Meet the Team

MEET THE TEAM

The Moonshiners

Luke Smith

Managing Director and
Head Distiller

The moonshiner
inspiring the name.

Luke’s interest was piqued and nurtured early by family members in the brewing trade; he began by making beer, pursued his curiosity and delved into spirit making from there. Self taught, his less than legal hobby was the delight of his barely legal friends in his formative years. 

His flare was noticed by a former employer and entrepreneur and he was offered the opportunity to turn this passion into a career back in 2015 when he became the distiller of a brand new distillery. His skill and flare for gin making plus his incredible work ethic and ability to wear many hats allowed the venture to quickly grow and turned this startup into an award winning gin distillery. He experimented and created over 15 spirit products for the distillery which saw the brand stocked in several major supermarket chains including M&S.

He moved on and became the Head Distiller of a team for a large craft gin brand in 2019, refining their processes and aiding them to scale up, even turning gypsy distiller, producing from multiple locations.

However, during this time, he had always had his sights set on his own distillery where he could fulfil his burning desire to truly create the products he wanted to in his way. He and his partner, Grace, were readying to start the business in early 2020 when Covid 19 pandemic hit. The effect this had on the hospitality industry followed by a cost of living crisis has meant their plans had to go on hold. After a few frustrating years Moonshiners Institute finally launched in 2024 where he is now Head Distiller and Managing Director.

Never satisfied with mediocre, his passion for crafting quality, unique spirits is unmatched – his skill combined with huge amounts of enthusiasm and a drive to continue exploring what is possible in distilling are what make Moonshiners Institute.

Grace Noon

Marketing Director

Grace’s story is a little less written-in-the-stars and more a happy accident, piggybacking on Luke’s distilling dreams. 

She studied Business and Marketing at university and after graduating she began working for a new brewery owned by a hospitality company. They didn’t have their own marketing department and so she quickly became the whole company’s ‘marketing person’. From this she created the company’s marketing department which eventually grew to a four-person strong team which she led during her 6 years with the business.

During this time the company decided to get into distilling – enter Luke. Grace was asked to handle the marketing for the venture and began working closely with him to create a craft gin brand from the ground up – a hard but very enjoyable task. Ever the food and drink enthusiast (i.e. greedy bastard), she really enjoyed working alongside Luke as he created new spirit products – getting to come up with concepts, input into product development and ultimately launch new gin products. Turns out, they also quite liked each other, eventually realised and even more eventually got married.They decided that a distillery was something they’d really quite like to do together, their way, to truly have the freedom to create whatever they fancied. And so that’s what they did with Moonshiners. He makes it, she sells it in effect. And does the more boring admin type stuff. 

The goal is to do what we enjoy everyday so work doesn’t feel like work. So far, it works.

James Hanson

Design Director

Loves designing creative brands and great tasting tipples!

James worked with Luke and Grace previously, they all got on and he is pretty class at creating drinks brands so we asked him to become a Moonshiner and he said yes – hurrah!

James met Grace originally when they were working on the creation of Sonnet 43 breweries brand. Luke was introduced to James when later, the same founders of S43 started Poetic License, and James again got to work on their brand while he was a designer at Surreal Creative.

Since then, many years have passed and James has now worked in the design and digital industry for over 15 years. He is the MD for Layers Studio and brings a different set of knowledge and experience to the team. He loves his Rum and is starting to discover Whisky.

When he heard that Luke and Grace were making the leap to create something uniquely theirs and that they would like him to be part of it, he was 100% on board. Mainly does design and web stuff – his actual product development starts and finishes with ‘taste testing’!