Distillery opened by 15-year-old and siblings criticised by ASA

A website for a UK gin distillery founded by a 15-year-old schoolboy and his four siblings has come under fire from advertising regulators for featuring an image of people under the age of 25.

The founders of Sibling Distillery have called the ASA ruling “a shame”

In June 2014, Sibling Distillery was opened in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, by Digby Elliott-Berry, his brother Felix and sisters Cicely and Clarice. At the time, they were aged 15, 22, 18 and 20 respectively.

The distillery is based at their family’s Battledown Brewery and produces a namesake small-batch gin..

Supported by Alcohol Concern, the Youth Alcohol Advertising Council complained to the Advertising Standard’s Authority that the “Who We Are” section of the Siblings Distillery website featured a photograph of its founders.

The council said the photograph breached UK advertising codes since it featured people under the age of 25 promoting alcohol.

Sibling Distillery defended the ad by claiming it portrays the owners, co-founders and directors of the business, which has a distilling licence.

The founders added that they believed consumers “have a right” to know who creates the products, and that no-one in the image was depicted holding or consuming alcohol.

Nevertheless, the ASA upheld the complaint, claiming that the ad featured people under 25-years-old “playing a significant role”.

“The ad must not appear again in its current form,” the ASA stated. “We told Sibling Distillery Ltd to ensure that in future their advertising did not feature people under 25 years playing a significant role.”

Felix Elliott-Berry said that his brother Digby plays a “fairly minor role” in business. “It’s obviously a bit of a strange one”, he said. “As we founded and run the distillery every day, we thought that our customers have a right to know who makes the gin as well as how and where it is made.

“We’ve always been absolutely transparent about our processes and thought that by doing so we were doing the right thing – obviously the ASA thought differently.

“It’s not so much a problem as a bit of a shame, the government is trying to encourage young people into business but because of organisations like the ASA we are forced to hide details about ourselves.”

He added that the founders knew they would not be permitted to use photography which depicted them drinking alcohol, but they were not aware of any rules forbidding them from posting the image on the left.