Elderberry Eau de Vie 2024

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, it had to be something truly extraordinary, the most complex Eau de Vie we have ever released.

In 2024 we worked with elderberries for the first time in seven years; the last time nine of us had picked fruit for an entire day to yield just 9 × 375ml bottles…

And so, in partnership with our friends who grow elderflower less than 30 miles form the distillery, we allowed 2,000kg of fruit to ripen to perfection. Every single berry was hand sorted, destemmed and went through a slow 5 ½ week wild fermentation. Distillation was with baited breath. The result was just 16 litres of spirit from 2,000kg fruit, capturing the essence of 120kg fruit in each litre. Diluted it is a mere 62kg per litre…

To work to such extremes is both a folly financially and in terms of risk. However, as I sat monastic in that distillery, everything made sense. As each flavour came over sequentially I travelled through an entire woodland, from canopy, blossom, bark, wood, leaf, soil, life and decay. As they collected and rebuilt the fruit in that container before me I was awed at how complex something could be and yet how incredibly elegant and balanced the result - something far beyond something we could create with our own intellect, millions of years of evolution laid before me.

“I have been flung to every corner of the world... to taste some of its most revered and culturally important spirits. And yet, here I was... having one of the most revelatory experiences of my career. ”

Millie Milliken, Esteemed Drinks Journalist