Jura Chemistry

Three women from very different backgrounds were drawn to the island – and have distilled their wisdom into gin

- Euan Duguid

 LUSSA Gin is distilled by three women living at the north end of the Isle of Jura,” says Claire Fletcher, one of that very trio. “It’s zesty and aromatic. We’ve used 15 botanicals from Jura’s coastline, its bogs, hills and woods.” By my reckoning, in among those indigenous ingredients is a potent strain of Jura serendipity. Claire, a former producer for the BBC originally from

London, explains, “I first came to Jura in 1991 as a wired 23-year-old on a random weekend to film a video for a band called The KLF.

“And as much as it was lust at first sight for the local 19-year-old who drove me around the island and later became my husband, it was love at first sight for the island. I’d never been to a landscape so raw and so wild.

“Alicia (MacInnes) is originally from Australia with a head for figures and finance. She came travelling to Scotland just over 10 years ago and met a local Jura boy whom she later married.

“Georgina (Kitching), a science teacher from Dorset, bought a house on Jura after her husband got the job as the High School physics teacher on neighbouring Islay a decade ago.”

The families all settled in Jura’s Lussa Glen, joining the population of circa 200 people and 6000 deer.