Bottoms up! S. African gin infused with elephant dung
MOSSEL BAY, South Africa — The makers of a South African gin infused with elephant dung swear their use of the animal's excrement is no gimmick.
Les and Paula Ansley, the creators of Indlovu Gin, stumbled across the idea a year ago after learning that elephants eat a variety of fruits and flowers and yet digest less than a third of it.
“As a consequence, in the elephant dung, you get the most amazing variety of these botanicals,” Les Ansley said during a recent visit to their operations. “Why don't we let the elephants do the hard work of collecting all these botanicals and we will make gin from it?” he recalled his wife suggesting.
Her idea came after a safari during which a wildlife ranger described an elephant's digestive process.
The first batch of elephant dung came by mail from the park where they had taken their safari. Then the couple, both scientists, puzzled for a while before working out the gin-making process.
Now they collect the dung themselves. They described the gin’s flavor as “lovely, wooded, almost spicy, earthy” and one that changes subtly with the seasons and location.
The gin bottles are marked with the date and coordinates of where the elephant dung was collected. “So, you’re able to compare almost different vintages of the gin,” Ansley said.
After about five sizable bags of dung are collected for a batch of 3,000 to 4,000 bottles of the gin, the droppings are dried and crumbled, then washed to remove dirt and sand. Eventually only the remains of the fruits, flowers, leaves and bark eaten by the elephants are left behind.
Those botanicals are then sterilized and dried again and placed in an airing cupboard. Think of it like a “spice cupboard,” Ansley said. Eventually, the remains are infused in the gin.
The couple are not above testing the gin on friends before explaining its provenance.
“The initial reaction of most people is, ‘What? There’s no way.’ But most people are very keen to actually taste it,” Ansley said. And once people hear about elephants’ digestive process “it becomes a lot clearer to them, and they accept it very well.”