Earth Day at Arbikie Farm & Distillery

Today is Earth Day, a very important day for us at Arbikie Farm and the Arbikie Distillery. As both Farmers & Distillers we are dependent on 'Mother Earth' to water and grow our crops, including the barley, wheat, potatoes, chillies, juniper, coriander, lemongrass and limes that we grow to distil. This is fundamental to our ethos at Arbikie where we are on a journey to being 'one of the world's most sustainable distilleries'.

As a young, five year old business we have a long way to go, but we're very fortunate that our family has been farming for over 400 years. John, David & I are definitely 'sons of the soil' as our Dad brought us up to appreciate that we are only the latest custodians of our family lands at Lunan Bay, on Scotland's fertile east coast. This has helped us to create a family of sustainable spirits that includes the world's first 'Climate Positive' gin and the first Rye Scotch whisky for almost 200 years, but we can only keep doing this if we enhance our rich soils using regenerative agricultural practices.

Our water, our lands and their rich soils are essential elements of our Arbikie spirit family's unique provenance, so our earth is precious to us. The earth allow us to grow what we distil and create innovative spirits that are in increasing demand with discerning drinkers across the world. We're very lucky to be located on Scotland's sunny east coast with rich, red loam soils and a temperate local climate at Lunan Bay thus gives us a unique terroir. One which we're keen to share with our consumers, as we're keen advocates of traceability labelling by incorporating the growing field and crop variety on all our labels.

Our newest spirit Nàdar Gin, the world's first Climate Positive gin is distilled from peas. Peas because when they grow, they extract carbon from the atmosphere, whilst also fixing nitrogen into our soil. We've just planted this year's peas at Arbikie and these will be harvested in late summer to distil into our latest vintage of Nàdar.

Nàdar was a five year project for our Head Distiller, Kirsty and our academic partners* at The James Hutton Institute and Abertay University. Nàdar, which means 'nature' in Gaelic harnesses the power of nature and science and is a revolutionary spirit for the drinks industry, with a carbon footprint of -1.54 kg CO2e per 700ml bottle. It is therefore at the forefront of the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss.

Big societal changes are underway, driven in part by the Corona Virus lockdown as people around the world look to make our world a better place. The latest YouGov poll tells us that 91% of people in the UK don't want to return to life as normal. 42% said they value food more since the pandemic, with 38% cooking from scratch more. 51% noticed cleaner air outdoors, while 27% think there is more wildlife.

Discerning drinkers will be part of this, valuing what they drink more highly, keen to enjoy drink transparency so they know how, where and from what their spirits of choice are distilled. At Arbikie we've followed a different path from most others by distilling our spirits from scratch and from our own crops, even though it costs more to do so, but in the belief that it's the right way to do things for the long-term and that our discerning consumer base will grow as more people across the world become aware of how and what we do.

Happy Birthday and thank you, Mother Earth.

Slàinte mhath!

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* Arbikie did not realise Nàdar alone, and was made possible by working hand-in-hand with Abertay University, The James Hutton Institute, Bangor University, Trinity College Dublin and the support of other key partners and collaborators associated with TRUE (www.true-project.eu) a European Union funded project.