Willy Borrell

It is no surprise to hear it all began with a home distillery experiment on his boat in Kings Cross (much to the approval of his friends). It went from being simply a pleasant pastime to becoming a serious business concept when he spent a soulful year-and-a-half getting back to nature and growing potatoes on the Isle of Sark. Like the romantic figure of Jim Hawkins inTreasure Island, it was here that Willy Borrell settled on forgoing his jet-setting party lifestyle, determined to make his mark on the world. ‘Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.’

When he returned to London, he was fortunate enough to hear of an enthusiastic if not bemused Polish distillery outside Warsaw where he went on to produce his first ‘batch’ of single distilled vodkas that like wine looked at Terrior and Vintage.

Willy developed an appreciation for traditional Polish vodka 15 years ago when his father John Borrell, a former War Correspondent for TIME Magazine, retired at the age of 40 and re built a typical lodge with land just outside Gdańsk with his new Polish wife. An ideal father-son partnership, his father nurtures the crop and worries about the weather whilst Willy steadfastly promotes the brand back home in London. He enjoys spending summers with his family in Poland where he returns once a month to check on the progress of the crop and the distillery, and hopes his half brothers will eventually join the business.