GINNED! Magazine August 2015
VOL.10
500 Miles to Gin
EDITORS’ NOTE When we here at the Craft Gin Club search for and select the best gins for our Club Members, a number of criteria comprise the decision process, one of them being the innovation demonstrated by distillers. In Rock Rose, we found exactly the innovation we seek in the husband and wife team Martin and Claire Murray of the Dunnet Bay Distillery. The couple’s experimentation has led to exclusivity for Craft Gin Club Members - your Gin of the Month has been made especially for you! It is the first Rock Rose Distiller’s Edition, one that celebrates its local botanicals with the addition of apples from the region and lavender from the distillery garden. As you sip your unique gin this month, you’ll truly have the taste of county Caithness on your tastebuds. In GINNED! Magazine’s profile of Rock Rose, you’ll visit the “beautiful and rugged coastline” of Caithness loved by Martin and Claire, roll along the North Coast 500 - Scotland’s answer to America’s Route 66 - with outlaw motorcycle gangs, and learn how drink driving will disappear primarily because our cars will soon all drive themselves. So pour yourself a Lavender Martini, kick your feet up in your autonomous vehicle and take a virtual trip to the Dunnet Bay Distillery to taste your exclusive edition of what has quickly become one of Scotland’s best gins. Jon Hulme John Burke
Cheers!
Co-Founder jon@craftginclub.co.uk
Co-Founder john@craftginclub.co.uk
GINNED! Magazine August 2015
VOL. 10
GINTRODUCTION p. 5… 500 Miles to Gin p. 9… The Roots of Rose Root Gin p 12… Rock Rose Gin & Perfect Serve p 14… Rocktails & Stories
FEATURES p. 24… Rock Rose’s Route 66 p. 27… Drink Driving for Droids
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p 36…
Toasting Cocktails to Caithness
p 42…
Oil & Gin GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
Get exclusive Craft Gins! Become a Craft Gin Club Member and receive exclusive gins delivered to your door.
For a special ÂŁ10 discount use the code: GIN10 http://www.craftginclub.co.uk/join
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500 Miles to Gin But I would walk five hundred miles And I would walk five hundred more Just to be the man who walked a thousand miles To fall down at your door - The Proclaimers
HRH the Duke of Rothesay visits Martin and Claire Murray at the Dunnet Bay Distillery, July 31st 2015 photo credit: Jill at Storyboard Films
Scotland’s North Highlands hold some of Europe’s most beautiful lands, lands steeped in history dating back thousands of years and defined by rugged landscapes lush with flora and fauna. To bring together this history and nature, in 2014 the 500 miles of roads circling the sparsely populated coast were transformed into the North Coast 500, a route designed to attract tourists and introduce them to this area of incredible natural beauty. If you follow the road, it will lead you to the cliffs around Dunnet Head, the most northerly point on the mainland UK. There you will catch a glimpse of a characteristic of the area that contributes to its beauty; the perennial flowering plant, Rhodelia rosea, more commonly known by several names including golden root, Arctic root, and rose root.
capture air. They found the plant’s high concentration of Vitamin C also made the perfect scurvy deterrent, it’s pleasant smell enticed the Norse to turn it into hair wash and perfumes, and it’s use in the turf that made the roofs of Norse houses came about because it was thought to stave off the lightning flashed from the heavens by their god Thor. The Vikings believed that rose root would give them strength for their sea journeys and foraged for it in the weather-beaten rocky cliffs around Caithness, exactly where Martin Murray, the distiller of your August 2015 Gin of the Month, found it, distilled it and transformed it into the primary botanical after juniper in his gin, a gin he and his wife Claire quickly came to call Rock Rose. A ROCK ROSE IS A ROCK ROSE IS A ROCK ROSE
Humans have used the R. rosea for medicinal purposes as far back as 77 AD when a Greek physician recorded his “We realised that it’s a rose that grows in the knowledge of the plant. Writings of its rocks - a rock rose. After that lightbulb A rose root by any other benefits stretch to ancient Chinese texts. moment, there wasn’t ever any competition name would smell as sharp But the plant’s health properties are most for the title of our gin,” Martin told closely associated throughout history with Viking cultures, the same GINNED! Magazine. “The leaf and the flower of rose root don’t cultures that a thousand years ago inhabited the Northern Highlands. taste particularly good, but the root is nice, although very astringent. By distilling it, we eliminated most of the astringency and a light rose The Norse mastered R. rosea’s astringent attributes and applied the aroma emerged. It’s an incredible botanical that really surprised us.” plant to open wounds, swollen limbs and even to lungs struggling to 6
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Rose root - or rock rose as it may soon be called in the area - is not the only regional botanical that Martin and Claire use in their gin. Before reaching their final recipe, they tested over 80 botanicals introduced to them by Scotland’s longest practicing medical herbalist and local resident, Brian Lamb. Lamb, who concocts herbal nutritional supplements with a strong emphasis on skin care and cosmetics, helped the Caithness couple to discover rowan berries, hawthorn berries and watermint, for which they forage in the local forest, as well as sea buckthorn which grows on the coast. The Rock Rose duo will eventually use juniper berries harvested in the region, a feat which is currently too difficult due to the decimation of juniper populations in Scotland in recent decades. They have joined the Caithness Biodiversity Group in its effort to rejuvenate the growth of juniper berries in the region and continue their support today in activities such as a survey of Dunnet Bay juniper taken this past June. In place of local juniper, Martin and Claire found two types of their gin’s main ingredient - one from Italy and one from Bulgaria - both of which they enjoyed but which transmitted completely different flavours when distilled. Down to his last test batches, Martin couldn’t decide which to use until Claire suggested they use both, an intriguing idea as Rock Rose is the only gin we know of made with two species of juniper. After playing around with the berries, Martin found a ratio that worked for the style gin he sought to produce as well as the mixture and ratio of botanicals that would come to define the only gin from the North Highlands. 7
A ROSE SAPPHIRE Rock Rose’s light signature style originates with the vapour-infusion process that Martin uses, a process pioneered by Bombay Sapphire back in the 1980s. The Bacardi-owned brand sought the lighter style at the time because gin as a category was in decline whereas vodka’s popularity was ever-growing: the brand reasoned that a lighter gin would attract vodka drinkers. Instead of macerating all of the botanicals directly in his still, Martin places them in a basket which rests at the top of the still and through which the steam of the heated base spirit passes, absorbing the flavour elements of the botanicals a n d carrying those elements with it as it re-condenses. Martin then eliminates the heads and the tails t h o s e parts of the resulting spirit not suitable for consumption through his trained nose, far from an easy task.
Will Rock Rose’s stone bottle become more iconic than Sapphire blue? GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
For the special Distiller’s Edition that Craft Gin Club Members have the exclusive chance to taste this August, Martin tweaked the mixture of his standard botanicals and added an additional two that through numerous tests he found complemented each other strangely yet perfectly: lavender and apple. Two species of lavender grow on the Dunnet Bay Distillery property so Martin had an abundant supply with which to experiment. The apples are sourced from a farm on the Black Isle, a peninsula about eighty miles to the south of the distillery. But sourcing the apples wasn’t enough. Martin needed to find the best way of distilling them. It turns out, that best way starts with apple juice. After placing the botanicals in their basket in which the plants are tightly packed - and before turning on his still, Martin stands over the basket, slowly trickling the apple juice into the basket where the dried botanicals absorb it all, themselves rehydrated au jus de pomme before their exposure to the spirit steam, a very unique twist on Bombay Sapphire’s vapour-infusion. For each Rock Rose batch, Martin conducts a 12-hour distillation process, a very slow steam compared to many other gins. The infused spirit then rests in stainless steel vats for three days before being brought down to bottling strength with water from the local reservoir 8
of Calder Loch and bottled in what has already become an iconic bottle in the craft industry, one made from ceramic in a style reminiscent of jenever bottles and which won Best New Product Launch Design at the 2015 World Gin Awards. DUNNET BAY GINTAGE A Pink Lady and Lavender bring even more beauty to the North Coast 500
The gin itself won two silver medals at the June 2015 Gin Masters Awards, one of a number of competitions in which Martin and Claire could enter their gin every year because unlike many gins, Rock Rose will be distinct every year. “It’s a challenge to juggle 18 different botanicals and balance them every year to achieve the same flavour,� explained Martin. “This year has been very rainy in Caithness so when we harvest our local botanicals, they will taste slightly different. You just can’t control nature!�
With the uniqueness of yearly vintages of their standard gin as well as the Distiller’s Editions - the first of which Craft Gin Club Members are exclusively tasting this month - they will produce and sell only at their premises, Martin and Claire have poised Rock Rose Gin to be one of the most successful of the growing number of craft gins, a success in which people from far and wide will revel as they pop off the North Coast 500 to visit the Dunnet Bay Distillery. đ&#x;?¸ GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
The Roots of Rock Rose
A couple of years back, the inhabitants of the villages between Dunnet Head and the town of Thurso would have spotted a family car passing east to west and west to east along the coastal route A836 and up the thin country road B855 which passes St. John’s Loch as it heads up towards Easter Head, the UK mainland’s most northerly point. The family in the car was in search of a property in the region, a region with which it was 9
very familiar as both husband and wife grew up there. Several times, they passed an unassuming, rundown property with a stone building of which they thought little. But the more they drove by, the more they realised that the property had everything necessary for the family business they sought to launch, the North Highlands first gin distillery which they came to call the Dunnet Bay Distillery. GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
The time that the heads of the family, Martin and Claire Murray, spent driving around the area searching for the perfect spot was the first time in a while that they had driven the local roads. The decision to start the distillery actually occurred whilst the couple and their two children were living in the town of Pau in the foothills of the French Pyrenees. Martin had been transferred to Pau after eight years of working in the Oil & Gas industry as an engineer, an industry he entered with his head, not his heart. His heart lay with the arts of brewing and distilling, passionate crafts that had initially attracted him during his university days but which ultimately lost out to practical engineering. Nearly a year into the family’s stay in Pau, Martin learned that his next move would be to Nigeria or Angola. Not entirely convinced by the prospect of bringing his young children to another continent, Martin’s heart finally took over and with Claire they decided to A sign of gins to come move back to Scotland and return to his university love of brewing and distilling, crafts in which he has begun his PhD studies which will culminate with a doctoral thesis centered on the experience of creating the Dunnet Bay Distillery and Rock Rose Gin.
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A PETAL-POWERED STILL With the location of their new distillery discovered and their planning licenses sorted, they turned to what is arguably the most crucial task of any distillery, choosing its still. Unlike many of the UK’s recentlyestablished craft distilleries which turn largely to Germany for their smaller still expertise, Martin found the mother of his gin in the “oldest distillery engineering business in the world,” John Dore & Co. After a 9-week lead time, the Surrey-based company shipped a traditional copper-pot still to the Dunnet Bay Distillery, where a new building to house production and bottling had been built. Elizabeth, as the still is named, ran her first batch of Rock Rose Gin on August 21, 2014, only a few weeks after Claire and Martin had sold their first bottle of their gin made from small, experimental stills. The final recipe to which Elizabeth was the final ingredient was the product of 55 different recipes, all whittled down to three different batches of which a mixture of Batch 1 and Batch 3 became the North Highlands first and only gin.
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From the early day’s, the internet and social media have been key for the Caithness couple. They pre-sold their first batch within 48 hours of announcing it online, before the batch was even made, a strategy which worked from this first batch through to Christmas of 2014. The distillery is truly a family-run outfit with Claire’s mother and Martin’s father - who both retired last year - as neighbours and who help out with the bottling and placing the wax cap on the bottle top. When you buy a bottle of Rock Rose whose wax runs straight across the bottle’s neck, then it was bottled by Martin’s father. If the wax is slightly slanted, Claire’s mother did the bottling.
well as Rock Rose’s suggested garnish of rosemary which works best with the gin when slightly burnt. Martin and Claire have also constructed a purpose-built geodome which houses the likes of baby kiwi fruit and lemon basil, the abundance and variety of which inspire new spirits and cocktail recipes and feed Martin’s penchant for experimentation. This experimentation combined with Martin’s ongoing doctoral distilling studies will undoubtedly keep the Dunnet Bay Distillery at the forefront of the craft distillation movement, a movement that has been advanced this month with Rock Rose’s first Distiller’s Edition made exclusively for Craft Gin Club Members. đ&#x;?¸
The family also tends to the distillery’s garden, which produces some of the botanicals that Martin will use in future Distiller’s Editions as
Hair of the dog: Rock Rose George takes a break as assistant distiller 11
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Botanicals 1. Italian juniper 2. Bulgarian juniper 3. Rose root 4. Rowan berries 5.Sea Buckthorn 6. Watermint 7. Cardamon
8. Verbena 9. Angelica root 10. Coriander seed 11. Blaeberries 12. Grains of paradise 13. Cinnamon 14-18. Secret!
Craft Gin Club Distiller’s Edition 19. Lavender (two species) 20. Apple juice from the Black Isle
Tasting Notes Distiller’s Edition Nose: Delicate apple notes accompanying by the fresh pine of the juniper and Rock Rose’s signature floral scents Palate: Very Rock Rose with creamy mouth feel, light juniper and floral flavours. Add tonic and the apple juice comes through Finish: A bite of lavender overtakes the lemon sherbet flavors characteristic of Rock Rose
Distiller’s Perfect Serve G&T • • •
50ml of Rock Rose CGC Distiller’s Edition 75ml of Premium Tonic such as Fever Tree or Walter Gregor Garnish with a slice of Pink Lady Apple
Rocktails & Stories Cocktails by Jody Buchan, Rock Rose Brand Ambassador 14
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500 Miles of Wheelchair Charity With the roads around Scotland’s North Highlands all recently joined into the iconic North Coast 500 route, hordes of tourists in all sorts of vehicles have thronged to the area to enjoy the road’s unique beauty, a number of which play a particular song as they drive. Almost too fittingly, 26 years before the opening of Scotland’s answer to Route 66, a Scottish band wrote a song that was destined to become the motorway’s anthem: The Proclaimer’s “I’m gonna be (500 miles).” Written in 1987 and unveiled on vinyl in 1988, “I’m gonna be (500 miles)” made the Proclaimers - a group consisting of Leith-born twins C h a r l i e a n d C r a i g Re i d - a n international sensation. Although it didn’t hit the top of the charts immediately and didn’t even make it into the top ten in the UK upon its release, its appearance in the 1993 Hollywood romantic comedy Benny & Joon gave the catchy tune the petrol it needed to travel the 500 miles to American chart success. The film placement as well as constant MTV play of the song’s video interlaced with scenes from the film drove it to number three on the US charts and earned it a certified gold record five years after it’s release. 15
1993 was certainly not the last time the Scottish psalm resurfaced. It’s instantly-recognisable muted chords and Scottish-accented verse regularly feature in films and television programs, it has over 45 million plays on music streaming service Spotify and it’s music video has over 16 million views on YouTube. But arguably its most famous rendition came in the digital era when in 2007 a rereleased version hit #1 on the UK singles chart, a rendition amusingly recorded with comedians Peter Kay and Matt Lucas and featured as a single on Comic Relief ’s charity album of the same year. Kay and Lucas performed the song live as their wheelchair-bound characters, Brian Potter from Phoenix Nights and Andy Pipkin from Little Britain. The two funnymen added a humourous twist to the lyrics, proclaiming that they would “roll” the 500 miles. With the North Coast holding charity events of those circling the route in classic cars, on motorbikes perhaps its next effort to raise money is gonna be wheelchair race.
500 team its own for or bicycles, a 500-mile
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Proclaiming their thirst for Martinis “You know I’m gonna be, I’m gonna be the man who drinks up all the Rock Rose Gin.”
Lavender Martini • • • •
3 sprigs of fresh lavender 35ml of Rock Rose CGC Distiller’s Edition 15ml of Lillet blanc (or dry vermouth) Lemon peel and lavender to garnish
Method: Shake 3 springs of lavender and gin in a cocktail shaker. Add the Lillet blanc and ice and shake some more. Strain into a martini glass. Garnish with lemon peel and a small sprig of lavender. 16
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A Loch of Legend, a Fount of Fortune As the vapours of Rock Rose Gin’s base spirit pass through the botanical basket and collect in the condenser, the steam is returned to liquid through the cooling process fueled by the waters of the nearby source, St. John’s Loch. With the loch’s waters, the gin becomes just as steeped in legend as it does in the flavours of its botanicals, botanicals that hold medicinal properties similar to those that generations past believed the loch to hold. Lore of St. John’s Loch as a healing pond was first recorded in 1840 by a local reverend Thomas Jolly who wrote of believers arriving from all over Caithness, Sutherland and the Orkney Islands to perform the ritual from which they absorbed the supposed beneficial powers of the loch. The mile-long and halfmile-wide pond, which takes its name from a Roman Catholic chapel dedicated to St. John that once sat on the loch’s banks, was visited traditionally on the first Monday of each quarter of the year - known as the “Raith” - by the sick and invalid seeking a cure.
Their ritual was to arrive at the loch early in the morning on the Raith to walk - or if one were too ill, be carried - once around the pond, wash ones face and hands, and throw in a coin, normally a halfpenny. The coin-tossing element is believed to be linked directly to the sincevanished Catholic chapel where its priests used to gather alms, a practice which evolved into throwing coins through the loch’s blessed ripples. Bowling spare change into bodies of water is a timeworn practice whose mysterious origins range from early European tribes thanking the gods for clean water sources to the use of metals as water purifiers.
Such legends continue today, most famously with the world’s most famous fountain, Rome’s Trevi Fountain. After the 1954 film Three Coins in the Fountain popularised the St. John’s Loch: hurl in a halfpenny for health notion that if a tourist threw one coin over their shoulder into the spray they would return to Rome; with two coins they would fall in love with a Roman; and with three coins they would marry said Roman. The superstition has Perhaps not surprisingly, the waters demonstrate no medicinal so penetrated the mind of tourists that well over £2,000 worth of qualities. Jolly wrote, “It is astonishing, that in these days such a coins are estimated to be thrown in the fountain daily, coins collected superstitious rite should be continued; but so it is, and people who by the Roman Catholic Church for its charity Caritas. Perhaps the should know better have recourse to it,” having convinced his own Church should use some of that money to rebuild St. John’s Chapel followers that the tradition was a sham built on nothing but a myth on the shores of the eponymous Scottish loch. that evolved over the years. Still, the sick continued to visit. 17
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Rock Rome Trading tartan for Trevi treasure
Jody’s Choice • • • •
50ml of CGC Distiller’s Edition 12.5ml of Maraschino 12.5ml of St. Germain 12.5ml of fresh lemon juice
Method: Shake and strain, and serve with an apple fan and cherry. 18
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OMG! Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs have a heart! On the newly created North Coast 500 (NC 500) route around the North Highlands peninsula, occasionally you’ll find motorists and cyclists participating in charity events run by the North Highlands Foundation. The Foundation also plans to invite motorcyclists to these events, many of whom are part of members clubs, clubs we often associate with thrilling stories drawn up by Hollywood screenwriters destined for the wide eyes of the popcornpopping public. But biker gangs - and the violence that accompanies them - are very real and their ferocity very recent. In May this year, a brawl between three rival gangs convening for peace talks in a Texas diner garnered international media coverage after a gun fight broke out leaving 9 dead, 18 hospitalised, 170 bikers arrested and over 100 weapons seized by authorities, a scene not uncommon in contemporary American history. After World War II, military veterans returning to a post-war US sought the camaraderie and adrenaline rush they experienced during the war, finding the rush in motorbike riding and the camaraderie in the clubs they formed. Most bike clubs were then and are today populated by legitimate bike enthusiasts gathering merely to roar down an open road such as the NC 500 together. But a small portion have transformed the protective status they enjoy as a club into a cover for organised crime. The bikers of this portion proudly call themselves the “one19
percenters”, a term adopted from an apparently non-existent quote by the American Motorcyclist Association that declared 99% of bikers as upstanding citizens. Today, the FBI reckons that approximately 2.5% of all of the America’s gang members come from motorcycle clubs - who fund themselves through illegal activities - including the three gangs involved in the abovementioned shootout and the most widely known OMG, the Hells Angels whose earnings from its over 400 chapters in over 40 countries are estimated in the billions. With such enormous amounts of money being made from selling drugs, prostitution, arms smuggling and the like, it’s no wonder that turf wars erupt, including in Europe where the “Great Nordic Biker War” raged throughout the 1980s and 90s between the Hells Angels and rival gangs that resulted in eleven assassinations and 74 attempted assassinations. However, not all is bikes and blood when it comes to OMGs. In fact, they have more in common with the NC 500 events than you would think. The clubs frequently donate to and raise money for charities, activities that the Hells Angels contrast with their popular reputation with the saying, “When we do right nobody remembers, when we do wrong nobody forgets.” Perhaps the Blue Angels, Europe’s oldest and Glasgow-based onepercenter MC, will show up to ride the stunning road after handing the NC 500 a big biker banknote. GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
Benevolent bikers Raising hell whilst raising cash
Lavender Elderflower Champagne Cocktail • • • • •
25 ml of Rock Rose CGC Distiller’s Edition 25 ml of Lavender Simple Syrup 25 ml of St. Germain Topped up with Champagne or sparkling wine 1 fresh sprig of lavender with flower to garnish
Method: Mix the lavender syrup, gin and St. Germain in a champagne flute and top up with Champagne. Garnish with a sprig of fresh lavender. 20
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The Wraiths of Rock Rose Before she became Scotland’s premier Countess of Gin, Claire Murray of the Dunnet Bay Distillery used her Honours degree in Hospitality and Management to help guests at Caithness’ Ackergill Tower - a converted castle that is now a five-star hotel and events venue - feel like the lords of the land that once inhabited the castle. Apart from a great place to watch the Northern Lights and its claim to Europe’s largest bedroomed treehouse, Ackergill Tower, like many Scottish castles, is home to a ghost. Not long after the castle’s construction in the late 14th or early 15th century, a beautiful woman of the Clan Gunn was abducted by the Castle’s owner from the Clan Keith. Instead of succumbing to her captor, she chose suicide and threw herself from Ackergill’s highest tower. Today it is rumoured that she wanders around the castle halls in a green dress. “The Jewel of the Highlands”, as its current owners call Ackergill Tower, was once the jewel in the eye of the man that held the title given to one of Claire’s Rock Rose Gin cocktails, Earl of Caithness. The title of Earl of Caithness (coat of arms pictured) has been held by Clan Sinclair since 1455 which held Ackergill Tower on three separate occasions. If the Sinclairs met the Gunn ghost during their tenure is not clear, but the family gave rise to another castle ghost 21
that may have spooked UK nobility even higher up the pecking order, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. Ground on The Castle of Mey, which the Queen Mother purchased in 1952, was first broke in 1556 by the 4th Earl of Caithness. It is rumoured that the 5th Earl of Caithness locked his daughter in one of the castle’s towers to prevent her from seeing a local man with whom she had fallen in love, a tower from which she fell to her death. Whether it was suicide or sinister is unknown, but today the echoes of her death reverberate in the tower where she is occasionally spotted as the Green Lady. But a castle ghost even closer to Claire is one associated with her surname, Calder. Clan Calder traces its roots back to Inverness in the 14th century, a town 5 miles from which it built the clan seat, Cawdor Castle, in the 1450s. A mere 60 years later, the heiress to the Calder name, Muriel, who had been kidnapped by the rival Clan Campbell, was married to John Campbell at 12-years old. Clan Campbell assumed ownership of Cawdor Castle of which it remains proprietor today. Surprisingly, Muriel and John’s marriage worked and it is said that their ghosts wander the halls of the castle together. Perhaps many years down the line when Rock Rose Gin has been handed to next generations, Claire and her husband Martin will haunt the Highland Gin Castle they have built, the Dunnet Bay Distillery. GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
Claire’s Castle Spirits Clans Calder and Campbell curse Cawdor Castle
Earl of Caithness • • • •
150ml of cold Earl Grey tea sweetened with a half a teaspoon of honey when hot 35ml of Rock Rose CGC Distiller’s Edition 15ml fresh-squeezed lemon juice 2 lavender sprigs
Method: Make Earl Grey tea and sweeten with the honey. Allow to cool and store in fridge until needed. Add all of the above ingredients into a cocktail shaker, with 2 sprigs lavender and ice. Shake several times. Then strain the cocktail into a tea cup. Garnish with lavender sprigs. 22
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Magazine
FEATURES
Dunnet Beach
Rock Rose’s Route 66 Following the North Coast 500 through the Highlands
The Dunnet Bay Distillery sits near the oceanside at the very north of the UK in the county of Caithness, a county of pristine natural beauty and top-quality food & drinks producers. To help introduce this amazing area and the rest of the North Highlands to more of the world, an effort coordinated by the North Highland Initiative (NHI) called the North Coast 500 was born. We caught up with the NHI’s Communications and Project Manager, Claire Farquhar, to learn more about the route and the region. 24
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What is the North Coast 500? With the North Coast 500, we have joined the roads that connect the coastal towns and villages in the North Highlands into one route that circles the area. Beginning in Inverness, the route passes through the stunning scenery of Black Isle, Easter Ross, Caithness, Sutherland and Wester Ross by dramatic ocean cliffsides, crystal lochs and beautiful mountains. Travelers on the route, which has been hailed by the Daily Telegraph as “One of the World’s Best” and is also comparable to America’s iconic Route 66, immerse themselves in this scenery whilst enjoying the delicious food and drink our local producers have to offer and taking in the rich cultural heritage which dates back centuries to the days when the clans ruled. Visitors will see an abundance of castles which date back to the clans and travel through what are some of the most untouched and unspoilt landscapes in Europe. How are you promoting the North Coast 500? Apart from engaging with visitors to the area on social media, we organise events on the route. Our major event to date has been a classic car rally in Inverness this past May which has led to classic cars being driven around the route with lots of people 25
sharing their images whilst they drive past the beautiful scenery in their beautiful cars. Another recent activity involved a cyclist named John Baikie who completed the 516mile stretch of road on his bike to raise money for the Cash for Kids charity. Events such as these have helped garner us significant press coverage from Lonely Planet tour guides to the front page of The Scotsman. How did the North Coast 500 come to be? The North Coast 500 is one of a number of projects of the NHI which was founded in 2005 by HRH Prince Charles to support and develop the fragile c o m mu n i t i e s o f t h e N o r t h Highlands across three areas - food & drink, tourism and built environment. The route is one of NHI’s tourism projects which also includes events such as the Wild North Festival which celebrates our local natural and cultural heritage and the members driven Tourism Project which works with local businesses to foster tourism in the area and collaborate on marketing to drive interest. For food & drink 26
we have developed Mey Selections which encourages closer connections between our region’s farmers, producers and consumers and acts as an umbrella brand for their products. We began by focusing on our beef and lamb and have expanded to include biscuits and shortbread with additional products such as cashmere, salmon and regional cheeses on the way. How has the Dunnet Bay Distillery and Rock Rose helped promote the North Coast 500? Martin and Claire have created a unique gem in the region - the first and only gin distillery in the North Highlands. We are already home to a number of whisky distilleries such as the world renowned Glenmorangie, Dalmore, Old Pulteney, Balblair and Clynelish as well as real ale breweries like the Black Isle Brewery and Cromarty B r e w i n g C o m p a n y. T h e s e businesses, which are primarily near the coasts on the NC500 route, drive tourism to the region and the Dunnet Bay Distillery, only opened last year, is adding to the attraction. đ&#x;?¸ GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
Drink Driving for Droids The effects of self-driving cars on gin lovers and other parts of society
Imagine you’ve stopped off at the Dunnet Bay Distillery to visit Martin and Claire Murray and taste their delicious gin, as we urge you to do soon. You may have found yourself so intrigued by their artisanal spirits that you couldn’t help but have a little more than a taste. When it’s time to bid adieu to the Rock Rose royals you waltz over to your car with a smile on your face as light as the gin you’ve been drinking, wave to the policeman across the way, get in your car and roll out of the distillery, regaining your route on the North Coast 500. 27
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You’re likely anticipating the next step in this sequence: flashing police car lights, breathalyser tests, the ever-amusing walk down a straight line whilst touching your nose… But this drink driving scene is not like the others. You’re not actually driving at all. If the policeman were to pull you over, he’d find you sitting back, resting comfortably with your legs up whilst holding yet another Rock Rose G&T in your hand whilst watching a film. He would notice that your car doesn’t even have a steering wheel and that no human is needed to guide it along the road - the car is driving itself ! Does all this sound too futuristic? Well, it’s not. It’s happening right now. You might be able to visit the Dunnet Bay Distiller y in your autonomous vehicle (AV) complete with car bar within the next five years. But enjoyers of fine craft spirits are only one part of society that will benefit from self-driving cars. The technology promises to make the lives of billions of people much easier and safer whilst simultaneously disrupting industries, institutions and occupations we today take for granted. Here’s a look at 10 demographics and industries which will soon feel the impact of AVs. The Lutz Pod: already driving itself around several UK towns 28
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CAR OWNERS & DRIVERS Why own a car if you could always have access to one on-demand through your mobile? Currently, the car that you own is idle 95% of the time. That’s a lot of downtime for an asset that as of 2013 cost you nearly £3,500 annually in petrol, road tax, insurance and your annual Motor Ordinance Test, not to mention the cost of purchasing the car and financing your ownership. By not owning yet still having ondemand access to a vehicle, consumers could save tens of thousands of pounds every year all whilst decreasing the number of cars on the road. Another benefit of AV’s for consumers concerns that bugbear of every motorist traffic. A 2014 study by the Centre for Economics and Business Research showed that the average UK driver spends the equivalent of four days per year waiting in traffic, a figure estimated to grow to 18 days by 2030 and to cost the average British family £2,000. With AV’s which will all be connected to one another and work in synch, traffic jams will disappear. 29
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THE AUTO INDUSTRY The business model of car companies is to sell their cars to consumers. But with car ownership made redundant by AVs, how will car companies survive? A March 2015 report by global consulting firm McKinsey estimated that one self-driving car would be needed for every two conventional cars. That immediately translates to a 50% drop in sales for car companies. It is likely that with widespread adoption of AVs, city governments will buy fleets for public transport purposes and companies that own fleets of self driving cars will emerge to offer more luxurious rides. The auto industry will likely be dealing more with these bodies rather than directly with
consumers. That’s not to say that consumers will stop buying cars outright, but most, once they understand the cost benefits of not owning a car, will likely turn to on-demand services.
LOGISTICS COMPANIES Modern shipping and delivery is no less than incredible - you can post something in New York one morning and have it arrive at your London desk in under 24 hours. But the costs of performing such a feat are equally incredible. With AVs, one-third of the cost of
overground transportation by the likes of Parcel Force or DHL drivers - would be eliminated. What’s more, lorries could drive all night not having to stop as is currently legally mandated for drivers and AVs are much more efficient users of petrol, the cost of which makes up another third of the cost of your rapidly delivered parcel.
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Another aspect of the auto industry that will be disrupted is the market for car parts and repairs, called the aftercare market, an industry worth £26 billion in the UK and estimated at about £400 billion worldwide. The huge reduction in car crashes combined with the fact that AVs will run more efficiently and require less care means that the companies in this value chain, from local auto repair shops to large auto parts manufacturers, could be made largely redundant.
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CHAUFFEURS AND TAXI DRIVERS Perhaps the most obvious class of people that will be affected by AV’s are those that chauffeur us around today. According to 2013 government statistics, 297,000 taxi or private hire vehicle driver licenses had been granted in the UK and Wales. A June 2015 report by research company IBIS World showed that the UK taxi market remains diverse and significant, with over 18,000 businesses employing nearly 295,000 people with total industry revenues reaching £9 billion. However, the market is considered mature and revenues are forecast to decline from now on. With the rise of smartphone-hailed chauffeur companies the likes of Uber, professional taxi drivers have already felt the squeeze. But the reality is that even selfemployed Uber drivers will become irrelevant with AVs - Uber itself announced in February that it is investing in its own fleet of self driving cars.
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THE POLICE We all look to our local police forces to keep us safe and squash out the baddies. But the reality of police work is decidedly more mundane. An article in The Conversation from March this year used statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice to show that more than half of all interaction with police forces in the United States relates to the public’s automobiles. With AV’s, today’s police work necessary for public safety from speeding violations and accidents to parking fines and routine pull-overs would disappear and with it, so could half of the nation’s police force saving local governments over $50 billion (£32.2 billion) annually with virtually zero effect on police forces’ main role: maintaining public safety.
GOVERNMENTS If governments stand to save money by halving the number of police officers on their payroll, they also stand to lose out on all of the fines they levy from traffic and parking violations. The Royal Automobile Club Foundation found that councils in the UK made a £667 million surplus from parking violations alone from 2013-2014. In the five years to 2013, CCTV cameras in London contributed £285 million to the city’s coffers by catching traffic and parking violations. At the same time, total adoption of AV’s would allow governments to eliminate the overhead needed to administrate such fines as well as the cost of court hearings related to traffic offences and even the functions at the DVLA related to issuing drivers’ licenses. 32
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MEDIA COMPANIES The promise of AVs will mean that people spend less time getting from point A to point B, but that time will be filled by more pleasurable activities than having to pay attention to the road whilst waiting in traffic or finding a parking spot. With ubiquitous screens and smartphones, many people will opt to use their newfound time in AVs to read the news, view programming, listen to music, chat with 33
their friends on WhatsApp or boost their Candy Crush or favourite game’s score. To fill this time, media companies will have to churn out even more entertaining and informational content and advertisers will have more time to get their message in front of consumers. This is one of the reasons why Google is investing so much in AVs - the more time people spend on their mobile devices, the more time they’ll spend searching for things to buy on Google. GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
THE ELDERLY Despite the fact that older drivers are actually proven safer than younger drivers - 2011 saw 6% of traffic casualties caused by the 70+ crowd whilst 35% of casualties were caused by drivers under 30 which compose 20% of the driving populace - the common perception contradicts the reality. Just the same, a survey by insurance company First Central showed that those over 65 are more than 50% more likely to hail the arrival of self driving cars than their younger fellow roadsters. 35% of people over 65 polled answered that AV’s would “eliminate the difficulty they have in maintaining concentration, as well as making driving in rush-hour traffic much easier.” In comparison, only 20% of 18-24 year-olds welcomed driverless cars as the future of transport.
EMERGENCY CARE Accident rates and traffic deaths may be declining across the Western world, but the figures remain a substantial burden on our health systems, a burden that AVs would all but eliminate. The number of road fatalities in the UK dropped by 50% from 2000-2013 and driving injuries were down 7% year-on-year in 2013 to 185,540. Despite the drop, the NHS declared in 2012 that these deaths and injuries cost it £547 million annually. In the United States, a country more reliant on its cars, over 2.5 million emergency room visits were related to automobile accidents in 2012, accidents which at over 6% of all injury-related emergency room visits are the primary cause of all injury in the country and which cost the country’s health care system £18 billion over the lifetime of those injured. 34
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INSURANCE COMPANIES Over the years, a number of studies of car crashes have cited human error as the cause of said crashes anywhere from 90% to 99% of the time. This prevalence of human error, the crashes themselves and the ensuing damages are the reason for which every driver that owns a car is obliged to have car insurance. Imagine if all of these accidents were eliminated, a phenomenon which would come about with total adoption of AVs. Insurance companies are worried about the potential loss of business. A March 2015 article in the Guardian noted that three major American insurance companies cited AVs as risk factors in their company filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although it will take time as AVs are gradually adopted, what is likely to happen is that insurance companies will change from insuring drivers - currently a $220 billion (ÂŁ141.8 billion) industry - to insuring the companies that make AV technologies in case of technological incidences. đ&#x;?¸
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Toasting Rock Rose Cocktails to Caithness
Martin and Claire Murray, the husband and wife team behind the Dunnet Bay Distillery both hail from the County of Caithness, one of the Highland counties through which the North Coast 500 passes. Proud of their region, the Rock Rose team would tell you that Caithness claims the most beautiful stretch of the route, an argument with which we can’t disagree. Here we visit five Caithness locations to which we can all raise a glass of Rock Rose. 36
Brough Harbor Aurora photo credit: Graham Mackay GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
CASTLE OF MEY Caithness for a Queen
Originally built in the 1500s, the Castle of Mey became a royal residence when Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother saved it from despair in 1952 not long after the death of her husband, King George VI. The Queen Mother would summer at the castle, a practice adopted by her grandson, Prince Charles, Duke of Rothesay, who stays at the castle with the Duchess of Rothesay the last week of July or first week of August when Castle Mey, which is now open to the public, closes for ten days. 37
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Dunnet Head Shining a light on Rock Rose
The most northerly point on the UK mainland, Dunnet Head is a peninsula that juts out towards the Orkney Islands some 9 miles in the distance and forms the eastern boundary of Dunnet Bay. At its tip, called Easter Head, sits a lighthouse built during World War II which as it turns points its light towards the nearby Dunnet Bay Distillery which makes a delicious spirit every drinker would love to find in their Easter basket, Rock Rose Gin. 38
Photo credit: Charles Tait / North Coast 500 GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
Castle Sinclair Girnigoe 500 years of clan command
Like a vision from the popular series, Game of Thrones, Castle Sinclair Girnigoe sits perched on a rugged cliffside looking as if at any moment it will fall in to the sea. It has sat this way since the 1400s when Clan Sinclair, whose noblemen have held the Earl of Caithness title since the time the castle was built, ruled the county and the Orkney Islands. The castle is currently undergoing renovations and will eventually open to the public. 39
Photo credit: Charles Tait / North Coast 500 GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
Duncansby Head The salty source of Scottish sea stacks
These dramatic rock formations known as the Duncansby Stacks reach heights of 60 meters, taller than the cliffs from which they broke off millions of years ago, with The Great Stack situated 200 meters from the shoreline. 40
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Whaligoe Steps a whale of a walk
This staircase of 365 steps descends steeply towards a small port called Whaligoe which means “inlet of whales.â€? Built in the 19th century, they served as an access point for transporting a days catch of fish to the town of Wick some seven miles to the north of the inlet. đ&#x;?¸ 41
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Oil & Gin Will Scottish spirits become more valuable than Scottish oil?
Before he listened to his heart and pursued his passion of brewing and distilling, Martin Murray, the distiller behind Rock Rose Gin, spent ten years guided by his head which led him to spend ten years working in Oil & Gas as an engineer largely in his native Scotland. It’s no secret that in Scotland Oil & Gas is of huge importance, it being the biggest industry in terms of contribution to GDP and one that plays heavily in the debates on Scottish Independence. 42
But even as the Independence movement debates its main objective, it is having internal debates about the impact of Scottish oil on the country’s future, primarily because different estimations of this impact exist. Here, we shine a light on these estimations as well as facts about the industry which, depending on your interpretation, may find itself between a Rock Rose and a hard place in the coming decades.
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Peak Production
Reserves
Most estimates show that Scotland’s North Sea Oil & Gas industry hit peak production in 1999 when it produced about 6 million barrels per day. By 2013, this figure had dropped to approximately 1.5 million barrels, the same rate as in 1977 and a rate that is expected to continue its decline.
Differences over estimates of future reserves are a primary source of contention in the independence debate. The Scottish National Party claims that there are 24 billion barrels left in the ground but leading oil expert Sir Ian Wood estimates these reserves at only 15-16.5 billion barrels.
Tax Revenues
Production costs
The amount of money that goes to Westminster’s coffers from Oil & Gas companies is just as volatile as the oil price. For instance, from 2011 to 2012 tax revenues amounted to £10.9 billion but from 2013 to 2014 that figure dropped 57% to £4.7 billion, a figure that preceded March 2015 tax breaks.
Although the North Sea claims the world’s highest number of deep sea drilling sites, those sites are becoming increasingly expensive, especially when compared with other regions such as the Gulf of Mexico. In 2004 it cost £4 to extract one barrel of oil. In 2013 the same task cost £17.
Exports Oil & Gas produced from Scottish fields makes up 28% of the country’s total exports including 20% of exports to the rest of the UK and a whopping 40% of all of Scotland’s international exports. By comparison, Scotch whisky, the third largest contributor to Scottish GDP, accounts for 20% of the country’s exports. 43
Investment & Employment Despite the ÂŁ14 billion invested in new North Sea production in 2013, over ÂŁ9 billion was needed to maintain existing rigs and wells, many of which are scheduled to run dry in a few years. Production cost rise are causing firms to cut back on costs, primarily employment which will affect the 160,000 people in Aberdeen that depend on the sector. đ&#x;?¸ GINNED! Magazine vol. 10
Rockin’ n’ Rosin’ the Princeliest of Craft Gins 44
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