Former IT professional Roz Tinlin is on a mission to raise the profile of an often overlooked area of Northumberland she’s called home for the last 23 years. How? Through her B&B, whisky and chocolate, of course! Alison Cowie speaks to the serial entrepreneur to find out more.
Roz Tinlin had enjoyed a successful career in IT when, in 2001, she and her family decided to buy a B&B in Rothbury, Northumberland.
She explains: “We fell in love with the area and bought the property on a whim. Our girls were nine and ten at the time and we thought Rothbury and Coquetdale would be a lovely place to bring them up.”
The former consultant threw herself into her new business venture, called The Haven, which had previously been used as a B&B and a base for outdoor pursuits training.
After fully refurbishing the property, Roz spent her days attending to guests staying in the 13 bedrooms, and her evenings cooking meals for patrons and locals.
“It was very full on at the start,” Roz recalls. “I had to get up to speed on everything. But I have a very strong work ethic and learnt on the job. I worked well with Environmental Services, Trading Standards and Fire Regulations. A lot of business owners grumbled about these ,but I found they helped me to get everything in order.”
As a new resident of Rothbury, Roz also became a prominent member of the Coquetdale Business Club, and was appointed chairperson.
Discussions between fellow B&B owners, farmers, shopkeepers and other small business owners often centred around ways to raise the profile of their area of Northumberland that is often overlooked.
“Coquetdale gets missed out because people tend to go to Alnwick, Hexham or Bamburgh at the coast,” Roz explains. “They forget about the stunningly beautiful bit in the middle.”
The group began researching the area and a local artist found that Coquetdale had a rich history of whisky smuggling
The revelation gave Roz the idea to develop a whisky to promote the area and honour its infamous past.
However, Her whisky dream was almost shattered before it started as Roz kept getting knocked back from distillers.
“I spoke to lots of people in the whisky industry but no one was interested,” she adds.
She then met a distiller called John McDougall
Roz invited him to the Coquet Valley and she told him about the history of the area and her desire to create a whisky.
John liked what he heard and the pair went for a walk in the local valley. The distiller took samples of the local peat and water before returning to his native Scotland to develop a whisky blend that reflected the Northumbrian area. Once the perfect blend was made, it was sent to an independent bottler, Jane, based in Glasgow.
Black Rory Whisky – named after the historic 19th Century smuggler who ran illicit stills in the hills of Upper Coquetdale – was launched in 2007. Roz reveals it has enjoyed steady sales over the years.
“I just love the thought of smugglers roaming around that area, and bringing out the whisky was a great way to honour that while promoting the Coquet Valley,” she adds.
Meanwhile, Roz had begun to employ help with the cooking and housekeeping at her B&B.
She took advantage of local courses for her staff and a tutor came to the B&B weekly to work with them.
One day, the tutor asked if Roz would be interested in becoming a tutor herself. Always up for a challenge, The Haven’s owner accepted and, for the next five years, taught literacy, numeracy, and food hygiene to adults with learning difficulties.
Her tutoring experience was to lead to yet another business venture.
Roz recognised that the best way to teach her students food hygiene was to learn skills on the job. she decided chocolate was the perfect tasty treat to make
“I’d never taken an interest in making chocolate before. It just came to me, thinking I wanted to do something nice and interesting with the people I was tutoring. We could make the chocolate together and then design the wrappers.”
Roz took several courses to learn how to make chocolate. But, just as she was about to embark on her teaching courses with the adults, everything came to an abrupt halt.
“All funding stopped overnight and I found I couldn’t put what I’d learnt into practice.”
Instead of letting her newly acquired skills melt away, Roz began making bars of chocolate to sell at local farms and food markets.
Her brand, Coquet Chocolates, gave the serial entrepreneur another opportunity to promote the area she called home.
“Like the whisky, I wanted to create a good quality product that would help highlight Coquetdale. I suppose, I hoped people would like the chocolate and decide to look up what the area had to offer.”
Roz currently produces 30 flavours of bars and her ‘Clarts’, puddles of chocolate with luxury fruit and nuts named after the Geordie word for clumps of dirt.
She supplies around 12 local shops with her chocolatey treats and produces one-off confectionary for corporate and special events.
In addition, Roz hosts chocolate-making workshops and chocolate and whiskey tasting classes.
Alongside running her B&B and whisky enterprise, Roz would like to develop her chocolate business and is currently looking into suppliers for more eco-friendly packaging.
She would also like to take on a chocolate-making apprentice, but the rising cost of ingredients has delayed her plans for now.
Whatever the future brings, Coquetdale is definitely in a sweeter position with Roz as one of its residents. Cheers to that!
Find out more about Coquet Chocolate at www.coquetchocolates.co.uk
