In October the first open, UK-wide distillery census was published. Anonymous, and focused on how distilleries actually operate it reveals information about people and skills, production reality, routes to market, tourism and sustainability.
This article explains why it happened and why it matters. I’ll touch on how it was run, the hurdles that were faced, and the choices I made to keep it useful.
It also states plainly what motivated me to do this and why, after finishing year one, I’m more convinced and hopeful than ever about building a bigger, more collaborative census in the years ahead.
Why it had to exist
I launched the distillery census because the UK lacked an open, cross-category baseline for craft distilling. Most available narratives lean on volumes, value and duty, or on single categories. Overarching metrics are used as a proxy for everything and in doing so, there is one scale to encompass all size of producers.
That never reflected the day-to-day that I could see for small producers making gin, rum, liqueurs, RTDs and more. Some of the multinationals distil more end product in a day than others make in a year – so the spectrum is not a scale that goes from small to large in real terms. It’s parallel worlds, tranches of operational scale and completely fragmented business models.
I’ve long believed that it’s wild that despite being one of the most engaged craft distilling communities in the world, with such acclaimed producers and such and evolved scene and ecosystem, the UK has no shared denominator: who’s making what, where, and how that activity shows up as jobs, skills, tourism and community value.
The absence has practical consequences.
Without comparable data, policy is shaped by anecdotes and the loudest voices. Grants are hard to argue for, because we can’t show consistent need or impact. Skills training are generic and often not craft scaled. Tourism planning treats distilleries as nice-to-have, not as visit drivers or anchor destinations.
So I set out to give producers, partners and public bodies a dataset they could trust enough to plan with.
I didn’t set out to reinvent the wheel. Far from it. Other countries already publish open, annual snapshots, free for anyone to use and I wanted the UK to have the same foundation.
That meant a short survey, an open data promise, and analysis written for action, not for a trophy report. I am proud to say that this has been achieved.
What the distillery census set out to collect (and what’s been avoided)
I focused on operational reality. Production methods. Batch sizes. SKU breadth. Sourcing. In-house vs outsourcing. Route to market. Export footprints. Tourism and visitor offers. Sustainability adoption and blockers. Each set of questions are simple in their own right, but once combined provide a powerful and broad understanding of the distilling landscape.
I intentionally kept the lens on how sites work, not just how much they produce. Partly because that’s where better decisions start, but also because there is already reams of data about volumes.
Most of all, I avoided questions that would break trust or be considered super sensitive. No price lists. No SKU-level commercials and no supplier identifiers. I designed the instrument to be anonymous at the point of analysis. I kept it broad enough so that no-one could identify a respondent once cross-tabbed by region, category and size.
Doing so kept participation high and the output safe to share.
The trade-off was intentional. I prefer an honest baseline over a stretched one. A clean first cut earns permission to ask harder questions in future. It also helps partners see where their programmes could plug in, without worrying that they’d expose a business.
Recruitment: outreach and coverage
My outreach combined direct email, LinkedIn, sector groups and word-of-mouth. I kept the ask simple. Ten minutes of their time, clear anonymisation, open results. I chased where we had to (which was a lot), and sent more reminders than planned. Understandably, busy people need an extra nudge but it’s been a long haul.
Representative coverage was always the hard part. HMRC Lists capture licences registered at Companies House, not active makers. Some businesses don’t have brands, or websites, or indeed stills. Some are just labs and R&D sites. There are a surprising amount that don’t have any form of public contact details either!
Others have pivoted or are closing (to the extent where I think it may be the most under reported stories this year).
Compounders, contract-only brands, hybrid operations – definitions blur. There has been a lot of research into contacting places who actually make things – not just listed somewhere, or imported by a company. Similarly, to try and reach all parts of the UK.
By the close in October, the distillery census had 138 submissions with 133 valid entries.
From my research and outreach, I can confidently state that it represents roughly a quarter of active UK distillers.
The active number (circa 550 of a total registered 750+ with HMRC), incidentally, is much higher that recent reports by national associations, and puts in serious question trade news outlets that publish stories about growth or closures per year down to single digits. The granular detail paints are far harder to track reality on the ground.
Irrespective, the Distillery Census and its 133 entries does not claim to present the whole picture on this first attempt. It is however, big enough to illuminate patterns and argue for better support.
It also proved that an independent, open distillery census can get meaningful traction when the value is obvious and the ask is respectful.
The hurdles: trust, apathy, inertia, gatekeeping
Trust takes time to build. Some respondents didn’t know Everglow or me personally. They wanted to see safeguards, not promises. I leaned on aggregation, clear methods notes, and examples of how the data would be used. Thankfully many took the leap of faith, while others already knew my values, reputation and my past work and supported wholeheartedly.
That said, apathy and inertia were real. Many owners wear five hats. Surveys compete with production, compliance, shipping, tastings and events. In larger organisations, whose “job” it is and if they would be allowed to was a frequent pushback.
There was also gatekeeping. Multinationals have their own dashboards and agendas. Some institutional partners were supportive in private but cautious about backing a new, independent initiative in public. Some ignored it altogether despite repeated calls to collaborate. I state this not to point a finger, but as a way of acknowledging that it is complicated and that it takes time to foster true collaboration.
That reality didn’t derail the project; it clarified why this had to be done. In this instance, independence is and will continue to be both the strength and the hurdle.
Changes while live
As responses grew, I kept making the case for this distilling census in forums, events and online. Advocates and collaborators grew (thank you to the English Whisky Guild, Distillers Forum in particular!). People saw how their effort will turn into charts and briefs they could share with teams, investors and local partners. That accelerated participation.
I’ve also learned the value of restraint. Year one needed to be tight. I’ve intentionally stayed focused on a baseline everyone could live with. That discipline has been tested. Some stakeholders started asking for the ability to cross reference gin vs whisky vs rum producers by region (or even further). The point was never to grab everything now; it was to earn the right to grow.
Finally, I’ve refined the way the results have come out. Instead of a single monolith, I have split analysis into three themed briefs – People & Skills, Commerce & Supply chain, and Sustainability & Tourism.
Each speaks to a different set of decisions. Each could live on its own, and still fit a larger story.
What hasn’t been published (and why)
I have held back where the risk of identification was non-trivial.
All named scrubbed. Any entry where I didn’t recognise the site or could validate it as a real place were deleted. Examples like “Anonymous test, Test site, Discovery Distillery” are likely to be people browsing the survey, so they have been removed.
The big call was in lumping all spirits together. Gin, Rum, Whisky etc. My concern was that by separating it, it would make producers entering it nervous about their anonymity. It’s a valid concern, although I think you would have to be incredibly informed to be able to recognise a distillery based on batch size, sales volume and staff numbers when cross referenced with an entire country and a spirit category.
Beyond not undermining trust and reducing friction in year one, I made that call because the point of the survey is to help policy making. The aim is to start mapping the ecosystem and while it’s nice to know and to be able to segment based on type of spirit – for the intended use of the data it’s not vital in this initial proof of concept.
I also avoided turning the survey into a financial audit. No cash-flow details. No margin ladders and for obvious reasons, no details around customer lists.
That wasn’t coyness; it was respect for the realities of competition and relationship-based selling, especially in the craft context. The goal was capability insight, not commercial exposure.
Who stands to use the distillery census, and how
Distillers and suppliers can use the data to benchmark reality. Team size. SKU breadth. Supplier counts. Batch sizes. In-house scope. Tourism significance. Sustainability actions and blockers.
That will help frame decisions on rationalising portfolios, harmonising specs, phasing CAPEX, designing tours and training priorities.
Associations and policymakers can use it to target funding and support. Tourism had headroom. Sustainability needs hands and hardware more than handbooks. Skills needed short, stackable units, not long block release. Upstream logistics and shared specs could release cash and time. Those are concrete briefs for LEPs, DMOs and grant makers.
Media and analysts can use the Distillery Census to tell a larger story than volume and duty. Craft distilling showed up as a network of local employers, visitor destinations, and anchor buyers for UK suppliers.
That changes how the sector is often framed in regional and national conversations, let alone when viewed alongside multinational plants.
What I have taken away from finishing it
Completing this part of the project, the data collection and reveal, I feel more convinced than ever that the UK needs cross-country, cross-category leadership that looks beyond requests for less taxation.
Tax is a vital lever and campaigns need to continue, but for the craft sector – the vacuum of representation, support and missed opportunities at local and micro level is obvious to see.
There is a need a neutral platform where data, training and route-to-market support can co-exist, year after year, without getting stuck in national-only or category only-politics. Associations need to go after smaller wins not just focus on the big ticket item that is duty relief.
I also saw how strongly the craft community shows up when the value is clear. The producers who engaged didn’t just fill a form. They shared the link. They told peers it mattered. They’ve been in touch in so many ways to will it on as a project. Those relationships are the foundation to build on. For those who got what this was about, they really got it.
There’s also an inconvenient truth that has also become unavoidable not to disclose.
The UK is unusual because the multinationals are so highly active and influential here. They are based here and have multiple sites, each, in operation. They are the lion’s share of volume, value, and export numbers. Their share of voice shapes institutional focus. If they don’t engage, initiatives like this will always struggle to get air in formal settings in a way that isn’t the case in places like Australia, USA etc.
I state that as a call to open the circle. A stronger more informed sector will help them in their campaigns too.
What to change next year
I’d like to work with associations to agree the denominators and questions. I’d love to have more of the larger, multi production-hub companies like Diageo, Pernod and others join the process.
I did this year but institutional stasis is real and focussed agendas, understandably, take priority. With more time, I remain hopeful to build strong alliances as projects like the distillery census lift everyone.
I’d also like to create a living register of active sites to make the context behind the headline numbers sharper. It will also reduce the noise between licences and producers and help everyone plan more realistically.
Lastly, i’ll add optional depth where trust now exists. Small tweaks to questions that will help insight. It’s all multiple choice and that will continue, but some nuance in places would allow for data segmentation in meaningful ways to build the case for specific sustainability, tourism or skills training initiatives.
Practical links and how to use them
The hub page hosts the overview, the results PDF and the anonymised XLSX , alongside the three theme briefs. It also carries the press and permissions note.
Please cite the census, link back, and use the charts freely.
For distillers and suppliers, my recommendation is to start with the theme most relevant to your next decision. People & skills if you’re juggling capacity. Commerce & Supply chain if repeat rate and cash are the priority. Sustainability & Tourism if you’re designing your space to host and run greener at the same time. Use the data as a mirror, not a verdict.
For associations, LEPs, DMOs and grant makers, the briefs point to specific interventions. Co-fund visitor-visible sustainability upgrades. Build shared tourism routes. Support install time and small-plant hardware. Convene shared specs and bonded logistics. Choose things that buy time and release working capital.
The distillery census shows where those moves pay back fastest.
Closing note
This project wasn’t a publication exercise; it was a community based need that i felt strongly about and was happy to do on behalf of all.
I believe it proves that an independent, open census can work in the UK. Over the next few months, how the data is used in campaigns will show that there’s not just a reason to, but an appetite to make it bigger and better.
If you want to be part of next year’s cohort — producer, association, supplier, or multinational — come in early and reach out.
Think of this as the foundation. The next chapter is collaborative by design.
