The Botanist

The Islay Gin.

Bruichladdich is one of the most impressive distilleries in Scotland, in the World even. It was built in 1881 by the Harvey brothers, who came from a dynastic Whisky family. The brothers had wanted to create a distillery that was the very antithesis of an Islay farm distillery. They built a cathedral-like, state-of-the-art Victorian still house, where they used 6m tall stills, which was unheard of at that time, and way ahead of its time.

Today, the distillery remains pretty much the same as it did over 100 years ago. Their belief is, as the French culinary saying goes, "it is in the oldest pots that the best soup is made". Slow fermentation, slow distillation, in very traditional, wooden vats and huge washes made from towering Douglas Fir.

However, they don't just make Whisky, they also produce Gin. For the Botanist Islay Dry Gin the craftsmen at Bruichladdich use 9 classic Gin aromatics and a whopping 22 additional local botanicals, which are hand-picked from the windswept hills, peat bogs, and Atlantic shores of the Hebridean island of Islay. This Islay specialty is distilled 4 times slower than the average Gin, in Bruichladdich's Ugly Betty, one of the few remaining Lomond Stills in existence. It’s the only Gin produced on the Isle of Islay. The story and the Gin, great.

Some of the botanicals included: Orris root, cassia bark, coriander seed, Mugwort, Meadow Sweet, Lady's Bedstraw flowers, apple mint, downy birch, elder, gorse flower.