Spring Happenings at Down Hall Hotel, Spa & Estate
As the longer, lighter days begin to set in, let Down Hall Hotel, Spa & Estate put a spring in...
Take a non-alcoholic walk on the wild side with Wild Eve Recipe no 1.
When planning your wedding day celebrations, accommodating your guests' needs is paramount when considering you food and drink offering. From veggies and vegans to the teetotallers - you should ensure you have something for everyone.
Award-winning apothecary and herbalist, Amanda Saurin, is excited to announce the launch of her long anticipated organic botanical infusion drink, Wild Eve Recipe no 1. This innovative, small batch non-alcoholic drink is hand crafted from an exclusive selection of organic flowers, fruits, leaves, and seaweeds, hand foraged on the Isle of Harris, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. The carefully blended botanicals assist to reduce stress, alleviate anxiety, and invite calm through the innate properties of the plants.
Incomparable to anything else on the market, Wild Eve is well thought out, rich and as intense as a really good alcoholic drink. It has heat, length, and real complexity with that moreish desire to keep on sipping. With the most extraordinary set of plants at the team's disposal from mountain, machair meadow and sea, Amanda has used her learning from years of thinking, testing and coming to understand the best ways of extracting flavour, to craft her 'magic in a bottle.' It draws on decades of acquiring plant knowledge, understanding plant medicine and a theory that plants, like essential oils for perfumery, can be categorised into top, middle and base notes to construct something really exciting.
The Nose: These are pleasing but fleeting – Grapefruit is at the forefront giving an instant brightness as Wild Eve is cultivated with only the peel which contains the precious oil and all its key benefits.
The Palate: Then come the middle notes, the heart of the drink – these are the warm, comforting, tastes. The florals of honeysuckle, rose, and chamomile give way to the fruity sloe, then arrives the spicy juniper and the warming oat.
The Base Notes: Finally, the enduring scents and flavours that give the length – the heat of the chipotle, the earthiness of gentian, ashwagandha and bogbean and that little umami pop of the sea that Sugar Kelp always offers.
The Process
The small local team that creates Wild Eve require time, skill, and a vigilant eye to spy the perfect picking stage – often abandoning their work to rush out on a fine day to collect the harvest. The weather on Harris makes the process particularly challenging, the plants are slower to emerge from the cold ground, slower to reach maturity and then much faster to dash to seed.
Besides the challenges, the weather on Harris is enchanting and crucial to the premium finish. The water is amongst the softest in Europe which allows the flavours of the foraged ingredients to develop without interruption. From the wild roses growing on the land to the sugar kelp hand dived in the pristine waters, to the chamomile and oats growing on the croft and the chilli plants that fill the windowsills, each of the botanicals are vital.
Drying the botanicals is a game of cat and mouse – the sudden rain requires quick release pegs to grab seaweeds off the line before dampening and delaying the sugars' defining moments. Some plants require weeks of careful management to bring out the full flavor profile, some need to be cut small by hand to capture the taste, and others need heat or smoke to reveal themselves. Wild Eve is a dance with nature, born out of decades of learning and experience, captured in one wonderful drink.
The extracting processes are slow, gentle, and considered, where each plant is handled carefully and respectfully.
This means Wild Eve will not be found anywhere demanding volume production including large supermarket chains. Instead, Wild Eve is boutique, created in small, sustainable batches, to be purchased directly with the distillers or through carefully selected stores that share their ethos.
Available now at Wild-Eve.com, £32, 50cl.
