A pop-up shop selling locally produced gin and vodka could open next month in Norwich’s Victorian arcade.
Fenspirits is run by Anthony ‘Ant’ Winterbourne, who already has shops in Wells-next-the-Sea and Wisbech and is now trialling opening a third shop in Norwich.
Subject to a premises licence application being approved, he hopes to open a shop in 16 Royal Arcade, which was once occupied by The Tannery leather shop, from next month up until Christmas Eve.
If all goes well, he has longer-term plans to open a shop permanently in Norwich.
Mr Winterbourne, who said they had been producing hand sanitiser during lockdown, said: “We’ve been bucking the trend, business has been booming.
“We’ll be stocking local producers. We have a long term plan - we nearly opened in Norwich last year but in February just paused to see how things were going. So it’s a trial, but if the pop-up goes well we will open in Norwich permanently.”
Mr Winterbourne, who said the shop would sell gift sets of its products, set up the firm, a family-owned and run distillery, in May 2016 from his kitchen.
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He started selling spirits at county shows and behind the scenes converted a workshop in Wisbech into a distillery. After two years the team moved in to the new premises in February 2018.
Fenspirits ferments and distils everything from scratch, fermenting sugar from sugar beet and distilling it into 96pc vodka before then re-distilling it into gin.
It also produces a range of fruit gin liqueurs and flavoured vodkas. Each bottle is filled, corked, wax sealed and labelled by hand.
Its products include London dry and raspberry gins, raspberry gin liqueur, rhubarb gin liqueur, lemon liqueur, coffee liqueur, toffee vodka and salted caramel vodka.
Advent calendars of spirits would also be on sale in the store, as well as other local producers, including Norfolk ciders and local artwork.
Fenspirits would be the latest retailer to move into the Royal Arcade, chocolatier Angela Ruthven, who has been running Artisan Chocolates by Saffire since she retired in 2004, swapped her modest purpose-built premises in Taverham Garden Centre for a beautiful new shop in the city’s Victorian Arcade last month.
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