NB Distillery
Halflandbarns
North Berwick
History: When husband and wife team Steve and Viv Muir decided to create their own gin it was not done in a-state-of-the-art distillery. The couple purchased a small pressure cooker and patched on some old copper central heating pipes and started experimenting in their North Berwick kitchen. After a time refining their recipe they launched NB Gin in 2014. The brand did well very quickly and the couple found themselves setting down plans to build their own distillery.
The spirit: They produce a classic London-style gin from the distillery as well as a navy strength and a citrus-heavy vodka. Since its launch NB Gin has achieved quite a few accolades including being voted as the World’s Best London Dry Gin in 2015. It was the only drinks brand selected in celebration of the Queen’s 90th birthday and was also selected to feature in Prince Harry and Meghan’s wedding album.
After five years of making gin and vodka the distillery launched a rum last year. After a lot of research they designed a Jamaican-style copper double retort still, which they believe is the first in Europe and possibly the first of its kind outside the Caribbean. The result is a full bodied and fruity golden rum as well as a lighter white rum.
Why visit: The new distillery opened around this time last year and is located just an hour’s drive from Edinburgh in North Berwick. As well as having modern distilling equipment to create the NB products, the distillery puts a big focus on giving visitors a real insight into how the spirit is created.
You can choose from the basic tour to the Connoisseur Tour, which lasts around two hours and includes a unique look a the production process as well as a full tasting of NB’s gins, vodka and the rum, all enjoyed while nibbling on canapés prepared by the distillery’s in-house chef.
Interesting fact: While building the new distillery the couple were focused on making their new home more environmentally friendly. This included using solar panels to power the stills and utilising our abundance of rainwater to be collected to run the distillation condensers. They also take their used botanicals, such as juniper, and use them as compost, and the leftovers of fermented molasses from the rum production is fed to a local farmer’s cattle. As well as all this they also moved their bottling from an Italian company to a UK based bottler.
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