Time for a wee dram of… gin
If you can’t tell your Lagavulin from your Laphroaig – and don’t care – let Mark C O’Flaherty guide you to the Scottish distilleries that are making a different kind of tipple
Readying to batten down the hatches for what I thought would be a few short weeks back in March of last year, I stocked up on essentials: a case of Casa Herradura Plata tequila, a couple of crates of brutally oaked chardonnay that no one else would ever want a glass from and the wild card – a few bottles of Scottish gin. Isle of Raasay Gin to be precise, made on the small island between Skye and the mainland, with juniper, rhubarb root, citrus peel and various other local botanicals. I could not leave London, but I could taste something from a place I wished I could be. And when travel was possible, I would go there.
Whisky tourism is as of much interest to me as skiing. Which is to say, not at all. I fear heights and the burn of dark spirits. I’ve had my fair share of picklebacks in dive bars, purely for the camaraderie, theatre and ruinous nature of it all, but I don’t have the palate to tell a Lagavulin from a Laphroaig. But gin? I love gin. I feel a visceral pleasure when I see the trickles of condensation on a balloon glass full of Iradier & Bulfy and tonic with peppercorns at midnight in San Sebastián, and I love a martini with Tanqueray 10 before a steak dinner, anywhere. Also, I am never happier than when I am in the Highlands and Hebridean islands of Scotland with my
other half. The mixology of all this, along with the promise of blazing autumn sunsets and fewer midges than in summer, seemed inspired. So between lockdowns last year, we set off.
We plotted a route focusing on the western Highlands and Islands. I didn’t want a single drive to be more than three hours, but I did schedule in maximum scenery. There is a handy interactive Gin Map on Visit Scotland’s website that flags up all the distilleries in the country by region, and notes which have tours. It’s indispensable. While some tours were and are still closed, most of the distilleries have retail, many have tastings, and the journey is really the point. You can, after all, walk the Malvern Hills and conjure up the emotion of Elgar even if you aren’t listening to Enigma Variations.
Driving through the Trossachs to Glencoe was all I had hoped it would be. Nothing says “holiday” quite like snaffling down a box of M&S cocktail sausages in the passenger seat, repeatedly saying “These are disgusting”, pausing only to eat another one or to reach over to press replay on Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? I had all that, amazing scenery, and the promise of artisanal gin. First stop: the Clachaig Inn, where I enjoyed the mist rolling down the mountains as I stood in an epic queue for check-in outside while being devoured by the last of the season’s most vengeful midges. Social distancing is a tedious business. There was one person working the front desk who took each guest to their room, slowly. When I went to the Boot Bar for dinner, a waitress came to the roped-off doorway, acknowledged my reservation, said she had some orders to take, and vanished. The midges descended again. Once allowed in, I was disappointed they had none of the most local gin, from the Pixel Distillery, but I did have a grand grapefruit-zesty Rock Rose Gin from Dunnet Bay Distillers way up in Thurso close to John O’Groats. A second disappointment: I missed out on the gin classes at Pixel, which resumed a few days after I left. But I’ll be back. The location, right next to the Ballachulish Bridge, is gorgeous.
On we drove, heading east, stopping at the Persie distillery in Perthshire, where I had a tasting of six gins presented in shot glasses on a wooden platter, half of them dog-themed: spaniel, dachshund, and so forth. This is a world away from Gordon’s miniatures on all those no-frills flights we didn’t know we’d miss so much. Everything I tasted was unique, from the vanilla and nuts of Old Tom, to the floral and coriander notes of Labrador, which I bought a bottle of to take away.
Many of the distilleries in Scotland “pivoted”, as we say, last year to develop a side line producing hand sanitiser. Persie still produces bottles of theirs for The Fife Arms in Braemar, which was where we stayed next. I hadn’t been here since the first week it opened, when it instantly became one of my five favourite hotels in the world. The mix of authentic Victoriana and Hauser & Wirth contemporary art is magical. Neither the hotel, nor my opinion of it, has changed. It is blessed by its location: the drive here is among the most memorable in the country, whizzing past vivid purple stripes of lavender that foreground the green mountains of the Cairngorms like a Mark Rothko painting in a good mood. The gardens at the Fife Arms have developed into something slightly wild and absurdly pretty. I went foraging with Natasha and her dog, Rosie, through the woods close to the Braemar Highland Games Centre, and back to the gardens at the hotel. We sat by a table surrounded by wild flowers while Natasha mixed up a variety of drinks, blending entirely foraged materials with base spirits including hogweed syrup and pineapple weed. The latter transformed a prosaic bottle of Bloom gin into something fresh and tropical. Back inside at the Flying Stag – with its sculptural centrepiece of a winged, antlered beast leaping over the bar – there is an epic, purely Scottish, gin list. The eponymous house spirit has been produced in collaboration with Brewdog, while Esker Honey Spiced Gin – with an elegant bottle inspired by the arts and crafts graphic lines of Charles Rennie Mackintosh – has warm flavours of honey and spice.
Driving the next day to the Summer Isles, heading north-west, we stopped for a sandwich on the terrace at the eco-architectural Highland Farm Café in Dingwall, which had shelves laden with local GlenWyvis gins. GlenWyvis doesn’t have a visitors’ centre, but does offer virtual tours. While the word “virtual” is something I’d like to excise from my vocabulary along with “Zoom”, it has its uses.
GlenWyvis has found one, as has Raasay, which has been offering virtual tasting sessions: you order samples online, then log on for a sort-ofcommunal experience.
I hadn’t been to the Summer Isles – an archipelago in the mouth of Loch Broom – before. I don’t know why. We stopped frequently for selfies as the light changed in the late afternoon, arriving at The Summer Isles Hotel in time for pre-dinner cocktails. I have numerous friends who are besotted with this place, and I can see why. Watching sunset from an armchair in the reception lounge reminds you why you drove all this way. It feels remote, but refined. There are couples drinking champagne and perusing the evening menu, and the bar stocks exclusively local gins. I had a “friendly double” (a term I shall start using with abandon) of small batch Badachro and tonic. The hotel serves it Spanish-style, in balloon glasses, and it’s splendid – heavy with juniper, citrus and lavender. The rooms at the hotel are plush and modern, with sofas and stove fires, but I was less taken with some of the plating at dinner, which veered from fussy to weirdly Grand Guignol, notably a grouse that came presented as roadkill, in a violent splatter of beetroot and red cabbage.
Another day, another drive, this time across the water to the Isles of Lewis and Harris, home of Stornoway black pudding and tweed. The CalMac ferry is the key link, and it’s a palaver during the pandemic. Capacity and frequency have been reduced, which left me stranded without the return I had scheduled for. At dinner at Broad Bay House on Lewis, I talked to a couple who had booked their tickets six months previously. Turns out, trying to do it the week before you go is a huge mistake that a travel writer should have the foresight to avoid. But there are worse places to be stuck.
I’d stayed at Broad Bay House 10 years ago. It’s a fancy B&B with a glasssurround lounge looking out on to a bay populated by seals, which is a lot to enjoy in itself. The place was originally built by a couple who left business life in London to live the dream in the Outer Hebrides. A few years ago, another couple, Sue and Tom, took it over. It’s now their dream. It is comfortable and stylish – lots of pale wood and tweeds – and the food is good, although roll on the post-virus days of breakfast without a designated time. I’d rather starve than be up for 8.30am. On alternating evenings, they offer a cooked evening meal and a sharing platter. I had the latter – a munificent spread of langoustines, smoked mussels and salmon, cheeses and meats served on the lid of a whisky cask. The wine list is good and gently priced, and there is, of course, a bar with plenty of Scottish gins. A lovely
design note: several empty bottles of Harris Gin have been turned into lanterns above the shelves, which is something anyone coming here might be inspired to do. The ripples and curves of each bottle’s surface conjure up the wild seas of the Outer Hebrides, and look gorgeous.
The next day, we drove to the distillery – which sells glassware inspired by the bottle, which I would like to buy in substantial quantities – and onwards to the Isle of Scalpay. It was a ravishing drive into a mossy, blasted landscape. On the return loop, we went to the brooding, cruciform, Neolithic Callanish Standing Stones, which would be swamped with tourists if on the mainland, and then the cemetery at Dail Mòr, with a visually pleasing architectural grid of headstones bearing the details of countless Murdos and Murdinas, overlooking a beautiful sandy beach. These islands are coloured by a strangeness, enigma and the elements. Water dictates the way of life in the Outer Hebrides. It is a place of ferry schedules and solitude.
We finished our trip on Raasay via a stop for dinner at the Three Chimneys on Skye – which has commissioned its own citrus-tinged gin in homage to original chef and founder Shirley Spear’s beloved marmalade pudding. Raasay is reachable only by a small ferry, and it seems implausible that life could be maintained here. There is, in fact, a lot of life, as well as wild painterly landscapes, basking sharks and a super modern distillery with a six-bedroom hotel in it. The tours and the rooms at the Isle of Raasay Distillery will open again from May 17. Until then, you can still visit the grounds and the shop and tour the island. And you should. You’ll see where the artist who created the bottle’s label took his inspiration – the geology, waves and layers of rock around the island, in soft pinks, ocean blue and mud colours. You’ll then want to take some of the gin home as a souvenir, it’s such a profoundly romantic object. Like many of the gins I bought and took back to London, it is made from its location and represents it. And you can drink it all in again later, wherever you are.