Foraged Scots pine is one of our main botanicals
Describing herself as an “accidental gin maker”, Kim Cameron first embarked on her spirit-making journey four years ago.
The Angus local was an avid jam maker, who had even won a prize at the World Jampionships, and often found herself with lots of leftover fruit and juice.
Hoping to avoid any waste, her mum suggested adding the extras to gin, creating tasty liqueurs – and the rest, as they say, is history.
Kim now runs an artisan distillery called the Gin Bothy, and uses only locally sourced ingredients in the recipe for her Original Gin and fruit liqueurs.
She said: “Our philosophy is that if it’s there and it’s natural, why not use it? All our products are 100% hand bottled, hand poured and hand batched. If it’s local and we can use it, that’s what we’ll batch.
“It’s the bothy way – it just makes sense. We’ve got some of the best Scottish fruit and plants right on our doorstep, so we just have to be clever about how we use it.”
Original Bothy Gin is made with botanicals from Scotland, including Scots pine needles, heather, milk thistle, hawthorn root and rosemary, much of which are gathered locally.
“Scots pine is one of our main botanicals. We used to buy our pine and then dry it out, but we then got in touch with the Woodland Trust and started gathering our own,” explained Kim.
“We forage in Loch Arkaig, which is one of Scotland’s oldest Scots pine forests, and £1 of every bottle of Original Gin sold goes back to the Woodland Trust.”
Kim and her all-woman team do everything by hand, and she works with a local vodka distiller to share their production space. This has allowed her to grow her business without impacting the local environment.
She said: “When I first started playing about with adding my fruit to gin, I bought in the first batch of spirit. But I found I couldn’t control the juniper, so I started a collaboration with a vodka distiller just down the road.
“We share the facilities, which has meant I’ve been able to the grow the business without having to put in a full distillery. It’s worked really well.”
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We’ve got some of the best fruit and plants on our doorstep