A Drink With… Will Borrell, Vestal Vodka

Will Borrell has a famous musician brother, but as his own burgeoning company Vestal Vodka gears up to a US launch, he’s now made a name for himself. He gives the low-down to Becky Paskin.

Will Borrell, founder of Vestal Vodka, has carved a path entirely separate from his brother Johnny, frontman of Razorlight

A potato vodka using its terroir and vintage as a USP is pretty innovative. Where did you get the idea from?
My family lived in Poland and my father began importing New World wines. Our discussion would always turn to the concept of terroir and vintage and we thought that potato vodka must fall under that category too because the potato lives in the soil. So almost four years ago we grew potatoes on our farm and trucked them to a distillery. We now have vintages from 2009, 2010 and 2011 and there’s a vertical tasting throughout them to show it’s not just a marketing ploy.

How has the vodka community reacted to your unique product?
We’re embraced by the spirits industry now but people thought it was a gimmick at first and weren’t purchasing it much. Now they see that year-on-year the quality of the spirit shows through. People like Simon Difford are raving about it; he gave it five out of five. We take what he says as a rubber stamp that we are doing something right.

Being a vintage product must come with its own unique set of challenges though?
The reality is that 2012 was such a bad year, not just for potato growers in Poland, but wine too throughout Europe. It was so wet last year that we physically couldn’t get to the potatoes as they were under a foot of water, and that means that we didn’t make a vintage. However that reality adds to the honesty of our story.

Losing a whole year’s crop is a disaster. Was that your biggest challenge so far?
The biggest difficulty we’ve had to date has been the UK government, their reluctance to do anything to help small businesses and the complexity of dealing with HMRC when we want to export. Aside from that, we’ve found aggression from the bigger companies who offer a blank cheque to bartenders to remove our product from their bar and stock theirs instead – something of a David and Goliath battle. Thankfully, so far, every bar has refused to submit to them.

What is it about Vestal that’s gaining such loyalty from bartenders already?
All we’ve done to sell our 10,000 bottles a year is wear out shoe leather meeting all our customers. They are now loyal customers that every year order from us directly, because in the beginning we visited them personally with a suitcase filled with vodka. As a small producer it’s the quality and transparency of our vodka that counts. That’s the fundamental business difference between the way we approach things and the way the bigger brands do.

You also produce an elderberry liqueur that’s gained a huge following already.
The response to it has been incredible. We reached a huge milestone when a panel on UK TV show Saturday Kitchen did a taste test between Vestal Amber and St. Germain last year, and chose ours as the winner. Because we use both the elderflower and elderberry in our liqueur, it has a great viscosity and flavour.

Your brother Johnny Borrell has found huge success with his band Razorlight. Do you exploit your relationship much to market Vestal?
We are appreciative of what they can do, but we’ve never asked them for anything. We think it would be a bit like Ciroc with P. Diddy. We may be stupid and missing the mark here, but I think it’s a bit crap when brands do that. That German vodka where every drop has been across the breasts of a supermodel is ridiculous; it’s marketing gone mad. I struggle even with the celebrity endorsed spirits and wines. I’m sounding like an old man here but it’s not me. I used to go on tour with Razorlight when I was younger and a bit more rock n’ roll, but it’s never really that fun backstage.

Is there much rivalry between you and your brother?
The main difference between me and Johnny is that I’m taller and better looking but have no musical ability at all. I struggle with the ukulele, although I hear it’s very cool now.