The beauty of gin is that it gives license to variety. Beyond juniper, just about any botanical can be macerated and made into this magnificent drink. With this in mind, Tasmania’s Hartshorn Distillery has decided to use (or, rather, ewe-se) distilled sheep’s whey as part of their incredible, experimental new Hartshorn Sheep’s Whey Gin. How experimental is it? Beyond macerating the cheese by-product made famous by Little Miss Muffett, half the native botanicals macerated by Hartshorn here have never been used in any other gin. As with anyone whose created anything good, Hartshorn Distillery’s Head Distiller-Ryan Hartshorn-has held his recipe under wraps. While we don’t know exactly what the ingredients are, we can tell you that the gin has been designed to smell beautiful. To this end the botanicals give off a delicious bouquet of delicate petals and citrus, signing off with the scent of freshly cut hay.
As for the unique (or, rather, ewe-nique) ingredient at the heart of this gin, you can be assured that Hartshorn Distillery knows exactly what they are doing. After all, they were established as an offshoot of the well-awarded Grandvewe dairy farm. If anyone would know their way around good whey, it would be these guys. And when you understand the complex sugars that can be sourced from whey, their wild decision to distill it into gin becomes all the more understandable.
So if ewe fancy an interesting new gin that packs all the flavour of Tasmania, try Hartshorn Distillery’s Sheep Whey Gin! Or if you’re just not a big fan of gin, perhaps their Sheep Whey Vodka is more to your fancy.