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Liverpool Gin Distillery

Category: Hospitality
Location: Liverpool

Client Brief

Halewood Wine and Spirits approached DV8 Designs to design a multiuse space to be home to their flagship unit for their sought-after range of Gins and spirits. The site in question was an existing Grade II Listed building on Castle Street, which is undoubtedly one of Liverpool’s most up and coming destinations, boasting several Grade II listed buildings, the area has a historic feel that is a fantastic representation of Liverpool’s rich heritage. Over three floors the client’s vision was to create two bars, a working still and a Gin School, where customers could hire out rooms to distil their own gin.

Objective

The intention was to give Liverpool Gin Distillery its own unique identity with a sophisticated design to compliment the site’s cultural location on Castle Street.

This area of Liverpool City Centre rich stories to be told, and the building allowed us to showcase the city’s rich heritage, whilst retaining a modern and future-proofed feel which Liverpool residents and visitor to the city would relish.

Approach

The spatial planning had to be greatly considered by the team to ensure the flow worked operationally for the client, as well as working closely with planners to sympathetically work with the existing Grade II listing building. It was a fine balance between design & function.

For the ground floor Gin bar, we wanted to create a space that was both modern and refined, we worked to incorporate a botanical and industrial element into the design to reflect the nature of the spirit and the manufacturing process that it involves – making use of exposed metals such as copper, alongside living foliage and natural materials.

In contrast, the basement dark spirits bar is atmospheric and masculine, with the focus shifting on to whisky tastings and dark spirit cocktails. We always knew we wanted this to be a dark and atmospheric space, but we really found our direction when browsing old oil paintings in ornate, chunky frames. Using this as our starting point, not only did we incorporate oversized oil paintings in overlapping gold frames into our scheme, but we based a lot of the features up on them too.

The first floor is home to a Gin School, consisting of three working gin laboratories where customers are taught about the history of Gin and the wide range of Botanicals used in the process, followed by the chance to create their own bottle of personalised gin to take home. Our design drew influence from vintage apothecary’s and the eclectic studies of past inventors and engineers.

Outcome

DV8 Designs transformed this historic five-storey, Grade II listed building to create an immersive experience that includes three Gin Labs, a Dark Spirits Bar and a Bartender School as well as a ground floor bar which is home to a striking 600 litre copper still which is used to produce Liverpool Gin on site.

The multi-faceted vision behind this standout venue really allowed us to be brave and innovate with the use of space, the décor and the functionality of this historical building. Using Liverpool’s working industrial heritage we were able to reflect that into the design and form a completely new scene on this up-and-coming street.

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