Just the tonic

THE news that England now has more distilleries than Scotland, thanks to the craft gin explosion, reminds us of distillery stories in The Diary over the years, including the Glasgow reader who had a temporary job in a plant that bottled Gordon's gin. It seems there were bottles hidden everywhere which the workers would partake from, and he was handed a paper cup filled with gin and Irn Bru, although in his naivety he said he preferred his gin with tonic.

"How do you think it would look at security," he was asked, "if we came into a gin bottling plant with bottles of tonic?" So Irn Bru it was, then.

Slice of bad luck

ANOTHER reader once worked in a bonded whisky warehouse in Dumbarton which occasionally bottled gin. The staff had set up a stainless steel bucket which they filled with gin and tonic for them to dip into when it took their fancy. All went well until a senior excisemen, in a state of great indignation, accused them of taking the mickey. It seems one member of staff had given the game away by putting slices of lemon into the mix.

Hot stuff

AVOIDING the excisemen has always galvanised distillery workers in Scotland. One whisky representative once told us about the distillery where the workers had discreetly fitted a small additional pipe that led to a tap outside the distillery where they could siphon off some of the nectar away from the eyes of customs.

All went well until there was a small fire on the premises and a customs man grabbed a pail, filled it at the tap and threw it on the fire only to watch in amazement as the flames suddenly enveloped the room.

Salad days

AND we recall in Stuart Rivans's book about Islay, Whisky Dream, that a former exciseman said that the Heinz salad cream bottle was the perfect fit for being dropped on a string through the bunghole of a whisky barrel. "It's a well known fact," said the exciseman, "that there was more salad cream sold on Islay per head of population than any other place in Europe, but not a lot of salad was eaten. Very curious.”

Tyred out

AVOIDING the exciseman continued. A Cumbernauld reader once told us: "Many years ago, when visiting the Ballantine's distillery in Dumbarton, I noticed the excise officer having a heated conversation with a grain lorry driver. A model of the Michelin tyre man was fixed to each side of his cab. After a few minutes, the excise man produced his penknife and stabbed the Michelin man at the driver's side of the cab - and out streamed the golden liquid.”

That's the spirit

OUR favourite gin stories include the woman walking down Buchanan Street in Glasgow with a hessian bag slung over her shoulder on which was printed: "Gym? Oh, I thought you said gin." And the claim by regular drinkers that they hate their favourite bars being clogged with "amateurs" before Christmas was summed up by a group who came into one bar and the boss asked a young girl what she wanted to drink and she couldn't think of anything. "Gin and tonic?" he suggested as the queue built up. "What's in that?" she asked.

Fruity

THE Herald once sent out a young trainee to interview the late chef and bon viveur Keith Floyd when he was in Glasgow, and she was to meet him that morning in a hotel lounge where she was sitting with a glass of orange juice. Keith strolled in, asked what she was drinking, and when she told him he swept it away and ordered her a gin. She left journalism not long afterwards.

What's your poison

DISTILLERIES are popping up everywhere, it seems. When a group of businessmen announced that they planned to build a distillery beside the Ocean Terminal shopping centre in Leith and close to the Royal Yacht Britannia, someone commented online at a newspaper reporting the story: "More poison being manufactured and subsequently consumed by the weak of mind." Undeterred, Ian Stirling, one of the partners in Port of Leith Distillery, said he was so taken with the comment that he would have T-shirts with the statement printed on them on sale when the gift shop opened.