Rock Rose Spring Edition Gin (700 ml)

Claire and Martin Murray founded Dunnet Bay Distillers in 2014 after testing 80 botanicals across 55 trial recipes — a deliberate act of botanical cartography that ended with a gin built around Rhodiola rosea, an arctic root growing on the sea cliffs directly surrounding the distillery, which no gin producer had ever used before. That single decision defines the entire Rock Rose identity.

Dunnet Bay sits above the two-mile white-sand arc of Dunnet Bay in Caithness, three miles from Dunnet Head — the most northerly point of mainland Britain. The sub-arctic coastal exposure that makes farming nearly impossible here is precisely what produces the hardy, stress-adapted botanicals — sea buckthorn, rowan berries, blaeberries — that give Rock Rose its character.

Production runs through two 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 aromatics that direct maceration would destroy. Cuts are made by nose by the master distiller. Each bottle is hand-filled, wax-sealed, and batch-numbered at 41.5% ABV. The Spring Edition shifts the seasonal botanical balance toward the distillery's own greenhouse-grown and freshly foraged material, amplifying the floral register above the standard year-round expression.

The citrus character here contains zero added citrus peel — it is built entirely from Bulgarian juniper, lemon verbena, and sea buckthorn, a structural transgression that produces brightness without the sharp edge of zest.