The modern history of JW Lees is one of “constant improvement and innovation”. However, in pub number terms since 2000, it has added 78 new pubs to its estate, which results in circa two or three pubs per year, while disposing of 108 that the company considered had no long-term future as successful pubs.
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JW Lees also owns Willoughby’s Wine Merchants and, during recent years, it has bought a number of regional wines and spirits wholesalers, including Yates Brothers, Duttons of Chester, Scatchard’s, Bushell & Maples and Thomas Baty & Sons, and all of these businesses have now been incorporated into the JW Lees Free Trade business that typically trades with hotels, restaurants, bars, pubs and clubs in the north-west, as well as national accounts and wholesalers who distribute the JW Lees portfolios of beers, wines and spirits.
In 2019, the business opened The Boilerhouse – its experimental small-batch 10-barrel brewery that brews “weird and wonderful one-off brews to delight our customers and push our boundaries in terms of new product development”. And with it selling for US$60 a bottle for a half pint, William said “that makes even London prices for craft beer seem cheap”. Similarly with ales, JW Lees Vintage Harvest Ale was first brewed 35 years ago in 1986 and at 11.5% ABV it is the strongest that a beer can be with a natural fermentation and, although it is a niche brand in the UK, it is very successful overseas including distribution in high-end New York City restaurants featuring multiple vintages on their beer lists. In 1876, the company’s current brewhouse was built and it brewing remains on the same site in Middleton Junction to this day. William said innovation has always been key to the JW Lees brewing business and it first brewed lager in 1959 – the year after Carlsberg came to the UK and JW Lees brews Carlsberg under licence today as well as its own brands of lager, Original Lager and Manchester Craft Lager. William Lees-Jones explained: “In many ways Dick Lees-Jones is the modern founder of JW Lees since he bought out all of the other shareholders and reincorporated the company in 1955. He was joined by his sons Richard in 1958 and Christopher in 1961 and both remain directors of the company today, although they stepped down from day-to-day responsibilities more than 20 years ago.” The suffix ‘-Jones’ was added to the Lees name in 1936 when Dick Lees-Jones inherited shares in the company from his uncle John Willie Lees, the grandson of the original founder. John Lees had founded the brewery when he was in his 50s as a retirement project after being in the textiles business in the 1800s as a ‘manufacturer of fustians, nankeens and jaconets’ with mills in Oldham and Manchester. Middleton Junction was seen to be the perfect location for a brewery, being not just a railway station but also on the Rochdale Canal. It also happens to be adjacent to the M60 and so, for the company, this is still an ideal spot for logistics and distribution into the Northern Powerhouse.
JW Lees was first established in 1828 but unlike many regional breweries it can genuinely stand the test of still being a family company with just seven shareholders, all members of the fifth and sixth generation of the founder John Lees.