English firm behind King William Gin surprised by how popular it's become in Scotland and Northern Ireland

In the year since London-based drinks distributor, Matthew Maslin, decided to
create a premium London Dry gin for the UK market which paid homage to King William III in England and II in Scotland, the brand said that they have been surprised to see the product go on to become one of the fastest-growing gins in both Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Recently reaching Amazon’s top 20 best-selling gins list, the gin was created to celebrate the fact that King William's Act of Parliament in 1690 "ultimately led to the gin craze" the UK is experiencing today.

MD of Gravity Drinks, Matthew Maslin said: “When King William ascended to the throne in 1689, one of the first things he wanted to do was to raise money for future wars against the French and other European powers.

"And the way he did that was by liberalising the distillation of gin in 1690 - which meant farmers grew more crops, which could be taxed, and so they raised more capital.

“Naturally, with King William being such a prominent figure in the world of gin, we thought someone must have done a King William gin because it’s such an obvious thing to do. But we did a check of the records and nothing was there.

"So, we registered the trademark and developed the brand.”

Maslin explained that though he expected it do well in the London market, he was not expecting it to go down as well as it has north of the border, he said: “When we released the original bottle in London last year it did well across the UK, but it really lit up North of the border in and we were thinking ‘hello, what’s going on here?’

"We’ve since had a lot of positive feedback on our gin from areas within Scotland and Northern Ireland and are fully expecting King William to making an appearance on plenty of other shores around the globe very soon!”

Distilled five times for "exceptional purity", the gin is made using carefully selected botanicals including orange peel, coriander, angelica, lime, cassia and nutmeg to create a "fresh, vibrant spirit" that is "bursting with plenty of orange citrus notes".

The news comes after the launch of the similarly named King Billy Gin by a distillery in Hull.