Driving Scotland’s Gin Trail – How, Where & When To Do It

My first brush with gin first serendipitously occurred a few years ago in a pub in Notting Hill, London, on a sun-drenched Sunday afternoon.

After stating to Paul, the bartender, that I was uninterested in ales and frankly over cider, I nonetheless felt dubious when he suggested a gin & tonic. Sensing my disappointment, he specified right away that this wasn’t my grandmother’s astringent gin but rather a delectable concoction of Scottish botanicals: a trailblazing spirit named Hendrick’s.

And while my recollection of that evening is slightly clouded by my, ahem, journalistic appetite for exhaustivity (read: deliriously taste every gin on the menu), I distinctly remember the epiphany of knowing my life would never be the same going forwards.

I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Paul.

Cue to 2018; I have since then become what you might describe something of a gin enthusiast. I frequent Montreal’s gin bars on an almost weekly basis, I purchased a gigantic sideboard for the sole…