LOCH Ness Spirits was set up in 2016 by Lorien Cameron Ross and her husband. Their gin uses juniper hand-picked from around their 500-year-old ancestral home and water from the famous loch.
Name: Lorien Cameron Ross
Position: Founder
WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS CALLED?
Loch Ness Spirits.
WHERE IS IT BASED?
Loch Ness.
WHY DID YOU SET UP THE BUSINESS?
I WORK as a doctor – it was originally my day job and is now my night job. My husband was a detective and we have no business background. We were looking for something to do together at home that was quite creative. We wanted to use what was around us – we are surrounded on the estate by juniper and botanicals. We went on a gin tour in 2015 and people were talking about juniper being brought in from overseas because of shortage. I had the idea to pick juniper and sell it to gin companies but realised it takes about four hours to pick and then you have to dry it. There’s no business sense in that. We laughed about it and decided to make our own gin.
Since the gin is from Loch Ness we could have had a tartan bottle and a picture of Nessie on the front but we didn’t go down that route. We wanted something the locals aren’t embarrassed to buy.
Our first batch sold out in hours and the second batch sold out in a week or so. We only make 2000 bottles a year so you won’t find it everywhere.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT FROM COMPETING BUSINESSES?
WHEN we launched we were more different – we were one of the only gins using our own botanicals on our own land. Using 100% of your own botanicals was rare at the time and is still quite rare now. We are probably less unique now. We are smaller than most – we now have a 500 litre still, before that we only had 250l ones. No one else uses juniper or water from Loch Ness and that’s really special. We were the first place in Scotland to make absinthe with Scottish wormwood. There’s one other absinthe in Scotland but the wormwood it is made with isn’t from here. We also have an augmented reality smartphone app where you can see the legend story of the spirit.
WHAT IS YOUR TARGET MARKET?
WE have never tried to box it in too much. We thought because it is expensive it would appeal to someone who likes a high-quality product. We’re authentic – the gin really does represent Loch Ness as it has water and botanicals picked there. If you call us you will speak to the distiller – there’s no one in between. We have young people who don’t have huge incomes buying for their parents and grandparents buying it with their pension. We retail in Harvey Nichols. Spending £45 on a bottle of gin is an investment.
WHAT DO YOU ENJOY MOST ABOUT RUNNING THE BUSINESS?
IT’S fun, especially in balance to my day job as a doctor. The gin makes people smile and it isn’t a chore to sell. It’s competitive but people like gin, there’s no chore involved in buying it. It is interesting to meet brand designers, accountants and chemists from different backgrounds. We don’t call them competition, we call them our gin cousins. It is really exciting to run a business in Scotland at the moment – Scottish food and drink has so much support. I don’t think even England or other countries get this.
WHERE DO YOU HOPE THE BUSINESS WILL BE IN 10 YEARS’ TIME?
I’M hoping we will still be on the banks of Loch Ness. We have people who buy the same numbers of each batch when it comes out. I don’t think other companies have that. I hope we will be on more shelves in bars and stores. I want our “squiggle” logo to be recognised and to be the equivalent of McDonald’s arches. For us it is about the whole experience and connecting people to our area – my family has been in Loch Ness for 500 years. Provenance and authenticity is important. Brexit is a big concern for us. Even in our tininess, our bottles come from Europe and our only member of staff is from Poland. We are expecting price rises for the bottles. When the settlement fee for EU nationals came up we said we would pay. Even having that conversation made him feel he was valued. We have also held off exporting. It has had a huge impact on a little company so I can only imagine the impact it will have on a big company. Most get corks and glass from overseas.
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