St Andrews distiller reveals new visitor experience and festive gins
A NEW visitor experience designed to “bring a unique blending experience to the home of golf” has been created by St Andrews-based craft distiller, Eden Mill.
Blendworks, located in what is described as a specially-designed spirits emporium at the Macdonald Rusacks Hotel in St Andrews, will see Eden Mill offer visitors a two and a half-hour “multi-sensory journey into the world of blending” – and give them the chance to create their own spirit.
The Blendworks gin experience will run twice a day, with tickets costing £95. Each ticket will include a gift pack containing three 20cl bottles of the gin, Eden Mill Blendworks glasses and a certificate; guests will also receive three cocktails during the session – two of which will be crafted from their own gin recipe.
We decided to go a step beyond and offer a unique, Scottish experience.
The new visitor attraction represents a £150,000 investment from Eden Mill and comes at a time of double-digit growth in the number of North American visitors to Scotland.
Its Old Course location is said to have already caused a stir – attracting various sporting greats, including Sir Ian Botham, Fraser Brown, Jonny Gray and Stuart Hogg – who all attended an exclusive Blendworks preview event.
Eden Mill aims to attract 2500 visitors within the first six months with the new experience.
Paul Miller, co-founder of Eden Mill, explained that the team at the distillery “love to share our passion with our visitors”, adding that they “decided to go a step beyond and offer a unique, luxury Scottish experience in line with the Eden Mill brand ethos of consistent innovation”.
“Blendworks offers a really personal experience whilst also paying homage to local traditions and produce – from the distilling techniques used to the botanicals that we painstakingly source,” he said.
“How people socialise is changing – we’re seeing groups come to the distillery to rediscover their local area and share their experiences on social media, for example.”
Eden Mill is hoping to attract 2500 visitors within the first six months.
Plans to extend the experience to include whisky blending are in place for later in the year.
In the meantime, Eden Mill has Christmas firmly in its sights with the launch of its annual 12 Gins of Christmas gift set.
Having doubled production in response to growing demand, this year’s 12 miniature expressions are said to have been handpicked from a number of recipes trialed and created on site.
Its Original Gin, Love Gin and Golf Gin are joined by festive varieties like Mulled Gin, Orange and Clove Gin and After Dinner Gin.
Miller said the 12 Gins of Christmas “truly has been a labour of love from our entire team, who’ve worked tirelessly over the past year to bring the ultimate Christmas-inspired gins to fruition”.
