About Manchester has to admit that it has never been foraging for the ingredients for Gin before so when an invite to turn up to arrive at Redbank on Saturday morning fell into the email box, it was impossible to refuse.
The event was all part of promoting Caorunn Gin, handcrafted at a working malt whisky distillery in the Scottish Highlands, encouraging people to forage for its ingredients and as we set off with trepidation for the secret location, rumoured to be Rochdale way.
The place, reasons for which we have to keep secret is high above the hills of Rochdale.It is, we are told as we are met by David Winnard, the only place in Greater Manchester that has all five of the unique ingredients that give the gin its distinctive flavour, growing.
David is a life long forager, starting when he was five as his grandmother paid him to find mushrooms.The bug stuck and he has foraged every since, clocking up over 200 species of plant around Greater Manchester and numerous types of mushrooms
The humble blackberry is not one of the ingredients but it does sit proudly on top of the cocktail that Elixr and Lawn Club are both stocking at present Wild Urban Bramble.
There are, says David five hundred and sixty five different types of bramble in the UK, one is unique to Greater Manchester and unsurprisingly it is called the Manchester Bramble.
With the rain coming down and getting ever heavier, we set off for our five unique ingredients, dandelion leaf, cloud blush apple, heather, rowan berries and bog myrtle along the way discovering other everyday ingredients.
The first ingredient is the Dandelion, its roots incidentally can be roasted.It contributes a herbal taste adding a hint of sharpness to the gin.There are two hundred and seventy two species of the gardeners worse friend.
Before the second we encounter the Colt’s Foot, its flowers infused in honey are a handy cough remedy, many of our cough sweets incorporate it and the Mugwort, a plant that stimulates the part of the brain that makes you recall your dreams when made into a tea, iand comes from the same family of plant that is used to distill Absinthe.
The second ingredient is the apple.Caorunn used the Could Blush variety that we would not find in this area.
(Incidentally did you know that a discarded pip can revert to any species of Apple.)
The third ingredient, the Red Rowan Berry, poisonous unless cooked, its Gaelic name gives the gin its brand name.
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It generally grows high up, and it is bad luck to cut them down, the bottom of the berry if you look closely has a pentagram and people often keep them to ward off evil spirits.
The fourth ingredient ling better known as heather which turns the moors purple this time of year and to the fifth, bog myrtle a deciduous shrub fairly rare around Manchester, it has been used for centuries for infusing its flavour and was a precursor to hops in the brewing in beer.When not used to infuse a spicy aroma in gin, it can be found in many brands of insect repellent.
It had stopped raining once we had found the five, but rain is good for foraging, especially when looking for mushrooms.
With foraged ingredients becoming increasing the plat de jour, we think that Scottish Highlands Caorunn will become an increasingly popular drink.
