Pickering's Strawberry & Black Pepper Gin, 50 cl

Believe it or not, this multi-award winning gin only came into being in 2013. Before that, we (Matt and Marcus) had been friends and business partners for years, with backgrounds in engineering, furniture restoration and property renovation. We were working at Summerhall when we spotted the derelict dogs kennels from the small animal hospital that once stood in the middle of the old Royal (Dick) Veterinary School. What to do with it? As fate would have it, Marcus had recently inherited a gin recipe from a friend of his late father. Hmmm… Add to that our mutual penchant for a good gin, and the next step seemed obvious. Never mind that we didn’t, strictly speaking, have a distillery. We rolled up our sleeves and built one. Never mind that we had no background in distilling. We tried, tested and experimented until we were experts. Never mind that everyone told us it couldn’t be done. We got on and did it. And so began the story of the Botanical Engineers.