WHILE the Scotch whisky industry continues its quest for global domination, its gin counterpart is suffering from a degree of growing pains.
Gin sales continue to soar around the UK as the surprise renaissance of “mother’s ruin” seen in the last decade shows no signs of letting up, with Scottish gin brands very much in the vanguard.
But, as revealed in The Herald this month, an increasingly fractious row is bubbling away over how just how authentic these “Scottish” brands are. Broadly speaking, there is a divergence between the brands produced by bona fide distilleries in Scotland, and contract gins made south of the Border whose tartan credentials are limited to their romantic brand names.
For distillers such as Paul Miller at Eden Mill in St Andrews, the schism carries huge risk. Mr Miller is quite blunt about the threat, declaring that the gin brands cutting corners in their claims of Scottishness risk tarnishing the reputation of the entire category. He believes the wider Scottish food and drink industry needs to wake up the threat, noting that some prestigious award schemes have been handing out gongs to gins which have next to no presence in Scotland.
Adam Hunter at Arbikie, the “farm-to-bottle” distillery and one of the very few to produce its own spirit for gin in Scotland, is similarly passionate about authenticity. In an increasingly competitive market, he said the need to demonstrate provenance has never been so great.
Perhaps the time has come for policymakers to intervene and afford gin the type of regulations which serve the Scotch whisky market so well.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here