A fresh take on Spirits

Loveday is the work of old friends more than a little bit obsessed with flavour and with two decades of culinary & design experience, on an eternal search for beautiful, vibrant new things to sip on.

It’s been slowly brought to life since 2020 over lockdowns, babies, coffee, sea swims and G&Ts in lovely Penryn, south Cornwall.

Stumped by a barrage of over-complicated, over-sweet flavour profiles, and tired of fussy branding that seems preoccupied with telling women ‘It’s gin o’clock!’ and ‘Rum is only for sailors!, we wanted to find a new way: where craftsmanship, modern design, and carefully balanced, chef-developed distillations come together.

We make sustainable spirits using fresh and foraged ingredients with enjoyment in mind - unhurried get-togethers with favourite company and a glass of something darn good in hand is how we love to serve Loveday.

  • CHLOE

    Co-founder, design department, reluctant tech-guy.

  • DAISY

    Co-founder, The Tastebuds, distiller

We’re childhood friends who spent our teens and 20s as chefs, creatives and hospitality workers: in restaurants, as private chefs, and on boats. Now we pour all of that experience and knowledge into every bottle of award-winning organic rum and gin that leaves our distillery doors, and every event we host.

Since 2020 we’ve been making our spirits with clarity, thought and warmth for people that want something fresh, distinct and handcrafted in their glass.

Over 35,000 bottles of organic, made-from-scratch rum, and award winning gin have been enjoyed in the UK and internationally, and they've picked up recognition along the way that's made us grin proudly from ear to ear:

  • An appearance on James Martin's Saturday Kitchen, in which Levi Roots said of our organic rum: "Wow... I REALLY like that"

  • A Gold Outstanding, 98/100 award from The International Wine and Spirits Competition which is rare as hen's teeth from this revered industry body.

  • Becoming the only British, Organic certified, made-from-scratch rum producer in the UK.

  • Being picked as a Craft Gin Club gin of the month, which saw one of our gins land on 44,000 doorsteps in August 2023

  • Achieving a full house of gold awards from the Taste of the West, and stars from The Great Taste Awards

What does ‘Loveday’ mean?

When we were name brainstorming in the beginning we knew we wanted something Cornish, something with a warm, joyful energy to it, and, on a less romantic note, something you could spell on the phone. When we put ‘Loveday’ out to our opinionated group of advisors in the early days one friend said ‘it makes me think of big skies’ which made up our minds!

In days gone by, a Loveday (Leofdaeg, in old English - literally meaning ‘beloved day’) was a day appointed for a meeting between enemies with a view to settle disputes, come to peaceful agreements, and to heal rifts. They were such huge cultural events during the middle ages, that babies born on these days, or anniversaries of them, began being called Loveday in celebration.

They were designed to result in voluntary—and therefore amicable—settlements, regardless of who was legally in the right- making them extra appealing if the people involved wanted to avoid the crown sticking their oar in. There was usually a sort of mutually-agreed umpire appointed to get involved in the case of a deadlock. And here’s our favourite bit: the process often had a social aspect to it, like both parties dining together- suggestions and decisions being passed across the table along with the wine and bread.

One famous one is the Loveday held in 1458 between king henry VI and the Duke of York in an attempt to prevent civil war during the wars of the roses.

For one reason or another, this tradition really stuck in Cornwall, and so ‘Loveday’ grew Cornish roots- making it a pretty good fit for two old friends who were born and grew up here, creating a business revolving around bringing people together.

As a side note, it definitely seems Loveday is one of those old names that's having a revival- we keep meeting lots of baby and toddler Lovedays at festivals and events!


Daisy, Chloe’s twin & Chloe, circa 1992

Our mums were friends long before we were born so you could say ours was a bit of an arranged friendship. Growing up in together in Cornwall in the 90s meant mud pies, den making, picnics, beaches, camping, bike riding, dressing up, nicking older our sister’s things, and learning all the words to the Spice Girls’ hits.

We did nursery, School and College together, before both moving to St. Agnes, The Isles of Scilly to work in the two island’s Cafes. It was in this ever so fun summer season that we learned cooking could be so much more than a hastily boiled cup of Supernoodles, that maybe I didn’t want to go and finish my art degree after all, and where we hatched a plan to make our fortunes working at sea.

Daisy trained at Le Cordon Bleu and made a career working on superyachts all over the Mediterranean, before returning to Cornwall to work in fine dining restaurants and eventually running a busy garden-Cafe kitchen. Meanwhile, I started cooking on a beautiful old sailing boat with my now husband. We took our guests exploring the west coast of Scotland, eating very nice seafood cooked up in my tiny galley and essentially throwing a dinner party every night. Daisy and I would rack up eyewatering phone bills calling each other from different countries to trade recipes and salacious stories of what we got up to.

Lockdown beckoned a shift, and we finally got cracking on making the culinary business we’d always wanted to start together. Running this distillery puts to use all the things we’ve learned and fallen in love with over the years- design, recipe development, and helping people have a thoroughly good time with friends.

We make spirits with the same approach that we both always took to cooking and hospitality- How can we best pair, balance and make these ingredients sing? Where can we get the freshest, most sustainable and exciting versions of them? What story can be told? How does this make someone feel? How can we bring people together over this bowl/platter/glass?

We set the whole thing up to make organic rum and got happily waylaid with botanical gin, which, to our delight, is going quite well. We’re over the moon that, as of summer 2023, we finally now also have Soil Association organic rums on the go too.

It’s been a joyful, stressful, mad, exciting four years, and we’re only just getting started!

Chloe X