According to the William Grant & Sons Market Report 2018, the gin category is worth £1.46bn, or 4.1m 9L cases, in the UK – growing a staggering +£346.7m from 2017. Sales growth in the UK on-trade is principally being driven the most, in actual terms, by gin (+£181.9m).
Said Izzy Almond, GM, of The Royal Dick in Edinburgh, “I’d say that more men are drinking gin and both sexes are willing to experiment beyond a G&T. Pickering’s Original 1947 Gin goes really well with ginger ale, but we’re also finding customers asking for it to be mixed with Dr Pepper. I’ve tried it and it’s really good. It goes really well with the orangey-spicy-ness.”
THE UK BOUGHT A RECORD BREAKING 73 MILLION BOTTLES OF GIN LAST YEAR ACROSS THE ON AND OFF-TRADE (NIELSEN/CGA)
In a recent survey of Scotland’s gin lovers by The Scottish Gin society, Kintyre Botanical Gin came second and the Teasmith Gin polled at number 5! In total, 6435 unique votes were cast in a survey that asked consumers to pick one of the many gins produced in Scotland as their favourite.
Prior to gin becoming a spirit we enjoy for leisurely reasons, the spirit was used for medicinal purposes. In India, it was used to make tonic water and cinchona mixture a more palatable taste to combat malaria.
There’s no set maximum, but the minimum alcoholic strength of gin is 37.5%.
Trossachs Distillery recently welcomed a new arrival called ‘Big Doogy’ the still, joining little sister ‘Little Maggie’ in the production of McQueen Gin. Big Doogy was made using the purest copper, took nine months to build, and sports a ‘Big Doogy’ nameplate. He has a volume capacity of 1,200 litres with an output of 3,640 litres of finished gin per day. We can see where he gets his name from!
Gin had been known as ‘Mother’s Milk’ from the 1820s but later in the century it became known as ‘Mother’s Ruin’, a description perhaps originating from the earlier ‘Blue Ruin’ of the prohibition era in the previous century.
Crabbie’s is a brand with a heritage dating back to 1801. The original Crabbie’s Gin recipes were found in an archive dating back to 1837. The initial launches have all been recreated from different recipes found in the archive and include some unusual botanicals.
The expression ‘Dutch courage derives from Gin being a Dutch invention. It was first distilled in Holland in the 16th century. The flavouring in gin comes from juniper berries and the Dutch for ‘juniper’ is ‘jenever’, which got Anglicised to ‘ginever’ and then to ‘gin’. The Dutch were the principal adversaries of the British at the time.
Kintyre Botanical Gin is sustainably produced using renewable energy, powered from the small hydro-electric scheme at Torrisdale Castle Estate. Its water is sourced from the hill from which the gin takes its name. ‘Beinn an Tuirc’ translates from gaelic as ‘The Hill of the Wild Boar’ and is the highest point in Kintyre, located above the distillery building.
Gin and curry go together. The marriage of flavours works will because neither overpowers the other.