William Kerr’s Border Gin
I picked up a bottle of William Kerr’s Border Gin on my latest trip to Constantine Stores. William did not mind as he is dead and, apart from lending his name, unbeknownst to him, to the gin, has nothing to do with the hooch. Who was Kerr, you might ask? Born in the Scottish Border’s town of Hawick in 1779, William Kerr moved south to seek his fame and fortune, joining the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew as a gardener. In 1804 he went to Asia where he developed a reputation as a plant collector, 238 of the plants he sent back to Kew representing new species. The Kerria, a vigorous, deciduous spring flowering shrub, also known as Jew’s mantle, was named after him. In 1812 Kerr was appointed as superintendent of the newly created botanical garden in Colombo, but, sadly, died within a couple years of his arrival in Sri Lanka.
It seems a natural fit, then, for a product distilled in Hawick using botanicals to be named after the town’s most famous horticultural son. The Border’s Distillery, responsible for the gin, are the first to operate in the Borders since 1837 and also produce malt whisky and vodka. For all their products they only use barley sourced from farms within a twenty-mile radius of the distillery. The water used is drawn from an underground lake beside the distillery, fed from the local hills.
As for the botanicals that go into the mix, we find juniper, lemon, bitter orange, sweet orange, coriander, angelica, orris, almond, liquorice, cassia and heracleum spondhylium aka hogweed or cow parsley. The latter, a native of Europe and Asia, is a source of nectar, particularly for pollinators, and is rated in the top ten for nectar production. The botanicals are steamed, rather than boiled, in the Carterhead still, a process designed to capture some of the subtler essences and aromas which might otherwise be lost in a more vigorous process, before being distilled down in natural water to produce the finished product with a very acceptable fighting weight of 43% ABV.
The bottle is squat with rounded shoulders rather than angular, leading to a short neck and a wooden stopper with an artificial cork. The glass at the shoulder is embossed with “Distilled in Hawick” and “The Borders” and at the bottom of the bottle with “The Borders Distillery”. The central label, using a pale green background, names the principal botanicals, but not all, and some of the places Kerr is associated with. It is a classy and elegant design in a rather understated way.
On removing the stopper, the first impression was one of boldness, the aroma an almost heady mix of juniper, herbs and citrus. In the glass and tasted neat, it initially tasted like a traditional London Dry with the juniper and its usual companions to fore. Then the citrus hit before giving way to the more earthy, herby sensations and departed leaving a pleasant, slightly spicy and lingering aftertaste. It was a remarkably smooth drink and with the addition of a mixer some of the subtler tastes and sensations of the herbs seemed to come to the fore.
As a gin, it has quite a strong and distinctive taste to it, although in the back of my mind, I seemed to me I had tasted something like it before. Rifling through my tasting notes, I tracked it down, it tasted rather like an understated Rosemullion Dry Gin. That is not a criticism. After all, even with the diversity of gins and styles that the ginaissance has spawned, there can only be a certain range of botanical combinations that make a quaffable drink.
I enjoyed Border Distillery’s gin and am sure that William Kerr would have approved.
Until the next time, cheers!
