Water & Climate

The Lowlands aren't highlands with rushing streams. This is flat, damp land between two coasts. Cameronbridge sits on a quiet waterway in Fife, surrounded by fields that soak up the rain like a sponge. The water is soft and low in lime, because it seeps through sandstone rather than limestone.

The climate is mild and wet. Rain falls almost every month, and severe frost stays rare, since the Gulf Stream warms the coast. For farming in Fife, that means good soils for barley and wheat. This grain becomes the base alcohol of the major distilleries.

Before gin goes into the bottle, it's cut down from strong spirit to drinking strength, usually to just under 40 to 44 percent alcohol by volume. That requires soft water low in minerals. Otherwise, the gin clouds up or tastes harsh. The gentle, low-lime water of the Lowlands is considered well suited in the industry for this final step.

For many decades, Edinburgh drew its drinking water from reservoirs in the Pentland Hills south of the city. It's the same range of hills where juniper and heather also grow. Water and botanicals thus come, at least for the city distillery, from the same small landscape.

On the open land around Cameronbridge, rainwater first collects in shallow ditches before flowing into the surrounding streams. This closeness of field and waterway is part of the whole region's character.

As still as the water here may seem, it has a precise say in the end over whether a gin stays clear or turns cloudy once cut to drinking strength.