Isle of Raasay Gin, Distilled

1. ISLE OF RAASAY JUNIPER

Before settling on the final recipe for our gin, we did a lot of desk and field (literally) research into Raasay’s native botanicals with the help of local botanist Dr Stephen Bungard.

We are fortunate that gin’s key botanical, juniper berries (juniperus communis), grows on the north coast of Raasay.

We set about looking for female Juniper plants because it’s only the female species that produce berries. The berries can take up to two years to ripen into a deep purple colour, so it’s quite common to see both green and purple berries on the plant at the same time.

2. CREATED IN OUR COPPER POT STILL & GIN BASKET

We had a lot of fun making our gin, and tasting lots of other gins first for research of course!

After creating a short list of our favourite botanicals with local botanist Dr Bungard, we were fortunate to be able to work with Heriot Watt University MsC student Fiona Williamson who worked a summer as a tour guide at the distillery! Fiona single distilled our botanicals on their own, and then together on small glass stills as part of her Master’s project. We ruled out a few botanicals through this process, like sea pinks, or armeria maritima to give them their Latin name.

The next challenge was to scale that recipe up for our 3,600 litre copper pot still in Raasay! After some trial and error, we hope you’ll agree that we crafted a lovely balance of flavours by distilling the juniper along with a select few botanicals in our copper malt spirit still, and vapour infusing the rest in our copper gin basket to retain their vibrancy. When the citrus reveals itself, our distillers make the cut and collect only the “heart” of the run, the very best quality spirit.

3. A DESIGN INSPIRED BY RAASAY 

The Isle of Raasay’s unique geology, shores and horizons inspired our gin design.

The bottle shape and contemporary colours reflect our modern island distillery, and the textured lettering, ‘liquified’ images and silhouette views of the mountains, including Dun Caan/Dùn Cana, echo the contours and horizons of the island and its surroundings. A fusion of tradition with contemporary design.

A lot of geology students come up to Raasay to study our unique geology, and the geological strata and different layers of rock along Calum’s Road were a key inspiration for the design.

We are really lucky to have a distillery well where we draw Raasay water up through 60 metres of rock, including porous Jurassic sandstone. The result is a mineral-rich water for our Raasay spirit. At 46% ABV, 54% of our gin is Raasay water, so the geology’s impact on our water is really important.

There is a long history of illicit distilling on Raasay, so it’s quite cool to imagine what the gins of years gone by would have tasted like using that same water, and likely the same Isle of Raasay juniper!