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Little Brown Dog Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin
You already know Little Brown Dog for their whisky. This is what happened when they turned the same obsessive standards on gin: a spirit built around botanicals foraged, grown, and gathered in Aberdeenshire, distilled on their own farm, and bottled at a confident 43% ABV. The working title during development was "Another F***ing Gin," a joke at the expense of a crowded category, and the finished spirit is the punchline: it is nothing like the rest of the shelf.
Where most gin brands guard their recipe like a state secret, Little Brown Dog publishes theirs. Every botanical is disclosed along with where it came from, and foraged ingredients are geotagged with what3words locations: the "Scan Yer Dram" QR code on the label shows you the actual patch of Aberdeenshire your gin grew in. It has taken podium finishes at the Scottish Gin Awards, the Gin Cooperative Awards, and the World Gin Awards along the way. This release arrives in Little Brown Dog's new label, redesigned to echo their Aberdeenshire Single Malt look. The liquid stays exactly the same; the new design simply gives the story more room.
About Little Brown Dog
Little Brown Dog Spirits was founded in 2018 by Andrew Smith, a vet and whisky obsessive, and Chris Reid, a farmer, in rural Aberdeenshire. The name belongs to Andrew's dog, who has accompanied him to tastings and distillery visits for years. From an on-farm micro distillery at Fetternear, they distill, blend, and bottle a small range of whiskies, gin, and rum under a philosophy they call traditionally unconventional.
Their defining trait is radical transparency: methods, ingredient origins, and batch data are published rather than hidden, and Scottish whisky-making discipline is applied to everything they touch. The Whiskey Lab already imports six of their whiskies. This gin completes the picture: the same hands, the same standards, a different still run.
Botanicals, fully disclosed
Little Brown Dog forages what they can, grows what they cannot forage, and buys only what would be unsustainable to source locally. The published bill:
- Foraged and grown in Aberdeenshire: birch sap, wood sorrel, beech leaves, rhubarb, parsnip, and a share of the juniper.
- Purchased where it must be: juniper (Italy), coriander (France), angelica root (Belgium), orris root (Italy), bee pollen (France, transitioning to local hives), plus fresh lemon and grapefruit.
- Gathering a year's botanicals takes a full year of foraging and growing. This is not a flavoring exercise, it is agriculture.
Distillation & strength
Distilled in a modified 350-litre direct-fired copper pot still on the farm at Fetternear. Dry botanicals steep in the base spirit overnight, roughly twelve hours, before fresh botanicals go into custom copper baskets hung in the neck of the still, where rising vapour slowly pulls out their oils.
The spirit run takes nine hours, unhurried by any measure, and the gin then rests for six weeks before bottling, a patience borrowed straight from whisky making.
The gin's silky texture is engineered, not accidental: it comes from the distillation technique, the botanical load, and a very slow dilution down to bottling strength. Bottled at 43% ABV, above the 40% default, so the botanicals stay vivid neat, over ice, or in a proper G&T.
On Tasting Notes
You will not find tasting notes here. By design.
The Whiskey Lab's position is simple: we will tell you everything about how a spirit was made, and nothing about what you are supposed to taste. Little Brown Dog makes that easy, because they disclose more than almost anyone: every botanical, its origin down to a map reference, the still, the steep, the run time, the rest. Everything that makes the liquid what it is. What remains is the experience of drinking it, and that belongs to you.
Tasting notes shape expectation. They tell you what you should find before you find it. A gin gathered from one corner of Aberdeenshire deserves better than a borrowed vocabulary. Pour it neat first, before the tonic. Take your time. The still did.
| Specification | Details |
|---|---|
| Brand | Little Brown Dog Spirits |
| Product | Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin |
| Style | Scottish gin, foraged botanicals |
| Origin | Fetternear, Aberdeenshire, Scotland (distilled on the farm) |
| Botanicals | Juniper, coriander, angelica root, orris root, birch sap, wood sorrel, beech leaves, rhubarb, parsnip, bee pollen, lemon, grapefruit (all origins disclosed) |
| Still | Modified 350-litre direct-fired copper pot still with custom botanical baskets |
| ABV | 43% |
| Volume | 700ml |
| Production | Small batch: overnight steep, nine-hour spirit run, very slow dilution, six weeks resting (a full year start to finish) |
| Label | New design echoing the Aberdeenshire Single Malt look; same liquid as the award-winning original |
| Availability | Open release |
The Whiskey Lab's Quality Commitments
- Small Batch: Ensuring a unique profile for each release.
- Full Transparency: Every botanical and its origin disclosed, down to a map reference.
- Honest Storytelling: Every profile written by people who actually handled the liquid.
