From Guardbridge beer to St Andrews gin and whisky.

Eden Mill began as a brewery. The Spirits Business reported in January 2022 that the company was founded in 2012 by Tony Kelly and Paul Miller, starting with gins inspired by the St Andrews area. The site was at Guardbridge, a village near St Andrews in Fife, and it came with a long industrial past. According to the Whiskypedia of Scotchwhisky.com, the Haig family had built a distillery at Guardbridge in 1810, the Seggie distillery, which later gave way to the Guard Bridge paper mill; the mill’s last operator, Curtis Fine Papers, went into administration in 2008, and the University of St Andrews acquired the site some two years later.

Whiskypedia says Paul Miller opened Eden Brewery there in 2012, and that in 2014, after installing a still, the business began producing a hopped gin and single malt spirit and was renamed Eden Mill. The Spirits Business reported that Eden Mill released its first limited-edition single malt in 2018, a blend of spirit aged in American and French virgin oak and ex-Pedro Ximénez sherry casks.

In January 2022 the company sold a majority stake to Inverleith LLP, an Edinburgh investor in consumer brands, on undisclosed terms, The Spirits Business reported. The money was meant to help complete a carbon-neutral distillery in St Andrews and to widen distribution in the UK and abroad, and Paul Miller stayed on as managing director, heading a newly formed board, with a new senior executive team to follow.

Ceramic first, then dimpled glass and a larger label.

Eden Mill’s packaging has been rebuilt more than once. The Scottish trade paper SLTN reported in April 2015 that the gins had a new-look ceramic design, the first stage of a plan to bring all of Eden’s products under a single brand identity. When the brand moved into glass four years later, Packaging Scotland described the ceramic look as established.

The move to glass came with the gin liqueurs. Packaging Scotland reported in July 2019 that the glass specialist Croxsons had made a bespoke clear bottle for Eden Mill’s Love Gin liqueurs, in 500ml and 700ml sizes, with a dimpled geometric pattern that clears to reveal the front label, the brand name embossed on the back and a wooden, debossed cap; the magazine said the bottles were screen printed, with label panels sitting flush with the dimples. Tony Kelly, then co-owner, told the magazine the bottle had to make a bold statement on the shelf, and Croxsons said the switch from ceramic was meant to give the brand a more sophisticated look for new markets.

The dimples stayed. In May 2025 Packaging Scotland reported a refresh of the core range of Love Gin, Original Gin and Golf Gin: an evolution of the existing bottle, with the dimpled glass kept, a larger label for presence on shelf and a wide-set cork in place of the screw top. Each gin was given its own illustration tied to its botanicals. The magazine described a love heart of raspberries and strawberries picked near the distillery for Love Gin, and a design celebrating the Fife coastline for Original Gin, with sea buckthorn, honeyberries and Scottish kombu seaweed. The chief executive at the time, Rennie Donaldson, told the magazine the botanical stories were central to the redesign. Donaldson called 2025 a huge year for the company, with the new distillery operational and a visitor centre due to open, and said the refresh was meant to give the range a vibrant new look.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Scottish gins: Caorunn, Pickering’s, Rock Rose, Daffy’s, Eden Mill, Lussa and Arbikie. Scottish gins in general come from many different kinds of producer, from whisky distilleries that make a gin alongside their malt to small independent distilleries, family farms and island businesses, and a single bottle can be sold everywhere from a local shop to a bar list abroad.

A gin brand’s identity is usually carried less by the spirit itself than by a name, a bottle, a label and the place it promises, because gin needs no long ageing and can be distilled almost anywhere. The company behind a name may have changed hands, moved its stills or had its gin made under contract somewhere else. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its gin is actually distilled and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its gin is made, which botanicals it says come from its own surroundings and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A new distillery, administration and a new owner.

The new distillery took longer than planned. Drinks International reported in November 2025 that the University of St Andrews handed over the site on its Eden Campus in June 2023 and that, after 21 months of building work, Eden Mill filled its first cask there on 7 April 2025. The Caterer reported that the site opened in October 2025, with a warehouse for 300 casks, a 40-seat bar called the Lookout and an experience programme around whisky, gin and cocktails.

Drinks International also reported that St Andrews Brewers Limited, the company behind Eden Mill, entered administration on 18 November 2025, with Kenny Craig and Kevin Mapstone of Begbies Traynor appointed joint administrators, who pointed to a drop in sales and a visitor centre that opened about a year later than expected. The same report said Ruby Capital, an investment firm based in Dundee, had acquired Eden Mill’s business and assets. In April 2026 The Caterer reported that Ruby Capital, chaired by Tony Banks, had appointed Steven Kersley, previously head of BrewDog Distilling, as chief executive, succeeding an interim chief executive who had stepped in after Rennie Donaldson left in October 2025.

For a design guide, Eden Mill shows how a young distiller can carry one tactile idea, a dimpled bottle, from a liqueur range to its core gins while the label grows and the illustrations take on the work of telling where each gin comes from. Compare Kingsbarns, the Fife farm-steading distillery, and Edinburgh Gin; Lindores Abbey is another Fife distillery. For this guide we use estuary teal, copper and links sand with an old-style serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Eden Mill’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.