Medal haul for Speyside gin distiller as it prepares to welcome tour visitors
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A SPEYSIDE gin distiller has earned a clutch of medals as it gears up to welcome tour visitors.
Elgin-based Moray Distillery, founded by Jill Brown in 2016 and home to Avva Scottish Gin and Berry Good Liqueurs, picked up two silver and one bronze medal at the annual International Wine & Spirits Competition this week.
Jill had been renovating the site to open for distillery tours when lockdown stopped all works.
After a seven-days-a-week operation to make hand sanitiser during lockdown, Jill's primary focus has turned once again to the refurbishments to allow gin tastings to take place on site, so news of the awards came as nice surprise at a busy time.
Jill said: "I don’t tend to enter these events as I never really have the time to complete the entry forms, but this year I decided to enter just three spirits.
"The samples were sent off in early February but with everything that has happened I hadn’t really given it much more thought. So it really was a fantastic surprise to open up the email and discover that all three gins had taken awards."
The distillery's quirky Blink Gin, which changes colour from blue to pink, earned a bronze, while its Pink Gin, an infusion of strawberries and raspberries, and its Avva Scottish Gin received silver medals.
The distillery makes small-batch gin on the UK’s first Scottish-made gin still, Jessie-Jean, named after Jill's grandmothers and made by Speyside Copperworks in Elgin.
Jill joined many other Scottish distillers to produce hand sanitiser in March and April.
She said: "The first three weeks of lockdown were seven-days-a-week production to keep up with demand.
"I had fantastic support from other local businesses, Moray Chamber, Scotland Food & Drink, who all worked quickly to assist with ingredients, bottles, labels, etc.
"The local authority were really good in ensuring all the test results were done for the product and label which allowed us to get hand sanitiser out to vital community groups who, through no fault of their own, had been unable to secure supplies. The support from those businesses also allowed the product to be given out for free for those in the most vulnerable sectors."
It is planned to open the distillery for tasting tours on August 14. As one of the smallest distilleries on Speyside, it has previously only taken in visitors during the Spirit of Speyside Whisky Festival.
Jill added: "Our plan is to open Thursday to Sunday for small groups of up to eight people.
"We had initially written off any hope of getting tasting tours done in 2020. However, we were also receiving a lot of calls asking if we were opened.
"Over July we ran pop-up shops outside the distillery which were well supported – but customers would like to see our still.
"We have amended our tour in both content and layout to work with the current Covid-19 guidance."
