Amazing time lapse video shows new Hollyrood Distillery gin still installed for World Gin Day

With a bespoke design created by head distiller Jack Mayo, the gin still has been christened ‘Ginnie Deans’ after Jeanie Deans, the heroine of Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Heart of Midlothian.

Holyrood Distillery, which creates a range of gins along with its core focus on single malt whisky, sits on St Leonard’s Lane, a stone’s throw away from what was once the site of a cottage where the character of the novel lived that later became known as Jeanie Deans Cottage.

Uniquely, its botanical basket can be used as retort tank, which allows different botanicals to be macerated at different alcoholic strengths. This process allows for more flavour to be extracted as some botanicals, such as spices, deliver more flavour when macerated at a lower ABV (alcohol by volume), while others, such as citrus, deliver more at a higher ABV.

Ginnie Deans will run once a week to start with, with each distillation lasting around six hours and producing around 600 50cl bottles of gin. The still sits on the second floor of the distillery, which will be the first single malt distillery in the heart of Edinburgh for almost 100 years when it opens in July.

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