‘We were determined to be useful’
Marian Bruce, 53, lives in Perthshire.
When our children were little, my husband, Simon, and I bought a farm near the market town of Alyth, between the Highlands and Lowlands of Scotland. With seven acres, we spent the next 12 years rewilding what had been a sheep and cattle farm.
We planted native trees, an orchard, added a pond and wild flower meadows. Birch and elderflower grew abundantly, so we started distilling our first Wild Scottish Spirits. We launched in October 2018 and soon added Wild Scottish Liqueurs to our range. We had hundreds of events booked for this year to showcase our products, but everything was cancelled when the lockdown came into force.
We were determined to be useful as the pandemic took hold. To distil our spirit requires ethanol, the principal ingredient in all alcoholic beverages. As the need for hand sanitiser grew and we had the main ingredient in stock, we learned how to make alcoholbased hand sanitiser, adhering to the World Health Organization official recipe. There was a lot to learn, not just in making the product but bottling and labelling, and it took us a few weeks to sort the paperwork. The price of hand sanitiser has rocketed, which means there are people on the front line who can’t get hold of any.
We have been dropping off free bottles at health centres, care homes, food banks and a children’s hospice – wherever vulnerable people need it. The future of our business may be uncertain, but we’re not the only ones. We want to do what we can to help because it’s good to put goodness out into the world.
‘We’ve been dropping off bottles to the vulnerable’