of failed botanical combinations, and the day the marketing team revealed a short, black, dumpy bottle that looked nothing like anything else on the back bar in 1999. Lesley's response? 'What?'
They go deep on what it actually means to hold a brand's core identity steady while letting innovation run wild at the edges, and why Lesley believes the consistency of Hendrick's is one of its most powerful assets. The recipe hasn't changed. The bottle hasn't changed. And yet every limited edition tells a completely new story, built from her botanical obsessions, from greenhouse experiments, from a cacao flower garnish on a cocktail in Mexico that sent her down a months-long rabbit hole.
Lesley Gracie has received an honorary Doctor of Letters from the University of Hull. She's been inducted into the Gin Magazine Hall of Fame. She's one of only four people in the world who knows the full Hendrick's recipe.
Strip away the titles and the accolades — what Lesley Gracie most wants to be known for is this: she enjoys what she does. And it shows.
Follow The Edison Agency and Amber Bonney for more electric conversations with boss women building big brands.
Links:
Lesley Gracie LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/lesley-gracie-62a64423/
Hendricks Web: hendricksgin.com/
Hendricks Instagram: @hendricksgin
William Grant & Sons Web: https://www.williamgrant.com/
William Grant & Sons UK instagram: @williamgrantuk
Guide Dogs UK: www.guidedogs.org.uk/
Bite Big Instagram - @bitebig.podcast
Amber's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amberbonney
Amber's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amberbonney
The Edison Agency LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-edison-agency
The Edison Agency Instagram: @edison.agency
Credits:
Host & ECD – Amber Bonney, The Edison Agency Founder
Producer – Niki Beeston, Group Account Director, The Edison Agency
Marketing – Liz Archer, Head of Operations, The Edison Agency
Post Production – Francine Toscano, 17th Street Audio
