Pitwheel Remarkable Gin Standing Proud

Pitwheel Remarkable Gin standing Proud

The name behind the brand…

When setting the business up we wanted something that we could identify with something recognizable we could think yeah that’s us, our home, the areas heritage and it wasn’t long before the emblem of a pit wheel stood out.

Driving through the local area we fell upon many mining references open ground once the pit shafts and colliery building, now just memories for the older villagers to relay their stories. Each of the mining villages around us has its own identity symbolized by their wheel with a bit of history attached.

The Pit wheel imagery we use replicates the Wingate monument standing proud with its own story and individuality the very story we want for our product.

We as a couple were married during the miners strike of the 1980’s can remember the hardship the way people came together in the face of adversity even though we were not part of the industry ourselves we were part of the community had friends’ relatives and neighbours all connecting us.

The history of each platformed pit wheel, reminds us of community spirit good times filled with good people so we wanted the pit wheel to keep turning and our Gin to continue the conversation keeping history alive …..

Black Gold

Written By Steven Atkinson, 2020

Pit-men emerged from the bowels of the Earth

Parched from the dust of their labours

Tongues as arid as the seams down below

Unquenched and devoid of all flavours

These men, through the swing of a pick,

Build villages where there had been none

And forged a community of hard working souls

Who, through to this day, still live on

The grafted and toiled for the masses

But the price for as many was high

Men and boys lost to the darkness below

When the pit heaved a fiery sigh

The seams of these pits run like veins

Under lands born of their dust

Such foundations may tarnish in time

But shall never be eaten by rust

The pit wheel is a symbol eternal

And we pay tribute to the parched tongues of old

Who could never savour such flavours

As they strove to bring home the ‘black gold’!

3 The Rdgs, Station Town, Wingate TS28 5PE, UK

Our Team

So, who are we?

We are an ordinary family called Rickard, living in the historical East Durham mining coalfield, based in Station Town, Wingate, County Durham.

In August 2019, due to being faced with redundancy, we were looking at options for alternative work and during a family night in we ended up chatting about how we could make one of Derrick’s many hobbies into a viable business.

Many-a-time we had been through this phase, right back to the 90’s when he was producing specially blended spice powders for Indian curry recipes, but this time it was different!

Derrick had been experimenting with gin flavours for a couple of years – ever since it had become increasingly popular on the drinks scene, people just couldn’t get enough of it – including us!

And that’s when the light-bulb moment happened and PitWheel Distillery was born.

Derrick

Director and Distiller

The head of our family is Derrick – an ordinary bloke with a vision for a business!

Our master distiller has over 30 years in the printing world which, for the most part, has been a long and enjoyable career and has given the ability and security to raise a family whilst still enjoying many varied hobbies along the way, some of which have led us to being where we are now.

Although he has no experience in running a business, he is at the forefront and is solely responsible for the production of the gins, experimenting and developing new flavours and ensuring that they are at a high quality standard to pass forward to our loyal PitWheel customers.

Our Distillery

Our distillery is part of our home, nothing too big and nothing over-complicated.

When deciding on how we were going to start up we knew it had to be cost effective and having done many years of home-brewing in the garage, it was a certainty that this was where is was going to continue.

As always, an idea quickly turns into a reality within the Rickard household and within moments of discussing our prospective business opportunity, there were plans in place as to how the garage could be converted into a fully functional working space with the capacity and facilities to make distilling gin the most efficient process it could be.

Derrick, always being hands on, had it sorted within no time – our double garage had been halved with the front end being a secured distillery and the rest is now history.

The North in Numbers – boom in distilleries leads to ‘ginaissance’

A resurgence in gin – dubbed the “ginaissance” – has led to an ongoing boom in distilleries across the North.

Dan Walsh, the maker of Rascal Gin in Liverpool, cut his teeth with the events company Gin Festival, where he worked from 2014 – right as the boom in gin was first beginning.

Speaking to Annie Gouk, host of The North in Numbers, he said: “They were putting an event up online and selling thousands of tickets, selling out venues 10 times over, in a number of hours – just for having gin in the title.

“Gin was on a spike, it was unprecedented madness. It was such a big phenomenon, and it’s continued.”

The North in Numbers podcast tells the human stories behind various statistics for the North of England.

This episode takes a look at the explosion in distilleries seen in the North, featuring industry experts as well as gin brands and craft distillers from across the region.

Figures from the Office for National Statistics reveal that between March 2010 and March 2020, the number of distilleries in the North exploded from around 15 to closer to 125.

Most of that growth has been seen since 2015, with the number more than quadrupling in the last five years alone.

The increase has largely been driven by a revival in the popularity of gin, with the drink overtaking whisky and more recently vodka to become the most popular spirit in the UK.

PitWheel Distillery in County Durham is a small distillery with a story to tell about their local area.

Derrick Rickard, who started selling gin with his family from the comfort of their own home in June 2020, said: “Personally I wasn’t in the mines, but my family – my brother, my father, my grandfather – were all miners.

“We thought of the heritage of where we are, and the mining and the pit wheels. Locally, every village has its own pit wheel monument where the collieries actually were.

“So we drove around the North East looking at different ones and thought this could work really well for us. We’re just trying to keep that heritage going.”