Hendrick's Master Distiller, Lesley Gracie, Conferred Honorary Degree

Lesley Gracie's extraordinary curious mind and industry achievements recognised with an honoris causa

Lesley Gracie, Hendrick's Master Distiller, has been conferred a Degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa by The University of Hull in recognition of her extensive career, industry-leading innovation and inspiring ability to blend science and creativity.

Lesley accepted her honoris causa in full cap and gown on January 15, at Connexin Live Hull as part of the graduating ceremony for the Faculty of Science and Engineering.

Born and raised in Hull, Lesley studied chemistry at Hull Technical College part time whilst working for a pharmaceutical company in the city. Lesley has always been enchanted by plants and one of her first roles involved playing with botanical flavors to mask the taste of medicines.

In 1999, while working in the lab at William Grant & Sons' Girvan Distillery developing different innovative liquids, Lesley was approached by the great grandson of William Grant, Charlie Gordon, to create a bold new gin unlike anything which had come before. Hendrick's Gin was the result, helping to spark a ginnaisance across the globe.

Over the past two decades, Lesley has been responsible for countless pioneering releases and has amassed an array of botanicals, distillates and experimental liquids in her lab at the Hendrick's Gin Palace. Lesley Gracie has a long history of pushing boundaries with her experiments, her genius lies in her fascination with flavors and how they work together. She visualizes flavors as shapes and strikes to create a round, balanced flavor in all of her experimental elixirs.

Introducing Lesley, Presenting Officer, Professor Kevin Pimbblet said: "There are people whose work quietly reshapes the way a whole field thinks about itself. Lesley Gracie is one of them."

As he presented Lesley to the Chancellor for the award of Doctor of Letters Honoris Causa he concluded: "Lesley's influence is now global. The gin she created is sold around the world, yet the scale of that success rests on habits that remain local and precise. Long hours with glassware and notebooks. Careful recordings of how a small change in a botanical, a temperature, or a timing alters the finished liquid. A readiness to keep testing until something genuinely new emerges. Colleagues and peers describe her as both meticulous and quietly bold, someone who will push at the edges of a category without losing sight of structure or restraint. Taken together, her career shows how science, craft, and imagination can be held in one steady practice, and how a curiosity first sparked by the problem of masking the taste of medicine can, over time, remake an entire segment of the drinks industry."

During Lesley's acceptance speech she paid homage to her home city of Hull, citing how studying chemistry entirely shaped her career path and the importance of blending science and creativity.

Addressing the graduating class, Lesley said: "We all have more than just one side to us, that's what makes us, us. If you're looking to combine science with creativity. Curious minds get rewarded. Always ask 'what if'. My advice to all of you graduates today is to just be who you are. If you try to conform to whatever the world tells you to be, you lose the opportunity to truly connect and bond with people on a real, human level and show them who you really are. Who you are is the best bit!"

Lesley was accompanied to the ceremony by her husband and two dogs, Lily & Daisy, she managed to leave the tortoises, rabbits, hamsters and countless fish at home.