The Best Visitor attraction in Edinburgh, The Lothians and Borders has a brand new shop!

“If you can’t find what you want, make it yourself” was the mantra and sense of determination that led Marcus and Matt to build their very own distillery in Edinburgh’s old Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. Unbeknown to them, they were creating what would become one of Scotland’s most unique distilleries. Which, we’re excited to announce, has been awarded Best Visitor Attraction in Edinburgh, the Lothians and Borders at Visit Scotland’s prestigious Thistle Awards.

Being recognised and recommended by Visit Scotland as the Best Visitor Attraction fills us up with pride, especially as Edinburgh is second only to London with its number of international visitors, with over 3.85m curious travellers attracted to our city’s world class museums, theatres, festivals, history and hospitality every year. Once attached to a public vet surgery (later renovated into a pub), our distillery has been welcoming the intrepid and the thirsty for tours since the early days of 2014. Now, our small distillery welcomes up to 300 visitors per week. Not bad for 400 square feet.

This summer, in order to continue improving our visitor experience, we decided to build ourselves a brand new shop and tasting room in the distillery. This means our lovely tour guides Jenny and Victoria (that’s them in the picture) can spend more time with our guests in between important distillery business and keep our shop open for longer.

Visitors to Summerhall Distillery get to see first-hand how we distil, bottle, label and wax our award-winning gin range by hand. At just £10pp each guest enjoys a complimentary welcome P&T, a full guided tour of the distillery and samples of the Pickering’s Gin range to finish. Our distillery shop is open Monday- Sunday 10am- 5pm if you just fancy some baubles, a bottle, a sample or even just a chat.