That’s the spirit: Garry and Lindsay Bowman, of Diss-based Stardust Spirits, celebrate World Drinks Awards wins

A pair of Diss-based drink producers are hoping for a bright future after celebrating winning five awards at the World Drinks Awards.

Garry and Lindsay Bowman, of Stardust Spirits, in Bramley Road, took home four golds and a silver for three of their vodka, rum and gin liqueurs.

Having worked as an operations manager for English Spirit Distillery for four-and-a-half years, Mr Bowman decided in 2022 to start making their own drinks..

The 52-year-old said: “I used to go out and sell the distillery’s products at weekends and thought surely I could do this myself.

“I had so many different flavour combination ideas in my head, so we started Stardust to see if people would like them as much as we did.”

The pair use stills from collaborative distilleries to make the base product and from there they make their range of spirits and liqueurs which now has a range of about 30 products.

Mr Bowman, an operations manager at Mizkan Food Products in Bury St Edmunds, said: “Ideally we would like to raise funds to get our own place and distill from there.

“But at the moment, these collaborations help us to get our product out to as many people as we can.”

Their plans to make this venture a long term business however will be greatly boosted by their recent awards wins.

“We entered our honey and vanilla rum liqueur and our lemon and lime gin liqueur into the World Drinks Awards and both came out with category and UK golds,” said Mr Bowman.

“We also put in our raspberry and white chocolate vodka liqueur, which won a category silver.

“To put three products into a prestigious competition like that and come out with five awards, we are just over the moon.”

The pair, who sell their products at shows, on their website and in Our Slice of Country Life in St Nicholas Street in Diss, now hope being a multi award-winning producer can help the future of the business.

“We have so many ideas for new flavours and with these awards wins it shows our ethos of using as many local and natural ingredients as we can and making these drinks the way we want to is paying off.

“We would like to thank all out supporters and hope we can carry on this journey together to bigger and better things.”

To find out more about the business and its products, go to the Stardust Spirits website.