New wine flavour created from gorse bushes

A TAYSIDE wine-maker hopes his unusual new recipe will prove to be a whin-win situation.

Amid fears that this year’s berry harvest might not be as fruitful as usual, b o ss e s a t the Cairn O’Mohr Winery were forced to come up with some new ideas for flavours.

And the solution was right on their doorstep.

Workers geared up with welders’ gloves and got stuck i n to the prickly gorse bushes that grow wild around their Errol base.

They are using the yellow whin flowers from the bushes for a new batch of wines which are expected to be brought to the market next year.

Winery co-founder Ron Gillies said: “We always try to experiment with different ingredients, ever since we started about 35 years ago.

“This is something quite new for us and it’s a brilliant resource.

“They have this very powerful aroma, l i ke coconut honey, but they taste like bananas.

“T h e r e ’s d e f i n i t e l y something tropical about them.

“We made a small batch to try it out and it went down well.

“It might take a while for folk to get used to the taste but I think people are more willing to try new things these days.

The idea was sparked by concerns about pickers not being able to come to Scotland to work on fruit farms.

Ron said his staff were used to dealing with gorse, because the elderberries they regularly use sometimes grow among the bush.

“It can be jaggy but we often f i n d o u r s e lv e s climbing in and out of the gorse,” he said.

“In my experience, you just get stuck in and keep moving forward.

“If you stop or try to go back, t hen you’re in trouble.”

Ron has warned it could take a year for the whin wines to be ready for the market.

“People will have to be patient,” he said.

“But we hope they’ll find it’s worth the wait.”

AN award-winning games developer from Abertay University has designed a unique videogame aimed at improving speech therapy for adults.

Student Jamie Bankhead, pictured with colleague Connie Reid, has already enjoyed success with the company Konglomerate Games, which created a ground-breaking videogame to help children with cystic fibrosis do breathing exercises.

Archipelayo is currently being medically tested at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

A FORMER guesthouse near Arbroath is set to be turned into a family home after plans were approved by Angus Council.

An application was submitted to the local authority in February to convert the Colliston Inn, which lies roughly 10 minutes outside the town, into a residential property.

Under the approved proposals, the property will be “stripped back” to its Georgian footprint by removing later architectural additions, including a flat above the kitchen and public areas.

This will enable the property to be a “logical” size to be converted into a family house as the existing building is too large to be a single home.

Also included in the application are plans to build three new properties within the grounds, each with private rear gardens positioned in such a way as to “minimise overlooking and create privacy”, as well as both a garage and on-site parking.

The application stated that the building has been on the market since January last year but according to the owners there has been no interest – despite the asking price being reduced to £440,000.

A supporting document said the inn was bought in 2009 from the Scott family, whose business had gone into liquidation.

Despite efforts by the new owners to run the inn as a pub, the community was “not supportive in sufficient numbers” to make it worthwhile keeping the bar open.

New drink-driving laws introduced in 2014 which limited alcohol consumption to virtually zero