In this edition of the bottom line, we're looking at the business of booze,

and in particular the rise of so-called super-premium alcoholic drinks.

Hello, welcome to the programme.

One of the most famous images of 18th century Britain is William Hogarth's Gin Ali,

a fictional London street populated by drunks, criminals, the diseased,

and unfortunate women neglecting their

children, all because of their overconsumption of gin, or so-called mother's ruin. Well, we've come a long

way since then. The product has a classier image now, not least because of a surge in top-end

suppliers. It's less about the quantity, the quality is what

matters. Similarly in beer, recent decades have seen the rise of craft beers. Watney's red barrel

is but a distant memory. Alcohol provides a perfect case study of a sector moving inexorably up

market, at least for a portion of consumers.

So today, we'll look at the dynamics of super premium drinks.

Why have they taken over? Will they last?

And what does their success say about consumer behaviour more generally?

Well, I'm with three guests who have thought more about this than most, so let us meet them.

And first, Tina Warner Keough, partner and co-owner of Warner Edwards' gin distillery in Northamptonshire.

So tell us a little about the business, Tina.

The business.

We're farm-based distillery.

When we started back six years ago, we had one mission, which was to save the world from mediocre gin and little did we know how big the gin market would get at that point in time there

was very few people in the market how much in a year then are you making what are we talking about

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