The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
On to a whinner:
Cairn O’Mohr’s Ron Gillies shows off the Carse winery’s latest creation, Whin Wine. Made with gorse flowers and with an aroma of coconut and honey, the company hopes to release the wine next year. Picture: Steve MacDougall.
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, bosses at 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 in to the prickly gorse bushes that grow wild around their Errol base.
They are using the bushes’ yellow whin flowers 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, like coconut honey, but they taste like bananas. There’s definitely 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 find ourselves climbing in and out of the gorse,” he said.
Ron has warned that 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.”