How To Make Eau de Vie - A Labour of Love

After many days collecting and preparing the fruit the distillery comes into life - a labour of love to produce the perfect fruit based scottish spirit.

The first step is mashing, taking a 50/50 mix of barley and wheat and soaking in hot water until all the natural sugars are released. We then filter the mash through a lauter tun, to separate the grains for recycling. The liquid from the lauter tun is transferred to fermenters and specially selected yeasts convert the sugars to alcohols. Mashing is a day long process, hard graft and completed 4 times for each batch.

The fermentors are left alone in temperature controlled conditions for just over a week. Each fermentor produces a wonderful smelling liquid, much like a beer and this is where much of the great taste in spirits is formed. When all sugars have been converted to alcohol the still is fired up and hours are spent collecting great tasting alcohol, our base spirit.

The next stage is where the natural fruit flavours are introduced. A carefully selected blend of fruit and spirit is stored for several weeks to extract the maximum fruit flavours. This process gives the spirit it's unique taste.

But, it doesn’t end there . . . Once we are sure we have the extracted all of the juices of the fruit we gently distil one final time to lock in the flavour and produce a clear spirit. The abv% is checked and after a rest we proof it down to what we feel is the ideal strength - 42% abv using the purest water. This is a process that cannot be rushed - the spirit must be rested to marry the flavours for the right length of time.

Never.25 Eau de Vie, a labour of love - a minimum 6 weeks for each batch. Handcraft indeed.