A Traveller’s Edition bottling of Gordon’s Yellow Label Gin, with a rather handsomely designed label. Bottled at a higher ABV than your standard Gordon’s London Dry Gin, the Yellow Label expression is more commonly found in Mainland Europe.

Trendy younger sibling to Bombay Original, on whose recipe it is based (with a couple of extra botanicals). Credited with kickstarting gin’s fashionability since its launch in 1987, Bombay Sapphire has become a truly iconic brand, with its distinctive blue bottle recognisable in bars the world over.

Created at the Bruichladdich distillery, this superb Islay gin was distilled in the ‘ugly betty’ still described as “an oversized upside-down dustbin made of copper” by Tom Morton. Perhaps the best looking packaging we’ve ever seen for a gin – it’s not all style and no substance either. This is a world-class gin, at a proper ABV.

A huge 31 botanicals go into The Botanist, including some native to Islay. The full list of botanicals is as follows: angelica root, apple mint, birch leaves, bog myrtle leaves, cassia bark, chamomile, cinnamon bark, coriander seed, creeping thistle flowers, elder flowers, gorse flowers, heather flowers, hawthorn flowers, juniper berries, lady’s bedstraw flowers, lemon balm, lemon peel, liquorice root, meadow sweet, orange peel, oris root, peppermint leaves, mugwort leaves, red clover flowers, tansy, thyme leaves, water mint leaves, white clover, wood sage leaves. Phew!