Exmoor Distillery

Industry: Food & Drink
Verdict: “Good enough for Berry Bros & Rudd. Not yet reflected in the website.”
Reviewed: April 2026

Who They Are

Exmoor Distillery produces premium spirits from the heart of Exmoor National Park. The brand has earned placement in Berry Bros & Rudd — Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant, founded in 1698 and holding two Royal Warrants — and in National Trust shops across the region. Recognition includes Great Taste Awards and media features on ITVX and in Hello magazine. The visual identity centres on a prominent stag emblem and a gold-and-amber palette drawn from the Exmoor landscape. The brand’s positioning sits at the intersection of place, craft, and heritage: spirits that belong to a specific landscape and are made to reflect it.

What We Noticed

A WordPress template where a bespoke experience should be

The most striking thing about Exmoor Distillery’s digital presence is the gap between what the brand has achieved and how the website presents it. Berry Bros & Rudd does not stock ordinary spirits. National Trust shops do not carry generic products. These are curated placements in institutions that care about provenance, quality, and story. But the website runs on a WordPress template with Myriad Pro typography and standard page layouts. It is clean and functional, but it could belong to any small business. The stag emblem is strong. The landscape photography is genuine. The brand has real identity. The template just does not let it through. A visitor who has seen the product on a Berry Bros shelf or in a National Trust shop will find a website that feels several notches below the retail environment they encountered the brand in.

The landscape stays at arm’s length

Exmoor is one of England’s most dramatic national parks. Moorland, river valleys, ancient woodland, red deer herds. The distillery takes its name from this landscape and positions its spirits as expressions of it. But on the website, Exmoor shows up as background imagery rather than as an immersive presence. The photography is there, but it sits within template constraints that limit its impact — standard image sizes, conventional layouts, no full-bleed moments. The brand wants you to feel Exmoor. The website shows you a picture of Exmoor in a box. For a spirits brand whose entire proposition is “from the heart of Exmoor,” the landscape should be the texture of every page, not a thumbnail.

Partnerships that speak louder than the site

Berry Bros & Rudd. National Trust. ITVX. Hello magazine. Great Taste Awards. Each of these is an external endorsement that carries significant weight. Berry Bros in particular is a credibility signal that most spirits brands cannot access — their selection process reflects centuries of curatorial standards. But on the website, these partnerships are listed rather than staged. They appear as text references or small logos rather than as the anchoring proof points they deserve to be. When your stockist has held Royal Warrants since the 17th century, that fact should do heavy lifting in the brand narrative.

What Works

The stag emblem is a powerful piece of brand identity. It is immediately recognisable, rooted in the Exmoor landscape (red deer are one of the park’s most iconic inhabitants), and carries connotations of wildness, heritage, and nobility. In a spirits market where many brands default to botanical illustration or generic craft aesthetics, the stag gives Exmoor Distillery a symbol that is both specific and memorable.

The retail partnerships validate the brand at the highest level. Being stocked by Berry Bros & Rudd is not a distribution deal — it is an endorsement. Berry Bros has been selecting wines and spirits for over 325 years. National Trust shops similarly curate products that reflect local quality and heritage. These partnerships say “this spirit is worth your attention” in a way that self-promotion cannot.

The gold-and-amber palette connects the brand to the Exmoor landscape without resorting to the greens and browns that dominate the category. It reads as warm, premium, and distinctive — qualities that align with the spirit and the setting.

The Wider Pattern

Across the food and drink brands we have reviewed, we keep finding brands whose external validation outpaces their digital presentation. Gail’s Bakery has 130 locations and does not mention the number. Yorkshire Pasta Company has endorsements from James Martin and Gennaro Contaldo buried in homepage clutter. Exmoor Distillery has earned placement in one of the most prestigious spirits retailers in the world and presents this fact through a WordPress template. The pattern is consistent: the harder a brand works to earn its credibility, the less work the website does to communicate it. The credentials exist. The presentation has not caught up.

If We Were Starting Fresh

We would build a bespoke digital experience that treats the Exmoor landscape as the primary design material, not as background imagery.

Full-bleed photography. The moorland, the river, the deer, the distillery itself — filling the screen rather than sitting inside template boxes. The goal is to make a visitor feel the landscape the way the spirits are supposed to taste: wild, rooted, specific to a place.

Berry Bros & Rudd and National Trust would become anchor credentials on the homepage. Not small logos in a footer strip, but featured partnerships with context. “Selected by Berry Bros & Rudd, Britain’s oldest wine and spirits merchant” carries a different weight when it is presented as a statement rather than listed as a badge.

The distillery visit and tasting experience would become a visible part of the site’s architecture. Exmoor draws millions of visitors annually. A distillery tour in a national park, with the stag emblem on the door and the landscape visible through the windows, is the kind of experience that converts visitors into advocates. It deserves a booking system, beautiful imagery, and a prominent place in the navigation.

The stag would remain the centrepiece. But the stage would finally match the symbol.