A gin infused with elephant dung is the latest and perhaps most unusual take on the craft distilling trend.
South African couple Paula Ansley and her husband Les collect elephant dung by hand from Botlierskop game reserve in Mossel Bay, and use it to create thousands of bottles of their Ibhu Indlovu gin.
The brand - the name means elephant in a blend of African languages - was born last year following a safari the couple took in Kenya. A wildlife ranger described an elephant’s digestive process, and scientist Ms Ansley realised the animal's dung could be re-purposed.
Although an elephant spends 80 per cent of their time eating fruits and grazing on grasses and trees, only a fraction of what it consumes is digested, which makes the 130kg of dung an adult elephant produces each day a rich source of nutrients and other organic matter.
The safari park posted an initial package of dung to the Ansleys, and they took it from there, creating a sterilising process.
To create a batch of 3,000 to 4,000 bottles of gin, the couple collect around five large bags of dung, dry, wash and crumble the droppings to eventually leave behind only the remains of the fruits, flowers, leaves and bark eaten by the elephants.
Mr Ansley told AP he credits the “amazing variety of botanicals” in the elephant dung for the flavour of the gin, which he describes as “lovely, wooded, almost spicy” and “earthy” - and the gin's flavour changes subtly with the seasons and location, due to the change in an elephant’s diet.
The entrepreneur recalls remembering his wife saying: “Why don’t we let the elephants do the hard work of collecting all these botanicals and we will make gin from it?”
Today bottles are available to buy online for around 500 rand (around £25) plus shipping, following a flavour-crafting process.
Mr Ansley admitted that they have trialled the gin on friends before telling them its provenance, in an attempt to get a reaction to the flavour untainted by preconceptions about elephant dung.
One local tasting the gin told AP it was “surprisingly very good”.
