The Surrey Copper Distillery

The Surrey Copper Distillery is an independent distillery founded in 2017 by the Smart family, including professor Katherine Smart, a Ph.D. in brewing and a DSc in Brewing and Distilling who is a qualified distiller and taster of spirits as well as a university lecturer in Brewing and Distilling at the University of Cambridge. There’s also Dr. Chris Smart, a Ph.D. in biochemistry and qualified distiller who was previously head of brewing services at Campden BRI. Their expertise has helped them create a library of spirits, beginning in a specially commissioned spirits lab and then distilled on a variety of stills. There’s a pair of two-litre (named Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum) and one 20-litre copper pot still with hotplates (named Alice), as well as a 300-litre mini Carterhead designed by Green Engineering of Italy, and another 20-litre copper pot still for vermouth named Wendy, after JM Barrie’s character Wendy Darling. A love of literature and stories also inspired the brand’s name, specifically a tale of a local policeman from Godalming back in the 1830s who put a stop to a sheep-stealing ring. This “Surrey Copper”, as he became known, was deemed a local hero.