When it comes to premium spirits, image is almost everything. So much is lavished on presenting the brand in the best light, the substance inside is almost forgotten especially with white spirits. After all, who thinks of the ingredients when contemplating an expensively-packaged vodka? No one, except perhaps the Stirling brothers from Angus.
They grew up on Arbikie - a 2000 acre farm overlooking Lunan Bay near Montrose, where their parents are third generation farmers growing wheat, barley and potatoes. There is no obvious connection to drink, and if you were to stare out at the fields and see them transformed into bottles of gin, whisky and vodka, people would question your sanity, or assume you had hit the bottle yourself.
Yet that's effectively what happened at Arbikie - Scotland's newest 'farm to bottle' distillery and the first to produce an ultra premium potato vodka. At £42 a pop, the humble tattie has never looked so posh. It sure beats the current farm-gate price for spuds which equates to about 11p a kilo.
"It's obviously more complex and costly to distil potato vodka, but it's worth it," says Iain Stirling who reckons you get a much smoother texture than with typical grain vodka. While the Arbikie whisky must mature for its statutory three years, a wheat-based gin is coming soon. With so many boutique gins around, they were probably wise to start with vodka in their gleaming new distillery housed in an old milking shed.
Using four kilos per bottle, the spuds are boiled, cooled and fermented into a gloopy potato wine that is then triple-distilled by Arbikie's master distiller Kirsty Black before being diluted to bottling strength with local spring water. Among their latest customers is Harrods. "They recognised the quality of the product and the single estate ethos behind it," says Iain.
You can just imagine Angus farmers eyeing their land with renewed interest, yet before they plunge in and hire a distiller and make what is clearly a huge investment, they should pause for breath. Making the stuff is one thing, selling it is another and here the Stirlings have form. Iain worked for the drinks giant Diageo while his elder brother David runs his own travel business in New York where he co-owns a bar. Arbikie also has form with a recently discovered map showing an illicit 18th century still, though it probably wasn't distilling potatoes.
Torres Sangre de Toro £7.99 Tesco, Asda, Waitrose (13.5%)
Spain's 'bull's blood' has just turned 60, and with its soft bramble and black cherry flavours, seems to have got better with age.
Janeil Syrah Grenache 2012 £8.25 Oddbins (13%)
A succulent blend from the French Pyrenees, with syrah providing sweet spice to complement the dense, red fruit of grenache.
Lothian Riesling 2012 £10 Oddbins (13.5%)
There's a real purity to this South African riesling from the cool, Elgin highlands with its nutty, pear-like flavour and dry, minerally finish.
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