The Botanist Gin [1000ML]

The Botanist is an artisanal Islay gin made by Bruichladdich Distillery. It is one of two gins made on Islay, and is distinctive for its addition to the nine customary gin aromatics of a further 22 locally picked wild Islay botanicals. It is these botanicals – and the two local botanists who collect them – that give the product its name.

The Botanist Islay Dry Gin is an artisanal Islay gin made by Bruichladdich Distillery. It is one of two gins made on Islay, and is distinctive for its addition to the nine customary gin aromatics of a further 22 locally picked wild Islay botanicals. It is these botanicals – and the two local botanists who collect them – that give the product its name.

The gin is distilled after an overnight maceration of the nine base botanicals – the seed, berry, bark, root and peel categories – in spirit and Islay spring water. This alcohol vapour infusion from the distillation then passes through the botanical basket containing the 22 more delicate Islay aromatic leaves and petals. This double infusion gives the Botanist gin its distinctive flavour, allowing the more delicate aromatic leaves and petals to influence the gin vapour without being destroyed.

Two types of juniper are included, including prostrate juniper that grows in the exposed sea level habitats of the Rhinns of Islay. Only a symbolic amount of Juniperus communis is added.

The Islay spring water from which this gin is made comes from “Dirty Dottie’s spring” on Octomore farm, both for the distillation and the bottling at 46%.

This artisanal dry gin is influenced exclusively by botanicals – no essences, oils or flavourings are added.The use of such aromatic plants for flavouring spirit is not new. Islay’s distillers have a long tradition of using whatever was at hand to improve their rustically produced usquebaugh, distilled on small, portable stills, hidden away in remote glens.

Artisanal Islay Dry Gin used nice of the classic gin aromatics, orris root, cassia bark, coriander seed, etc and augment these with a heady harvest of 22 local botanicals, hand-picked by our expert foraging team from the windswept hills, peat bogs and Atlantic shores of this Hebridean island of Islay.