Scottish Gin Awards: Edinburgh distillers among this year's big winners

Edinburgh Gin was both the Growth Business and Innovation of the year categories.

More than 600 people travelled to the Double Tree By Hilton in Glasgow, to celebrate Scotland’s gin industry and to discover who the winners were across 18 categories including Taste and Business awards.

In pictures: The Scottish Gin Awards winners

Edinburgh Gin took the title for Growth Business and Innovation of the Year for Edinburgh Gin 1670, a collaboration with the capital's Royal Botanic Gardens.They also won silver and bronze taste medals for their Cannonball Navy Strength gin and their Pomegranate and Rose liqueur.

Electric Sprirt Co. won the Excellence in Branding category

In the taste sessions, 80 gins progressed to the finals from a field of 116 after a blind tasting, with the top three performers awarded gold, silver and bronze medals in each of six categories.

Leith-based Electric Spirit Co. also bagged a major title for Excellence in Branding at the awards.

This year, there was a 53% increase in the number of gins entered in the competition compared to last year.

The awards, which are now a firm fixture in the spirits sector in Scotland, also raised funds for Edinburgh based charity, It’s Good 2 Give, which last year opened a world class respite home named The Ripple Retreat in the Trossachs for families who have children with cancer.

Chairman of the judging panel, Alex Bruce, managing director of Adelphi Distillery, congratulated all of the award winners before adding: “The Scottish gin sector can be very proud. These medals will help retain our precious reputation as a global centre in the production of high-quality spirits.

"With a phenomenal 80 Scottish gins in the finals and 18 taste medal winners presented, the results will provide winning distilleries with a real boost in advance of the busy Christmas season. For the discerning gin drinker, these awards provide welcome guidance when choosing from the large range of Scottish gin now on the market.”

The most anticipated award of the night, the title of Scottish Gin Distillery of the Year, was presented to Isle of Harris Distillers whose mission to create a “social distillery” bringing jobs and increasing tourism to the island was praised by the judging panel.

St Andrews-based Eden Mill, who won the most awards with five in total, took home the coveted taste award, the Gin of the Year.

Eden Mill’s Original Gin triumphed in the highly competitive London Dry gin category, fending off 30 other gins before going on to win the judges’ prize for best gin in the overall competition.