10 years for Tollgate owners - and what a good job they're doing

I made my second visit of the year to Tollgate Brewery’s brilliant Milking Parlour on the Calke Abbey Estate near Ticknall at the weekend and – small milestone – it was for my first outdoor drink of the year. It was perhaps a bit touch and go. A sunny day was beginning to fade and turn chilly by the time the family sat down but no matter.

The Milking Parlour is a brilliantly realised brewery tap which might have appeared to be in the middle of nowhere when first opened but has quickly become a destination for visitors to the area, being a comfortable stroll from Calke Abbey itself. Several formerly derelict old farm buildings have been carefully restored and brought back into use in a collaboration between Tollgate’s owners and the National Trust, who own the site.

Last year, the Milking Parlour marked five years open and the owners were thrilled to sign a new 20-year lease with the Trust, allowing them to proceed with confidence with further plans, which have included solar panels, a new toilet block and their own mini sewage treatment plant, an innovation which has greatly reduced the number of truck visits to the site.

There is another significant anniversary this year, though, and it passed just a few weeks into the New Year. That was a decade of ownership by the current owners, led by local businessman Kevin Elliott.

I wrote about Tollgate’s story previously for my newspaper column but it bears repeating. The original company was based in Woodville, founded in 2005 in a unit close to where there had indeed been a toll booth on the road from Ashby to Burton and where the 19^th century Brunt, Bucknall & Co Brewery had stood. Quentin and Pat Brearley took on the company in 2009. Pat, a mother of five and a chemist by trade, soon proved adept at brewing.

The couple lived at the hamlet of Calke itself and moved the brewery to the Milking Parlour site in 2012. At that stage, they took on one of the former farm buildings owned by the Trust purely as a brewery. And things went well. Beers such as Billy’s Best Bitter and Red Star IPA were soon well-established favourites.

In 2016, the Brearleys agreed to sell the business to Kevin Elliott. They could see the potential for expansion; he had the clout to make it happen. And the Trust liked the idea of bringing more of the derelict buildings into use. Initially, Pat remained as head brewer and the Brearleys remain involved, often to be seen around the place.

Kevin was often to be seen, too, as plans swung into action. Far from overseeing his project from afar, he was to be found in sweatshirt, shorts and working gloves, hands-on in the process. First, what was literally the former milking parlour for the farm, adjacent to the brewery, was opened as a bar. Soon, the courtyard was ready to welcome visitors and, following that, barns on the remaining two sides of the yard have been opened for business, one housing a state of the art pizza oven.

It was quite a statement, last year, when that new 20-year lease was signed with the Trust and progress on the site has moved on apace since. On a hot summer’s weekend, it can be very busy indeed, hard to park and with a bit of a wait for food – but you’re usually going to be spending a while there anyway, so that’s not necessarily a hardship.

While no bus runs past Southwood House Farm, where the brewery and taproom are situated, it is, as I said, a short-ish stroll from Calke Abbey and a pleasant walk from Ticknall, which is served by buses. Tollgate also have micropubs in Ashby, Leicester and Duffield and the beauty of the business model is that they supply the vast majority of beers they sell. They don’t have to buy it in and they don’t have to chase free trade sales elsewhere. Nor do they chase trends. Sure, they innovate with new beers but the core range, in which their Ashby Pale is the biggest seller, remains largely constant.

As Kevin told me last year: “We’ll only do trade within a reasonable distance of the brewery. Some breweries that have really struggled rely on trade sales and there are fewer places selling small brewery beers. People will run halfway around the county just to sell one cask and if you stop to look at the true cost of that…

“The beauty of our pubs is, first, we’re totally in control of our product, second, you’re guaranteed sales. I can almost tell you exactly how much money is going to hit the bank on a Monday. In our pubs, you don’t drink that pint unless you’ve paid for it, whereas trade sales can be 30 days or whatever.”

It’s shrewd but it’s also common sense and in a business with more than its share of obstacles in a difficult trading environment, Tollgate have hit on a winning formula.