Juniper
The one that makes it gin. Scots juniper grows wild but slowly, and wild harvesting it at scale is not realistic — most Scottish gin uses imported berries, and the handful of producers using Scottish juniper make a point of it.
Botanicals
What actually goes in the still
Every gin has juniper in it, or it isn’t gin. What tells one apart from another is the six or ten or twenty-two other things in the still — and in Scotland a striking number of those are gathered rather than bought.
Heather
Honeyed and faintly dusty. Turns up across Highland and island gins, usually gathered in late summer when the moor goes purple.
Bog myrtle
Sweet gale. Grows in wet ground all over the west, smells resinous and slightly medicinal, and has been used in Scottish brewing for centuries.
Rowan berry
Sharp and bitter. The rowan was the tree planted by the door to keep out harm, which is a large part of why it keeps appearing in Scottish spirits.
Sugar kelp
Hand-cut from sea lochs. Brings a genuine salinity rather than a "sea breeze" suggestion — it is the botanical that most clearly puts an island in the glass.
Scots pine
Needles or tapped sap. Green, resinous and close enough to juniper to reinforce it rather than fight it.
Meadowsweet
Creamy and almond-ish, from damp meadows and ditches. One of the three sacred herbs of the druids, and one of the easiest Scottish botanicals to find.
Sea buckthorn
Bright orange berries off the east coast dunes, sour as anything, high in acid. Does the work of citrus without being citrus.
Blaeberry
The Scottish bilberry. Small, dark and hard to pick in any quantity, which is why it usually appears in tiny amounts.
Elderflower
Floral and hedgerow-sweet, out for about three weeks in June. Widely used, easy to overdo.
On foraging. Several distilleries on this site gather their own botanicals, and a few gather nearly all of them. If you want to try it yourself, the Scottish Outdoor Access Code covers picking small quantities of fungi, flowers, fruit and foliage for personal use — but not uprooting plants, and not on nature reserves or SSSIs without permission. Know what you are picking before you pick it.