Cheers...to my ‘schoolboy’ gin!
WHEN Bruce Walker was caught in school selling home-made gin, he was given a ‘stern talking to’ and told never to do it again.
Six years later he is back to his old tricks, producing his own spirits – only this time he has won an award.
The young Glaswegian who was carpeted for selling his ‘bathtub gin’ to his schoolmates has launched his own company, Purist Gin, and it has just been voted among the best in Scotland.
Within months of start-up, his first batch has won a bronze medal at the Scottish Gin Awards in a category with 150 entrants, including Edinburgh Gin and Isle of Harris gin. Mr Walker, 22, launched the company after finding himself jobless during the first coronavirus shutdown. He decided to lift his spirits by returning to his passion for producing them and now has a fully-fledged business with his mother on staff. The gin-maker from the city’s Broomhill said his love for spirits began in his teenage years, when he would make so-called ‘bathtub gin’ by infusing botanicals in a jar with a raw alcohol for his classmates to enjoy at parties.
He said: ‘I was doing that and one day at school I got caught with some of the gin and I was given a very stern warning and told “do not do this again”. I was around 16.’
But Purist Gin took third place in a blind taste-test competition last November in the London dry gin category of the Scottish Gin Awards.
‘It was unbelievable, I couldn’t quite believe it actually, it was a crazy, crazy experience that night,’ Mr Walker said.