Scotland’s Year of Stories provided the inspiration for a new gin created by Isle of Cumbrae Distillers, who create award-winning gins and offer tours of their distillery in Millport. The all-female distilling team decided to produce a new gin – Maura – an ancient Celtic name meaning ‘Star of the Sea’. The gin celebrates Scotland's women, who helped shape its history, legends and stories of the sea and the bottle features a specially designed label by Scottish painter Hope Blamire.
The Scotch Whisky Experience on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile also chose to align their activity with the Themed Year, using the campaign hashtags alongside their own #collectionchronicles social posts which highlighted a different story each week about one of the bottles in their whisky collection. Year of Stories was also a good match for their Tasting Tales events, which include stories about Scotch, the distilleries and the Scottish food to which they match the whiskies.
In November, Rosslyn Chapel launched an initiative which asked visitors from around the world to share a story about the attraction, as part of Scotland’s Year of Stories 2022. The chapel, which was founded in 1446, has featured in a number of stories, most notably Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, but it has attracted visitors for generations, many of whom have recorded their stories in travel journals. Inspired by the Themed Year, this new project aims to add stories and memories from more recent visitors.