It doesn’t happen very often, but I actually came up with the idea for the product and designed the brand around it.

With The Lakes Distillery spirit now officially a single malt whisky after

3 years of maturation in the cask, I thought of blending it with a Scotch whisky from just over the border.

Cross-border relations have not always been friendly, to say the least. 

From the 13th century to the 17th, families from either side of the border would steal from each other, kidnap, blackmail and kill. They were known as the Border Reivers and wore Spanish-style Morion helmets, from which came their nickname, The Steel Bonnets.

Here are my favourite headlines from an extensive press campaign.