GINNED! Magazine August 2015 VOL.10 500 Miles to Gin EDITORS’ NOTE When we here at the Craft Gin Club search for and select the best gins for our Club Members, a number of criteria comprise the decision process, one of them being the innovation demonstrated by distillers. In Rock Rose, we found exactly the innovation we seek in the husband and wife team Martin and Claire Murray of the Dunnet Bay Distillery. The couple’s experimentation has led to exclusivity for Craft Gin Club Members - your Gin of the Month has been made especially for you! It is the first Rock Rose Distiller’s Edition, one that celebrates its local botanicals with the addition of apples from the region and lavender from the distillery garden. As you sip your unique gin this month, you’ll truly have the taste of county Caithness on your tastebuds. In GINNED! Magazine’s profile of Rock Rose, you’ll visit the “beautiful and rugged coastline” of Caithness loved by Martin and Claire, roll along the North Coast 500 - Scotland’s answer to America’s Route 66 - with outlaw motorcycle gangs, and learn how drink driving will disappear primarily because our cars will soon all drive themselves. So pour yourself a Lavender Martini, kick your feet up in your autonomous vehicle and take a virtual trip to the Dunnet Bay Distillery to taste your exclusive edition of what has quickly become one of Scotland’s best gins. Jon Hulme John Burke Co-Founder Co-Founder [email protected] [email protected] Cheers! GINNED! Magazine August 2015 VOL. 10 GINTRODUCTION p. 4… 500 Miles to Gin p. 8… The Roots of Rose Root Gin p 11… Rock Rose Gin & Perfect Serve p 13… Rocktails & Stories FEATURES p. 23… Rock Rose’s Route 66 p. 26… Drink Driving for Droids p 35… Toasting Cocktails to Caithness p 41… Oil & Gin 3 GINNED! Magazine vol. 10 500 Miles to Gin But I would walk five hundred miles And I would walk five hundred more Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles To fall down at your door - The Proclaimers HRH the Duke of Rothesay visits Martin and Claire Murray at the Dunnet Bay Distillery, July 31st 2015 photo credit: Jill at Storyboard Films Scotland’s North Highlands hold some of Europe’s most beautiful capture air. They found the plant’s high concentration of Vitamin C lands, lands steeped in history dating back thousands of years and also made the perfect scurvy deterrent, it’s pleasant smell enticed the defined by rugged landscapes lush with flora and fauna. To bring Norse to turn it into hair wash and perfumes, and it’s use in the turf together this history and nature, in 2014 the 500 miles of roads that made the roofs of Norse houses came about because it was circling the sparsely populated coast were transformed into the North thought to stave off the lightning flashed from the heavens by their Coast 500, a route designed to attract tourists and introduce them to god Thor. this area of incredible natural beauty. The Vikings believed that rose root would give them strength for If you follow the road, it will lead you to their sea journeys and foraged for it in the the cliffs around Dunnet Head, the most weather-beaten rocky cliffs around Caithness, northerly point on the mainland UK. There exactly where Martin Murray, the distiller of you will catch a glimpse of a characteristic your August 2015 Gin of the Month, found of the area that contributes to its beauty; it, distilled it and transformed it into the the perennial flowering plant, Rhodelia rosea, primary botanical after juniper in his gin, a gin more commonly known by several names he and his wife Claire quickly came to call including golden root, Arctic root, and rose Rock Rose. root. A ROCK ROSE IS A ROCK ROSE IS A Humans have used the R. rosea for ROCK ROSE medicinal purposes as far back as 77 AD when a Greek physician recorded his “We realised that it’s a rose that grows in the knowledge of the plant. Writings of its rocks - a rock rose. After that lightbulb A rose root by any other benefits stretch to ancient Chinese texts. name would smell as sharp moment, there wasn’t ever any competition But the plant’s health properties are most for the title of our gin,” Martin told closely associated throughout history with Viking cultures, the same GINNED! Magazine. “The leaf and the flower of rose root don’t cultures that a thousand years ago inhabited the Northern Highlands. taste particularly good, but the root is nice, although very astringent. By distilling it, we eliminated most of the astringency and a light rose The Norse mastered R. rosea’s astringent attributes and applied the aroma emerged. It’s an incredible botanical that really surprised us.” plant to open wounds, swollen limbs and even to lungs struggling to 5 GINNED! Magazine vol. 10 Rose root - or rock rose as it may soon be called in the area - is not A ROSE SAPPHIRE the only regional botanical that Martin and Claire use in their gin. Before reaching their final recipe, they tested over 80 botanicals Rock Rose’s light signature style originates with the vapour-infusion introduced to them by Scotland’s longest practicing medical herbalist process that Martin uses, a process pioneered by Bombay Sapphire and local resident, Brian Lamb. Lamb, who concocts herbal back in the 1980s. The Bacardi-owned brand sought the lighter style nutritional supplements with a strong emphasis on skin care and at the time because gin as a category was in decline whereas vodka’s cosmetics, helped the Caithness couple to discover rowan berries, popularity was ever-growing: the brand reasoned that a lighter gin hawthorn berries and watermint, for which they forage in the local would attract vodka drinkers. Instead of macerating all of the forest, as well as sea buckthorn which grows on the coast. botanicals directly in his still, Martin places them in a basket which rests at the top of the still and through which the steam of the heated The Rock Rose duo will eventually use juniper berries harvested in base spirit passes, absorbing the flavour the region, a feat which is currently too difficult due to the elements of the botanicals a n d decimation of juniper populations in Scotland in recent decades. carrying those elements with it as it They have joined the Caithness Biodiversity Group in its effort to re-condenses. Martin then eliminates rejuvenate the growth of juniper berries in the region and continue the heads and the tails - those their support today in activities such as a survey of Dunnet Bay parts of the resulting juniper taken this past June. spirit not suitable for consumption - In place of local juniper, Martin and Claire found two types of their through his trained gin’s main ingredient - one from Italy and one from Bulgaria - both nose, far from an of which they enjoyed but which transmitted completely different easy task. flavours when distilled. Down to his last test batches, Martin couldn’t decide which to use until Claire suggested they use both, an intriguing idea as Rock Rose is the only gin we know of made with two species of juniper. After playing around with the berries, Martin found a ratio that worked for the style gin he sought to produce as well as the Will Rock Rose’s stone mixture and ratio of botanicals that would come to define the only bottle become more iconic than Sapphire gin from the North Highlands. blue? 6 GINNED! Magazine vol. 10 For the special Distiller’s Edition that Craft Gin Club Members have of Calder Loch and bottled in what has already become an iconic the exclusive chance to taste this August, Martin tweaked the mixture bottle in the craft industry, one made from ceramic in a style of his standard botanicals and added an additional two that through reminiscent of jenever bottles and which won Best New Product numerous tests he found complemented each other strangely yet Launch Design at the 2015 World Gin Awards. perfectly: lavender and apple. Two species of lavender grow on the Dunnet Bay Distillery property so Martin had an abundant supply DUNNET BAY GINTAGE with which to experiment. The apples are sourced from a farm on the Black Isle, a A Pink Lady and Lavender The gin itself won two silver medals at the peninsula about eighty miles to the south of bring even more beauty to June 2015 Gin Masters Awards, one of a the North Coast 500 the distillery. But sourcing the apples wasn’t number of competitions in which Martin enough. Martin needed to find the best way and Claire could enter their gin every year of distilling them. It turns out, that best way because unlike many gins, Rock Rose will be starts with apple juice. distinct every year. “It’s a challenge to juggle 18 different botanicals and balance them After placing the botanicals in their basket - every year to achieve the same flavour,” in which the plants are tightly packed - and explained Martin. “This year has been very before turning on his still, Martin stands rainy in Caithness so when we harvest our over the basket, slowly trickling the apple local botanicals, they will taste slightly juice into the basket where the dried different. You just can’t control nature!” botanicals absorb it all, themselves rehydrated au jus de pomme before their With the uniqueness of yearly vintages of exposure to the spirit steam, a very unique their standard gin as well as the Distiller’s twist on Bombay Sapphire’s vapour-infusion.