1, Summerhall, Summerhall Distillery, Newington, Edinburgh EH9 1PL, UK
Pickerings Interesting 9 Botanical Gin
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.
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
Matt Gammell
Co-founder and Head Distiller
Happily mixing his engineering background with a penchant for a mighty fine gin & tonic..
Marcus Pickering
Co-founder and Head of Export
Has a love of gin, a fascination with how things are made, & a distinctive surname. Travels & talks a lot.
Dave Quinnell
Head of Sales & General Manager
The man in charge of office operations. Ensures the distillery runs like clockwork.
Jason Toro
Production Manager
Ensures our production process runs as smoothly as the Gin, with every batch distilled & bottled perfectly.
Quinn Miller
Distillery Operative
Motorbike mechanic turned botanical engineer. Bottles, batches, boxes & (fixes) forklifts, all at lightening speed.
Conor Lynch
Distillery Operative
Brings flare & finesse to our distilling process; distilling, bottling, waxing & boxing each of our award-winning Gins.
Rachel Thomson
Head of Marketing
Here to make sure Pickering’s Gin looks & sounds as good as it tastes. Can’t make cocktails, but a successful gin drinker & marketeer.
Michaela McStay
Head of Creative Content
Loves social media marketing as much as a good old natter – especially about Gin. Shares our story far & wide through various marketing channels.
Keith Thompson
Warehouse Manager
King of the warehouse & deliveries. Nothing goes in or out without his say-so.
Lionel Gauthier
Finance Manager
Our keeper of the coffers. Ensures the cash flows as smoothly as the gin.
Alyssa Engel
Visitor Experience Team
Shares our gin story with her own fun and vibrant American twang. Looks after distillery guests & loves seeing smiling faces during tours.
Marina Capaldi
Head of Visitor Experience Team
Gives 5 star tours with passion, humour & a cheeky French twang. Looks after guests in the distillery & shares our story to visitors from far & wide.
Jamie Corkery
Visitor Experience Team
Shares our passion for gin and innovation. A savvy story-teller and advocate for Pickering’s Gin with Scottish Botanicals- can you blame him?
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