Rock Rose Navy Strength Edition Gin (700 ml)

Claire and Martin Murray founded Dunnet Bay Distillers in 2014 after testing 55 trial recipes across 80 botanicals — a deliberate act of botanical archaeology that ended with a formula no other distillery had attempted: Rhodiola rosea, the hardy arctic root growing on the sea cliffs directly above the distillery, used as a primary botanical for the first time in gin history. That earthy, Turkish-delight-like root now anchors the entire Rock Rose architecture.

The distillery sits on the exposed sub-arctic coastline of Caithness, three miles from Dunnet Head — the most northerly point of mainland Britain. The harsh maritime microclimate that batters this shoreline is precisely what makes Rhodiola rosea viable here, and what gives the hand-foraged botanicals — rowan berries, blaeberries, sea buckthorn — their concentrated, wind-stressed character.

Production runs through two bespoke 500-litre copper pot stills (Elizabeth and Margaret, built by John Dore & Co.) using vapour infusion: botanicals sit in a basket through which vaporised wheat-base spirit passes, preserving volatile floral and citrus compounds that direct maceration would destroy. Cuts are made by nose. The Navy Strength expression is bottled at 57% ABV, hand-filled, wax-sealed, and batch-numbered. Unlike most craft gins, Rock Rose builds all citrus character from verbena, Bulgarian juniper, and sea buckthorn — zero added citrus peel. At Navy Strength, the dual-juniper spine (Italian for pine depth, Bulgarian for lemon-sherbet lift) and the Rhodiola earthiness arrive with considerably more structural force than the standard 41.5% expression.