Edinburgh’s gin story is both old and new simultaneously. The city has been distilling spirits since the eighteenth century, when the Edinburgh Gin Act of 1736 tried and failed to suppress the trade. The craft gin movement of the last fifteen years has reinvigorated that tradition with new producers, new botanicals and a bar scene that takes gin as seriously as Edinburgh has always taken whisky.
Edinburgh Gin
Edinburgh Gin – the brand, not the general category – was founded in 2010 and operates a distillery on Rutland Place near the West End. The visitor centre and bar is worth visiting for the tutored tasting, which covers the house range including the seasonal expressions that use Scottish botanicals like meadowsweet, pine and heather. Edinburgh Gin Cannonball is the higher-ABV expression that has become the house pour in a significant number of Edinburgh bars. The Christmas gin expressions, released annually, sell out reliably.
NB Gin
North Berwick Gin – NB Gin – was founded in 2013 in North Berwick on the East Lothian coast, close enough to Edinburgh to count in the city’s gin geography. The approach was London Dry in style but Scottish in character – juniper-forward, clean and precise. NB Gin became one of the benchmark Edinburgh-area gins and is now stocked widely across the city’s bars.
Rock Rose Gin
Rock Rose is made in Dunnet Bay in Caithness in the far north of Scotland, which is technically beyond Edinburgh’s immediate geography, but its distribution through Edinburgh’s bars has made it part of the city’s gin story. The pink peppercorn and rose petal expression is the one that drew attention. The gin uses locally foraged botanicals from the Caithness landscape and the sense of place in the flavour is real rather than marketing.
Rose Street
Rose Street – the pedestrian lane running between Princes Street and George Street through the New Town – has historically been Edinburgh’s pub crawl street and remains so in the gin age. The gin bar offer on and around Rose Street includes Badger & Co, the Heads & Tales bar at the Dunstane Houses hotel, and several bars that have replaced their traditional Scottish ale selections with gin lists of considerable ambition. Walking Rose Street on a Friday evening in the direction of gin is a specific Edinburgh experience with a long tradition behind it.
The Gin Triangle
Edinburgh sits within what the drinks press calls the Scottish Gin Triangle – along with Glasgow and Speyside – that produces a disproportionate share of Britain’s independent gin. The concentration of distilleries, the quality of the local water, the access to Scottish botanicals and the tourist infrastructure that supports distillery visits has made this part of Scotland one of the most interesting places in the world to drink gin in 2026.
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