My word they love their gin in Wigtown. For those of you who have never heard of Wigtown, it’s a small town in the Machars of Galloway in the extreme south west of Scotland. Its claim to fame is that is Scotland’s Book Town so think Hay on Way on a much much smaller scale. Every year Wigtown hosts an extremely good Book Festival with top writers from all over the UK and beyond and we are always extremely honoured to be invited to talk about gin and do a gin tasting.

In our Gintime programme this year we decided to have a bit of fun by pitting some very classic English gins – Beefeater 24, Martin Miller’s and Plymouth – against three new wave Scottish gins – Caorunn, Darnley’s View and Hendrick’s. Our audience loved them all but the more fruity, floral flavours of the Scottish gins really went down a storm with plenty of informed and interesting comments.  A straw poll at the end of the session understandably brought out Scottish pride and proved that, in this little corner of the country, Scottish gins rule. Interesting session.