Food & Drink
Xavier Baker, Co-Founder of Mermaid Distillery
Published: July 10, 2023 | Updated: 9th July 2023
Xavier Baker, Co-Founder of the Isle of Wight Distillery, has a long legacy in the alcohol trade.
“I was commercially brewing at 17, before I could even legally drink,” he explained.
Having started his working life in a pub at 14, Xavier was taken on as an apprentice brewer at Ventnor Brewery on the Isle of Wight at 17.
I was fortunate to have an old master brewer teaching me the old methods, then I met Tim O’Rourke, who’s a technical master brewer.
“I was taught the old methods and allowed to make lots of mistakes and experiment.”
After 15 years there, Xavier moved to Canadian-American brewer Molson Coors, working on their Different World Drinks team.
“It was just as the craft beer scene started to take off, so it was nice to be involved in that.”
He spent two years with Molson Coors, before being given the opportunity to set up a brewery in Ireland.
“I met three mad Irishmen at Adnam’s Distillery in Southwold. The day after the interview they called me and said ‘Right, you’ve got the job, when can you start?’.
“I was given a budget and an old dairy on the Dingle Peninsula, which is the most westerly point of Europe, right out in the Atlantic, and told to set the brewery up.
“Within six months we launched an Irish Larger and I ended up being there for three years. It was incredible.
“While in Ireland I met some whiskey distillers. I had always enjoyed whiskey anyway, so it seemed like an obvious next step from brewing. I learnt a lot from them.”
While on this journey, Xavier had always kept in touch with Conrad Gauntlett, owner of Rosemary Vineyard on the Isle of Wight.
Xavier and Conrad
“We’d always spoken about setting up a distillery together, and since I was coming back from Ireland, towards the end of 2014 we decided to make the leap.”
In 2015, Conrad and Xavier’s Isle of Wight Distillery launched its first product, Mermaid Gin, which uses Rock Samphire, a plant that grows naturally on the Isle of Wight and was once known as mermaid’s kiss.
Starting off in a standard bottle, the gin became well established on the South Coast and the Isle of Wight.
“Then we went through a big project to rebrand in a bespoke bottle, taking sustainability and the environment into consideration.
“Part of that was making a bottle of beauty. It’s very tactile with scales around the side and it’s plastic-free. But we were also keen to make something people wouldn’t want to just throw in the recycling, something people would want to keep and repurpose somehow.
Isle of Wight Distillery’s first product, Mermaid Gin, in it’s redesigned bottle
“We were quite fortunate when we launched the new bottle, as the gin boom was really taking hold.
“We weren’t looking for the next big thing, we just did it for passion and the love of creating drinks.”
With the new packaging design, Mermaid Gin went nationwide and started exporting abroad.
In 2022, Isle of Wight Distillery became the first business on the island to become a B Corp, which recognises businesses for their commitment to making a positive impact on the world.
“It was a complete dream to become a B Corp accredited company. It was a two and half year process to get the accreditation – a lot of the things needed we were already doing, they just weren’t formatted correctly.
“Our sustainability and compliance manager, Charity Parker, was instrumental in taking us through the process.”
The accreditation is about more than just environmental impact, taking into account how a business looks after staff and suppliers, as well as its engagement in its local community.
As part of this community work, the Isle of Wight Distillery raises a lot of money for charity, recently sponsoring Sail to Reward, part of the Room to Reward charity which gives volunteers rooms in hotels as a way of saying thank you.
And sailing is currently a massive part of Xavier’s life as he prepares to take on the World’s Toughest Row, an endurance event which sees participants rowing 3000 miles from the Canary Islands to Antigua.
“There’s three of us doing it,” Xavier explained. “Myself, Chris Mannion – owner of iSurf – and Paul Berry, who is ex-Royal Navy. Our team is called Mermaid Atlantic.
Xavier, with Chris Mannion, centre, and Paul Berry, right.
“We’ve all known each other since we were kids. We’ve surfed together and we all have a good understanding of the sea.
“We’ve been planning it for around three and a half years, and now, all of a sudden, it’s less than six months away.
“Between training, the necessary qualifications and safety check surveys, as well as the social media and marketing aspect of it, it’s consumed our lives. I’m hugely excited for it though.
“It’ll be a massive challenge. One of the biggest things we’ve had been working on is being open with each other and checking in every day and sort of saying ‘where’s your head at? Are you in a good place?’.
“It’s been a good learning experience for my day to day interactions with people too though. I’ve got better at reading people and rooms. There’s also an element of being more upfront when you’ve got an issue with something or someone.
“Everything on the boat will be amplified. Even the way your mate wears his sunglasses, after a certain length of time, can start to really get on your nerves. I’m learning ways of working through these things which are a lifelong learning curve.
Mermaid Atlantic will start their row in December. They are raising money for The Seahorse Trust, Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, and Surfers Against Sewage.
For more information on the row, visit: https://mermaidatlantic.com/
For more information on the Isle of Wight Distillery, visit: https://isleofwightdistillery.com/
