Pickerings Interesting 9 Botanical Gin

1, Summerhall, Summerhall Distillery, Newington, Edinburgh EH9 1PL, UK

Pickerings Interesting 9 Botanical Gin is a unique and exciting spirit that is worth trying for any gin enthusiast. This gin is crafted in Scotland and is made with nine different botanicals, including juniper, coriander, cardamom, and fennel. Each botanical adds a distinct flavor and aroma to the gin, creating a complex and well-balanced spirit.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Pickerings Interesting 9 Botanical Gin is its versatility. This gin can be enjoyed on its own with a splash of tonic water and a slice of lime, or it can be used as a base for cocktails such as martinis or gin and tonics. The mix of botanicals in this gin allows for a wide range of flavor profiles, making it a great choice for experimentation and creativity in mixology.

In addition to its unique flavor profile, Pickerings Interesting 9 Botanical Gin also has a rich history behind it. The Pickerings distillery has been crafting gin since 1947, using a recipe that has been passed down through generations. This attention to tradition and quality is evident in every sip of this gin, making it a truly special and authentic spirit.

Overall, Pickerings Interesting 9 Botanical Gin is a must-try for anyone looking to expand their gin palate. With its complex botanical blend, versatility in cocktails, and rich history, this gin offers a unique and enjoyable drinking experience that is sure to impress even the most discerning gin connoisseur.

Building The Distillery

Pickering’s Gin

£33.00

Classic Recipe, Modern Twist

Based on an old Bombay recipe, handwritten on a fragment of paper dated 17 July 1947. Kept as a family secret for over 66 years, until we launched in 2014 when we had fine-tuned the recipe, perfecting its balance of botanicals and tweaking it to the contemporary palate.

The result is a spectacularly smooth, refreshing and flavoursome gin.

Pickering’s Original 1947 Gin

£33.00

Recipe From Bombay 1947

The recipe that started it all was scrawled on a piece of paper dated 17 July 1947. Kept as a family secret handed through generations since the last days of the Raj, this recipe resurfaced only in 2013 after 66 years when Marcus Pickering & Matt Gammell built Summerhall Distillery & began distilling the first batches of Pickering’s Gin!

While our flagship ‘Red Top’ was adapted from this recipe to a more modern palate, our ‘Orange Top’ remains unchanged from this classic recipe!

Welcome To Summerhall Distillery

Home to Pickering’s Gin & The Broody Hen.

Building The Distillery

Back To The Beginning

Casting back to 2013, our distillery looked nothing like a distillery, but an old and neglected animal hospital of The Royal Dick Vet School. First things first, 24 dog and cat kennels had to be removed. Matt & Marcus decided to keep eight of the original kennels, which are found hidden in the still room under our containers.

Time To Roll Our Sleeves Up!

Matt pictured standing above where Summerhall Distillery offices are now! Walls, floors and roofs were torn down and built back up again to contstruct Summerhall Distillery HQ. From an idea to real life, Matt & Marcus rolled their sleeves up to build our distillery in just 6 months!

We Did Everything Ourselves

Our team became plumbers, plasterers and tilers overnight – we really did everything ourselves! Once the structural work was complete, it was time to bring in the distilling equipment. Our copper stills imported from Portugal and our first label machine handmade from various materials including MDF, a phone charger & plumbing pipes!

Our Distillery Today

Our small but perfectly formed distillery is now home to Pickering’s Gin and The Broody Hen Scotch Whisky. From a pipe dream around the kitchen table to a distillery producing 2,500 litres of spirit a week we have evolved our business and team massively in the past 8 years.

Hand-crafted Spirits

Distilling

Taking an idea and making it real starts in our botanical room. The research and development stage begins where our distillers test and perfect the key notes and flavours of the spirit. Botanicals are weighed precisely by hand and the liquid is distilled in a small pot still. We use copper pot stills to ensure the flavour and purity of our liquid is the best, as well as using triple filtered Scottish fallen water to dilute our spirits after distillation.

Bottling

Our unique bottling station is a very technical process and a labour of love! Our equipment was meticulously engineered by Matt, so that we can bottle almost anything. With Matt manually making bar optics to fill our 5cl mini bottles. Keeping it local to Summerhall we worked with our fellow neighbours to construct various parts of our bottling process, including our trusty manual bottle capper borrowed from Barney’s Beer.

Labelling

When you ask our distilling team about our label machine, they will say when it works, it works perfectly! However, quite like our bottling process this is another labour of love – see a theme here?

Gin On Tap At The Royal Dick

As luck would have it, our next door neighbour is the brilliantly bonkers Royal Dick pub, which serves top-notch food and drinks from noon till night.

Guided Tours & Tastings

Fancy a Gin jolly? We’re always happy to show visitors where we distil, fill, label, wax & ship every bottle of Pickering’s Gin. We also offer whisky tasing experiences of our Broody Hen Scotch Whisky’s.

Book A Tour

Home of Pickering’s Gin & The Broody Hen

Pickering’s Gin is engineered from 9 botanicals

Juniper

Juniper berries aren’t actually berries at all – they’re female pine cones that produce juniper plants. They are also the only spice to come from a conifer tree. Piney, resinous and slightly citrus, these berries give our beloved spirit its distinctive taste and aroma.

coriander

Coriander was one of the many plants cultivated in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and cultivation started around 2000 BC. The Ancient Greeks used coriander as an ingredient in perfume making. Fragrant, nutty and warm, alongside juniper it is a true staple of gin distillation.

cardamom

Known as the ‘Queen of the Spices’, cardamom is the world’s second most expensive spice (after saffron). Originating from India, it’s been consumed by us humans for over 4000 years! Spiced and intensely fragrant, cardamom is a majestic botanical for distilling gin.

angelica

Since the 10th century angelica has been used in herbal teas and to flavour liqueurs, vermouths and aquavits. Bitter, earthy and reminiscent of wormwood, angelica brings a nice dry finish to a distillation and is used to create the dry style gins that our modern palates have come to love.

fennel

Fennel is a flowering plant that actually belongs to the carrot family! People in India and Pakistan chew sugar-coated fennel seeds after a meal to freshen their breath. Anise-like in flavour and green on the nose, fennel plays an integral role in our Pickering’s gins.

anise

Anise is used to flavour many spirits such as absinthe, pastis and ouzo. In high concentration anise can sometimes produce the ‘ouzo effect’ – when diluted with water it becomes milky. We use it to bring a liquorice-like sweetness to our distillation.

lemon

Botanically speaking, lemons are actually berries! The British Navy has used lemon juice to prevent scurvy amongst sailors since the 1800s. Lemon juice has been used as an invisible ink from 600 CE all the way through to England’s Lemon Juice Spies during WWI.

lime

Limes are predecessors to lemons; they are the most acidic of the citrus fruits but have almost half the vitamin C of a lemon. Lime and lemon peel bring the bright, zesty top notes to Pickering’s Gin, giving us the beautiful characteristics of a clean, classic, juniper forward gin.

cloves

The clove tree is an evergreen from Indonesia and belongs to the myrtle family. Cloves today are used in ketchup, Worcestershire sauce and Chinese five-spice powder. In our gin, they complement the sweet anise and fennel botanicals with intense aromatic notes.

Cinnamon in Pekring’s 1947 editie

Back in the days of quinine, gins were made sweeter than today to combat the bitter taste of the antimalarial tonic. The cinnamon in our 1947 expression has a sweet warmth that’s absolutely characteristic of an authentic Bombay style gin.

Botanical Engineers

From ballerinas to bartenders, butlers to bakers, you’ll find them all in the mix here at Pickering’s. From our unmistakably smooth gin, to the smooth running of our remarkable distillery, it’s all down to this marvellously mixed concoction of talent