10th Birthday Edition

The beginning…

It started as a family of 4, with a one-eyed Shihtzu called George!  Although our dreams began in our university days and ideas began to take more shape from 2009, it wasn’t until 2014 that we distilled our very first drop of Rock Rose Gin.

Much research was carried out before Elizabeth was tasked with her fabulous role.

We spent many a day looking at local botanicals and learning, many an evening creating sample distillations and many months planning!  Finally, our recipe was perfected and we were happy with our gorgeous, and soon to become iconic, bottle.  Elizabeth, our still arrived and Martin set to distilling the very first batch.

Not many people know that our first batch was actually distilled on the 17^th August.  It was a big day all round as not only was it our son’s birthday, but also his first day at school and our daughters first day at playgroup! Martin distilled overnight so as not to miss his special day.  We have since always celebrated Rock Rose Gins birthday on the 21^st, which was the night we hosted a launch party, to make sure we were never distracted from our sons day!

The nerves we felt after the first batch bottles went on sale were real.  If we didn’t sell a bottle then our design was duff.  If people didn’t come back for a second bottle then the gin was duff.  It was a real conversation!! Would people like it?  Would they come back for another bottle?  Well it was incredible!  We received such fabulous and positive feedback, we were blown away. For every subsequent batch up until Christmas it was sold on a waiting list basis, we couldn’t keep up!

We had to react quickly to demand and luckily for us Martin’s dad, Rab, and Claire’s mum, Margaret, had both recently retired and happily sprung into action to help us.  For a long time you were able to identify who had waxed each bottle as Margaret waxed at a jaunty angle and Rab’s wax was always dead straight!

A funny story of our first year was the labelling of our bottles!  We had purchased a labeller from Italy and it had all been tested before it arrived.  However, when the big moment arrived to label all of our first batch bottles we discovered that the labels would not apply without a wrinkle.  We spent hours trying various ways and the Italians were on their August holidays, we were stumped.  Fortunately, a visit from Claire’s mum and dad provided the answer.  This was around the time of the loom band craze and after studying our bottles, Margaret hit upon the genius idea of contouring the label roller to fit neater to our bottles.  Away Mac went to get loom bands and fitted them to the roller – it worked so much better!  It wasn’t perfect and many labels had wrinkles flattened out of them still, but it was a big improvement. It gave us the opportunity to make an improvement in the next year but at that point loom bands saved the day!

Martin is called home!

Heading in to 2015 we thought it would be quiet. It was January, the festivities were over and we thought the buzz would have quietened off.  We were wrong!  Stockists needed to be re-stocked and word was spreading!

It was at this point that we really made the decision that Martin would see his off-shore project through to the finish and then return to work full time at the distillery.

Previously he had been on a rotation, which saw him distil when he was at home leaving enough for us to do in the time he was back off-shore.  However, we couldn’t keep up and needed him there full time!

We weren’t going to let him rest on his laurels once he came home and he set about creating our Navy Strength Gin and Holy Grass Vodka.  Holy Grass is the botanical that Robert Dick, the famous geologist and baker, discovered growing on the banks of Thurso river, thus proving its existence in the UK. In the trial distillations we tried Holy Grass but we felt it didn’t complement juniper so we decided we would keep it to release as a vodka to enable us to tell the story of Robert Dick.

With every batch we sold out we decided we would make an investment into improving things.  We bought padded floor mats to stand on; a Quooker for a quick cup of tea; comfier seating and after a few sold out batches the investment into moving to a screenprinted bottle!  This meant less peeling off or de-wrinkling of labels and improved our bottle significantly.

Meanwhile over the summer, Hanna our then gardener, built our fabulous geodome all ready to grow amazing botanicals such as pineapple sage, figleaf and Vietnamese coriander all which we have used in various editions over the years.

Another exciting moment in 2015 was the royal visit from HRH Prince Charles, now HRH King Charles.  HRH visits Caithness every year to stay at the Castle of Mey and he chose to visit our wee distillery and meet us all.  He also has a very keen interest in Castletown Mill, which we are conserving and revitalising to be the home of our Stannergill Whisky, and we regularly keep him updated.

Not long after our royal visit we were over the moon to learn that our Original Edition had been awarded 3 Stars by Great Taste – the best accolade you can receive.  Even more exciting we learnt that we had been entered in to the final 50 to be awarded the Golden Fork – unfortunately we didn’t win though we were still incredibly proud to have received this award and gotten to the Golden Fork stage.

New arrivals

January of this year saw the first of the website crashing Lassies Toast Gin being launched.  Martin distilled this using botanicals inspired by the Moorland tea that Rabbie Burns was reputed to have enjoyed.

It sold out very quickly and we ran a competition to guess how much parcel tape was used when dispatching orders – the answer was 3.2km!

We had fun launching our Colour a Rock Rose Gin label competition.  We created an outline of our original design and asked people to colour it in – we received some fabulous entries, creative and inspired.  The very talented, Hope Blamire, was selected by Pocket Rocket Creative as the winner and she received 12 bottles of her very own gin with her very own label!

We welcomed a lovely new arrival to our family. Our youngest was born in the April, and at the time we thought it was another pair of safe hands in which to hand over the distillery reins to one day – 8 years on and we’re not so sure with the littlest rocket 😉  Sadly, at the same time we also lost our beloved dog, George, our beautiful one-eyed shihtzu.  He had overseen our distillery beginnings and his picture remains on our StillHouse wall so he can still keep an ‘eye’ on us.

After growing fabulous botanicals in our geodome we introduced our Seasonal Editions.  These are still distinctly Rock Rose Gin but distilled using seasonal botanicals to give a taste of each season.

Mr Mackintosh, a ‘large’ Miniature Schnauzer, arrived in November to step into George’s role, and he took on the mantel of #DistilleryApprentice, quickly learning to love how to hoover up biscuit crumbs in the tearoom!

Extra space required

January began with the release of our Lassies Toast Gin in its new and beautiful red glass bottle. The demand crashed our website again and it sold out in days!

This year saw the extension of our distillery to double its size as well as the restoration of the existing steading building to create our new visitor centre and shop.

Previously, our visitors had come in to our ‘office’ and could taste a sample of our gin from our repurposed bookcase.  Although they got a lovely welcome, it wasn’t much of an experience!  The advent of the North Coast 500 saw a huge increase in visitors and we wanted to make sure they had a lovely time when they visited Caithness and us in particular.

We set about discussions with architects and the restoration took place, creating a fabulous Tasting Room complete with original brye stone walls and a new shop.  We got our brown roadside sign installed and we were finally able to welcome visitors with style and Joanne developed our visitor experience to provide a fun and informative, award – winning tour.

The feedback from our Colour a Rock Rose Gin winning label was unanimously towards releasing it as a limited run called Artists’ Edition!  We did so and again the demand was so high that it crashed our website.  This time poor Martin had to try and speak on the phone to upscale our servers and all the time he had an incredibly painful quinsy!  Hope’s beautiful and intricate carved design was created into a label and Martin distilled the same citrus inspired gin Hope had enjoyed.

We have always been very appreciative of the loyalty from our fans and come November we wanted to give something back.  Rather than have one day of discounts, which is the norm on Black Friday, we decided to create our own Rock Rose Friday. We chose orders that had been placed throughout  the year to be rewarded with surprise gifts or to have their entire order refunded.

Another new addition!

Demand remained high for our Rock Rose Gin Original Edition and also for our Holy Grass Vodka and seasonal editions.  It was decided that it was time Elizabeth, our still, had a partner!

Along came Margaret, with the same botanical vapour basket as her counterpart, and she was ready to distil alongside Elizabeth.

Margaret was so named as a testament to Claire’s mum, Margaret.  Up until 2024, Margaret worked tirelessly as our Production Supervisor and it felt like a fitting tribute to her.  As Martin said in Margaret’s retirement speech ‘both can hold  drink and not fall over’!

This year saw us fill a container with our Original Edition and send it overseas to the USA.  We had been exporting since 2015 to Germany and this was a significant next step.  We were days singing ‘A lorry to America’ to the tune of the famous song by The Proclaimers!

We launched our Creative Collection in November, each edition had a uniquely designed label featuring works commissioned from artists based in the Scottish.  Our first one released was the exciting Clootie Dumpling Gin with the scratchboard artwork designed by the talented Lindsey Gallacher. Another sell out success!

The year of launches

The year began with what was fast becoming an annual event – the website crashed again with the launch of 2019’s Lassies Toast Gin!  This time I couldn’t even get on the site to add the stock before it had crashed.

It was to be a year of launches as we released our Pink Grapefruit Old Tom, Holy Grass Vodka Cold Brew Coffee Edition, a Sherry Cask edition, a Sauternes Cask edition as well as the remaining three in our Creative Collection plus our fantastic new refill pouch scheme.

Pink Grapefruit Old Tom became part of our core range after making its debut in the 2017 Artists’ Edition. The gin was very well received so we added it to the range with its very own Rock Rose Gin identity.  We worked with three more local artists Liz O’Donnell, Kelly Munro and Hannah Cambridge to create a watercolour for Apple & Lavender, abstract art for Coastal Edition and a fun illustration for our Jam Doughnut edition, respectively.

After many, many months of hard work and research we launched the very first recyclable, freepost gin pouch in the UK. We knew how much our iconic ceramic bottle was loved and people couldn’t bear to part with them, they are also not so easy to recycle, so we set about creating a refill system which allowed them to become a bottle-for-life!  A lot of research went into the best materials to create the pouches and Martin worked hard with Royal Mail to allow these to be easily popped into post box to be returned Freepost to us for recycling.  It was a revelation and has since inspired many distilleries to follow suit.

We were blown away in the October of that year by being awarded the Scottish Gin Distillery of the Year at the Scottish Gin Awards!  It was incredible and we couldn’t believe it.  In fact, when they announced the award we were actually chatting and nearly missed it.  We were in total disbelief as we were praised for a commitment to sustainable business practices, community engagement and investment in people as a key employer in the area.

The winter months saw the launch of our Holy Grass Coffee Cold Brew Coffee Edition and also our Inspired By Gin exhibition.  Our tours are very seasonal and we were keen to ensure our Tasting Room was used over the quieter winter months and the idea of an exhibition was borne.  We put out a call to local artists to submit artwork ‘inspired by gin’ and we received some beautiful entries.  These were displayed in our Tasting Room over the winter months for people to come and enjoy.

2020 needs no introduction!

Well where do we begin that was the year of 2020!  Everyone has many a tale of 2020, a year that won’t be forgotten for a long time.  We remember sitting in our tearoom in January talking about what was happening in Wuhan with disbelief.  We were even joking about a coat stand that we had purchased which we discovered had originated in Wuhan!  Little did we realise then the impact that was about to come.

Although we were expecting it, it was a real shock when the news came that the schools were closing that night, and then lockdown.  The immediate worry of what our team would do and would everyone be ok.  We spoke with our team and sat and made plans as to how we could ensure people were paid for as long as possible. Thankfully news of the furlough scheme came through which relieved that worry instantly.  Hearing stories of food shortages and people afraid to travel far, we ordered in groceries from a wholesaler so that locals could come safely to us. We bought in large containers of soap which were left in our geodome for people to refill their own bottles.

As the shortage of hand sanitiser loomed, we quickly learned how we could make this using the alcohol we had at the distillery.  It was distributed, free of charge, to local health practices when they needed it.

Our team went home and before lockdown was fully in place they all had a delivery of gin left at their door! Martin was left to man the distillery and Claire to man the emails whilst homeschooling.  We coped, we survived and made plans for when we were through the crisis.

We knew we wanted to be able to give our visitors a proper welcome when they were allowed to come again and worked to achieve this.  As with many ideas, it started as an ‘ironing board moment’ where lots of our ideas have originated! We hit upon the idea of creating individual, socially distanced booths for visitors to sit in whilst they enjoyed a tasting and stories. It was Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters and we decided to use that theme and created cute little ‘boatshed’ booths and Joanne dressed as a pirate to tell coastal themed stories about our products.  The whole Tasting Room was converted with coastal décor, pampas grasses, creels and ‘sand’. It was fab and it was safe.

To ease the boredom of people at home we re-introduced our Colour a Rock Rose Gin label competition. Again, we received lots of fabulous and creative entries and this time the fabulous Ruth Potts won with her fabulous thistle design with Mr Mackintosh featured on the front.

Martin distilled 60,000 bottles of our Citrus Coastal Edition gin for the Craft Gin Club!  It was, however, too much of a task to ask him to bottle it all on his lonesome so it was sent off to be bottled elsewhere.  Our Citrus Coastal won Gin of the Year with the Craft Gin Club members that year.

In October we launched our Refill Rewards Club to great success. Our members would receive the pouch edition of their choice, along with mixers and goodies on a frequency of their choosing.  We learnt a lot about subscription models and websites with this venture! Our club continues to grow and evolve and we love choosing the goodies to include each month, and more excitingly deciding on the next Guest Pouch.

November saw the release of Artists’ Edition 2020 with Ruth Potts’ lovely design printed onto our ceramic bottles.  We chose to support two charities by donating £5 from every sale to Ruths chosen charity, Help Musicians, and to the Scottish SPCA, a charity chosen by Mr Mackintosh.

Castletown Mill is purchased

We had an exciting start to the year as our purchase of the 200 year old dilapidated old mill in Castletown went through.  We were delighted to start the planning application process and share our hopes and ambitions to revitalise and conserve the building to become the home of Stannergill Whisky, our newest venture.

For Martin and Joanne it was a long process completing forms, answering questions, chasing advice and finalising the new business plan. One which they persevered through and have eventually come out the other side!

It was a quieter year as Martin focussed on the mill building.  We released our Citrus Coastal Edition based on feedback from the Craft Gin Club members and hosted a cocktail competition, which was won by Ross Lawrie from Orchid in Aberdeen.

In August we celebrated some more exciting news as we were officially announced a ‘cool brand’.  Our gin had been selected by the influential CoolBrands in the 2021/22 roster of the coolest brands around!  Brands are shortlisted by invitation only and selected by a prestigious panel of 49 judges, comprising designers, style experts, media personalities, and prominent names from entertainment, fashion, and music.

A graduate project

2022 saw the launch of our Bordeaux cask and also our Smoked Orange Edition.  Smoked Orange was the gin created by Craig who has worked with us since his teens, during his school and university holidays and latterly as a distiller. He graduated from Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh with his BSc (Hons) degree in Brewing & Distilling. He also won the Best Brewing & Distilling Project Dissertation for his year in 2021.

As part of a full-time graduate placement scheme, Craig returned to work with us  and Martin challenged him to come up with an entirely new gin expression. We were delighted with the resulting new gin expression creating using Lapsang Souchong tea. Craig travelled for a while after the release of Smoked Orange but we always knew he would return to us after he got a Rock Rose symbol tattooed on his arm!

Rum worth finding

At last we finally found our rum!  Rum had been a project which we had been working on since 2019.  However, with lots of things in 2020 plans went awry  and the rum project went on to the back burner.  Nonetheless, Kevin and Hanna continued to work on recipe development, when time allowed, and into 2023 they perfected it.

Mapmaker’s Rum is our tribute to Timothy Pont and his incalculable importance to the cartographic history of Scotland and our first edition Coastal Spiced rum was released early on in the year.

Martin was incredibly proud to receive the very first Outstanding Contribution to Scottish Gin accolade from The Gin Cooperative, which he received for his help, guidance, generosity, kindness and support to others in the industry. We were so proud of him too that we even filmed a daft wee video to share on social media to him as was in Miami at the time!  Appearing on video is not something that comes naturally so we we really were super proud!

We also launched our new Guest Pouches as part of our Refill Rewards Club!  These provided a lot of excitement with new and exclusive flavours to experiment with.

Progress was moving along with Castletown Mill and work began on the project in November 2023.  We released our Castletown Mill: A History Through Whisky series, a carefully curated blend of grain and single malt whiskies, designed to celebrate periods of the mill’s rich history. Using a symbolic photograph from the history of Castletown Mill, Kevin has curated and expertly married single malt and grain whiskies to create blends which pay homage to the moment in time depicted in the image.

And here we are…

Here we are now in 2024 as a family of 5, with a Miniature Schnauzer and cat, reflecting back over the last 10 years.  It has been very nostalgic looking back over the years remembering silly stories we had long forgotten about, exciting moments and also the times when it was pretty tough. As much as we tell the lovely stories there have certainly been tougher times and tough decisions to make along the way too.

We have learnt a lot since beginning this journey and no doubt we have a lot to learn yet.  Every day is a school day!

And that brings us to here – our 10^th Birthday Edition gin in a very special bottle.  We have loved our journey so far and hope it continues to take us and our family far.

We may be clocking up in years now, as we celebrate turning ten,
but genuinely every time an order is placed we feel happiness and gratitude. So, thank you from all of us here!

Here‘s to the next 10 and more…