I meet three women who have overcome many challenges to produce a multi-award winning gin whose provenance is intrinsically entwined with their island home.
The Lussa Gin team, from left, Claire, Georgina and Alicia
Another week another new craft gin. That’s the way it can sometimes seem since distillation laws were first relaxed a few years ago. So a gin needs to have something a bit different about it to make us sit up and take notice. Take three women in their 40s living 25 miles up a single-track road, add one ten-litre still, and a crystal clear spring amid acres of peat. Stir in 15 locally sourced botanicals and you have that essential difference.
Lussa Gin is the brainchild of Claire Fletcher, Georgina Kitching and Alicia MacInnes who together make up ten per cent of the tiny community of Lussa, reached after a tortuous hour or more’s drive via the potholes of the only road on the Hebridean island of Jura. The trio decided in 2015 to pool their “complementary skill sets” in a way that could secure them all an independent income as their children advanced through school.
But to suggest that it’s just the corporate structure that sets Lussa apart from other gins would be to ignore what makes it so special: this is truly a spirit that has evolved from the very landscape in which it was conceived. “We are self-sufficient in 11 out of the 15 botanicals we use,” says co-founder Georgina Kitching, the former science teacher who’s the one who looks after the techy side of the business, such as calculating the alcohol content and complying with the many regulations.
Some of the botanicals, such as elderflower, honeysuckle and water mint grow wild on this favoured eastern shore of an island, where deer outnumber humans by 30 to one. Today, our task is to join Georgina on a short sea voyage in pursuit of sea lettuce, which infuses into the gin a subtle hint of the moist and misty isle. It’s high tide and this lush green leafy seaweed can be lifted from close to the seabed with the aid of long boat hook. After no more than half an hour, we’ve filled Georgina’s plastic bucket. “That’s enough for 11 batches of gin,” says Claire later. “Nearly 5,000 bottles!”
Georgina with our sea lettuce “catch”
Or half a year’s production, I reflect, while noting that not all of those magic ingredients are as easy to come by. The tender Spring needles of Scots pine, for example, can be quite high off the ground and bog myrtle initially demanded foraging in the wilderness boglands, where few plants can gain a foothold on the thin soils that survive in places on the dense and impermeable quartzite rock. “We didn’t feel comfortable tramping through a bog that’s next to a Site of Special Scientific Interest,” says Georgina, who planted some water mint in her garden, only to find it had migrated into the nearby polytunnel in search of greater comfort.
The ethos of the team is guiding them, eventually, to be self-sufficient in all botanicals. Rosehips and the ubiquitous ground alder also grow wild, while the flowers from the lime trees in the grounds of Ardlussa House are plucked each Spring. It helps that Claire’s husband Andy owns the extensive Ardlussa estate and the stable block that houses the two custom-made 200-litre Portuguese stills. The estate is one of seven on the island and runs to about 16,000 acres – of which only about 35 are cultivable. The neighbouring estate belongs to Andy’s uncle and includes the remote croft near the northern tip of the island, where George Orwell wrote 1984.
Coriander is grown for its seed in polytunnels at Lussa and also by members of the island’s plant swap, and all the ingredients freeze well. Orris root and roses (for petals) grow in the garden, while the team has embarked on an ambitious programme of juniper plantation with the ultimate aim that it meet all their needs. One potential botanical was the beautiful sea pink flower that illuminates the rocky shoreline – although harvesting it would have been sustainable, they couldn’t bring themselves to pick it. Lemon balm and lemon thyme are grown in the garden in its absence.
“It’s a combination of cultivated and wild botanicals,” says Georgina. “A bit like our lives here! Both Ali and I used to work for Claire at various times on the estate, and Claire used to do the childcare for me when I was teaching.” Georgina was raised in Melton Mowbray and says she still makes a mean pork pie; Claire, who looks after the marketing, used to work for Radio 1 and first arrived on Jura to shoot a video with the band KLF, which later notoriously set fire to £1 million on the island. Alicia, originally from Perth, Australia, met her partner while she was working at the Jura pub and he worked on the Ardlussa estate. She looks after the financial side and is up to her eyes in VAT during my visit. “We are all quite different, the three of us, because we have quite different skills and backgrounds and that’s been a great strength as we all approach problems in different ways and so make fewer mistakes,” says Georgina.
The women do not see themselves in competition with other distillers and say they received much support from the team that produces The Botanist gin on neighbouring Islay. They frequently compare notes with colleagues at the Jura whisky distillery and welcome the arrival of Deer Island, a craft producer of spiced rum. Their own gin evolved over a year of testing about 70 different recipes. Eventually they hired the village hall in the main settlement of Craighouse and trialled a shortlist of just three different
The road less travelled
gins with most of the island’s population.
“They chose our own favourite by a big margin!” says Georgina, who adds that they’ve also been helped by the praiseworthy flexibility and patience of their haulier, Waltons, of Oban.
About 75 per cent of their market is in direct sales to smaller outlets and consumers and they have deliberately turned down approaches from two supermarket chains as they fear such supply pressures could only compromise their slow and gentle production methods, heating their stills indirectly using a hot water system they designed themselves. “It’s a passion for us,” says Georgina.
Lussa also exports to Sweden and Germany, though Brexit has presented huge challenges and vastly increased paperwork, such that they had to find a new haulier for Germany. More recently they had their first significant order from the USA, necessitating a new bottle size and a raft of paperwork to comply with American food and drink regulations. Prices of cardboard packing trebled during the COVID pandemic and demand for glass for vaccine vials also sent bottle prices soaring. But, says Georgina: “We are quite resolute and resourceful here and we do find a way.”
Dear on Jura vastly outnumber humans
Lussa is pretty much a one-product company, though each year the team s batch of bramble liqueur in time for Christmas, leaving the small and distinctive local fruit in a tank with gin and sugar for eight weeks.
Meanwhile, Claire and Georgina’s children are showing signs that they too have the entrepreneurial spirit: each weekend they bake cakes and then leave them with tea, coffee, hot water and an honesty box in a horsebox parked in Inverlussa Bay, before the long daily drive to school on Islay. It’s called Tea on the Beach and “saves us paying them pocket money!” jokes Georgina.
- A version of this post was first published in Scottish Farmer.
- www.lussagin.com
Travel tips
⛴ If you want to take your car to Jura, then you’ll need to travel via Islay, taking the Caledonian MacBrayne ferry from Kennacraig, on the Kintyre peninsula, to either Port Ellen or Port Askaig. The short ferry across the narrows to Islay runs from Port Askaig.
The Jura Passenger Ferry is a community-owned business, running a fast catamaran up to four times daily, except Tuesday, from Tayvallich, on the mainland, direct to Craighhouse.
🛌 We stayed at the Jura Hotel, a marvellous family-run business, which also serves great food and offers a cosy bar, as well as a quiet sitting room from which to contemplate the scenery.
A variety of self-catering and other accommodation is also available on the Ardlussa Estate.
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