Tyree Gin, 70 cl

Product Information

At the beginning of the pandemic, the distillery produced hand sanitiser free of charge for any companies or individuals on the island that required it. In December, they also helped to spread some festive cheer by giving a free miniature of Tyree Gin or Hebridean Pink Gin to every islander over the age of 18. They produced a sample gin using the botanicals we’d sourced and after a couple of tweaks, we finalised the recipe. We then officially launched at Tiree Music Festival 2017. The Scottish Gin Awards have revealed gin brands which have successfully achieved medal status in 2023, following the awards dinner in Glasgow this month.

The whisky was named after a ship that ran aground off the shores of the island and it has cases of whisky - a story similar to Whisky Galore,” says Ian. We launched that at the Tiree Homecoming and only bottled 230 which all sold out. That was the first step - to publicise the whisky company and to let people know what we were doing.” Starting with gin Picture: Tyree Gin Facebook Beinn an Tuirc Distillers, South Loch Gin and Linlithgow Distillery also won multiple taste medals.

19. Hills & Harbour GIN

The Isle of Tiree lies to the north of Islay and south of Barra and is the most westerly island of the Inner Hebrides. In the eighteenth century it was home to ‘no less than fifty distillers’, yet the island’s connection with the Scotch Whisky Industry has long been lost. Along with this historical knowledge, my business partner, Alain, is a local crofter and he and his family had a knowledge of various botanicals available on the island’s machair ground. And now, after eighteen months of contract distilling in London by Thames Distillers. The company is celebrating the release of the first island-distilled batch of Tyree Gin. Sales of the London-distilled gin helped to fund the renovation of an industrial shed in West Hynish in the southwest of the island and a 250-litre G-Still was installed there in late 2018.

We have no access to three phase power so our still had to be adapted accordingly. We also had to pay for the installation of a new electricity connection to allow us to utilise the power capabilities of the equipment, an additional cost that we hadn’t planned for. There was also a long-standing concern about a rise in drunkenness on the island, which the authorities linked with the number of stills. James Turnbull had reported in his Statistical Account of 1768: "The people drink more than they would do, which is a means of spoiling their morals and keeping them idle." Being neighbours and having played with Trail West at the Bruichladdich Distillery on a few occasions, Tyree Gin’s Ian Smith now asks The Botanist Gin… The main difficulties have been connected with the remoteness of our distillery and the options available to us in such a remote location. Thankfully things are now going to plan! Known as Tyree and not Tiree is another nod to the island’s history, as Ian explains: “Tyree was a historical form of spelling for the island while the modern spelling of Tiree first appeared on a map of Scotland by John & Frederic Tallis in 1851.” Creating a whisky for Tiree Music Festival

31. PICKERING’S NAVY STRENGTH GIN

Myself and my business partner are very into the local history - we love reading about the island’s written historical accounts and one of the things I discovered was that between 1790 and 1791 there were 157 people caught distilling illegally, and one in every ten was evicted from their croft or holding. We thought this history was fascinating - there were hundreds of years of history of whisky production on the island - and we thought, why has nobody tried to revive that?” Tiree, long known as Tìr an Eòrna 'the land of barley', was an island whose swollen population could barely feed itself, an island that had exhausted its reserves of peat and had to rely on expensive imports of coal. In addition, the long-lived eighth duke held a policy of keeping Tiree alcohol-free (the island’s licence had been removed in 1848 and wasn’t reintroduced until 1950). Tiree Whisky Company is the producer of Tyree Gin and Hebridean Pink Gin, both of which are handcrafted and bottled on the Inner Hebridean Isle of Tiree. Distillers from across Scotland have been selected, with those on the picturesque Hebridean island of Tiree offering up one of the festival’s most far flung gins.

This award-winning gin was the brainchild of two whisky distillery managers who also happened to be gin enthusiasts. Their aim was to create a spirit that would appeal to seasoned gin drinks but also entice a new market of non-gin drinkers and convert them to gin. And so they set about creating a gin that would have subtle fruitiness and a soft creamy finish. Drawing upon their joint experience of over 25 years in the distilling industry, the long experiment began using as much locally grown botanicals as possible. There are many theories as to where the name Tiree is derived. Professor William J Watson, who published The Celtic Place Names of Scotland in 1926, argues that the second element of Tir-iodh is likely to be Heeth, a name from the Iron Age or earlier which is not Gaelic, possibly not even Celtic. More common theories have suggested that the name derives from ‘Tir-iodh’ which means ‘land of corn’, or possibly ‘Tir-I’ the land or granary of Iona. Tyree Gin truly reflects the landscape in which it is distilled. Kelp harvested from the icy waters provides sweetness as well as coastal salty flavours and floral, grassy and vanilla notes are achieved using a range of botanicals from the machair ground inland from the shore. Our distillery has now been operational for just over a year and continues to go from strength to strength. We had hoped to open to the public and offer tours this year but this has been put on hold for now, like everything else! We feel as though the island’s distilling history isn’t widely known about so this heritage will be an important part of our tours and we are looking forward to sharing this story with locals and visitors to the island once things return to some kind of normal.

The distillery's flagship product is the world’s first Oyster Gin, a premium gin made by charging the still with the shells of fresh Scottish oysters. The waters of Scotland’s west coast are famous for their oyster beds and Isle of Bute Gin's come from the beautiful Loch Fyne. The oyster shells add a delicate maritime essence to the spirit – blended with citrus and other botanicals to create a savoury gin which is a perfect pair to seafood and the ideal base for a martini. The island of Tiree is the most westerly of the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. It is a relatively low-lying island with an area of 7,834 hectares and a population of around 650.