\"I'm often called an accidental distiller,\" says Kim Cameron, founder of the Bothy Distillery in Glen Prosen in the Scottish Highlands.
Kim started off running a coffee shop and producing jam. World class jam, which 11 years ago won its category in the World Jam Championships. So she launched her Jam Bothy label.
\"In Angus,\" she says, \"we grow the most amazing fruit, arguably in the best in the world: raspberry, rhubarb, blueberry, strawberry... And I was making the full seasonal calendar of jam. Now one of the byproducts of making jam was I had some juice and fruit left over. And rather than waste that, we decided to add it to gin.\"
Next thing Kim knew, people were beating a path up her glen in the north east of Scotland for her gin. \"The jam took a bit of a back seat,\" she continues, \" and we focused on the Gin Bothy as a brand.\"
\"That,\" she explains, \"is how my entry into the world of spirit happened. I didn't ever imagine that we would be in a position where we'd be distilling whisky in the glens.\"
Well Kim's not quite distilling whisky yet.
Her best selling gin is Gunshot Gin.
\"I was selling that into the US market, and one of the things that we were always told on feedback was: 'We love the flavour profiles.' So it was cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, spice. Those really rich warming flavours. But we had distilled it with gin. And the biggest thing that the export market wanted was in a whisky. So we flipped the base and called it Gunshot Whisky.\"
Gunshot was an eight year old blended whisky created for the Kim's export market. \"But,\" she continues, \"our customers here, once it followed our gin journey, have always asked me: 'When are you moving into whisky?'\"
Well that move has begun!
Bothy Distillery is well under way. It's being built in old bothy in Glen Prosen in Cairngorm National Park in the eastern Highlands that in the early 1700s had been an old whisky smuggling room.
The stills are on order from Forsyths, Scotland's go-to still manufacturers. They're about to be installed. And Kim hopes the first new spirit, to be distilled under the supervision of Ron Welsh (the master distiller behind Beam Suntory's Laphroaig and Bowmore, and 140 other expressions of Scotch whisky), will begin to flow in December or January.
So join John as he chats to Kim about her journey from jam to dram.
Slàinte!
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Creator & producer: David Holmes
Art work & design: Jess Robertson
Music: Water of Life (Never Going Home)
Vocals: Andrea Cunningham
Guitars: John Beattie
Bass: Alasdair Vann
Drums: Alan Hamilton
Bagpipes: Calum McColl
Accordion: Gary Innes
Music & Lyrics: Andrea Cunningham & John Beattie
Recorded & mixed by Murray Collier at La Chunky Studios, Glasgow, Scotland
Special thanks: The Piper Whisky Bar, 57 Cochrane Street, Glasgow, Scotland
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