Our Botanicals
Hogweed
Heracleum Sphondylium
This overlooked native botanical is highly aromatic with a warm spicy taste. Think cardamon crossed with orange zest. Toasting the seeds really brings out the flavour! A common site across the hedgerows of Britain, most people don’t look at Hogweed twice. Interestingly it plays an important part in Persian cuisine.
Rock Samphire
Crithmum Maritimum
Rock Samphire used to be a luxury. Shakespeare writes about the dangers of picking this once highly valuable item from the cliffside in King Lear. It’s complicated flavour can be overpowering in its raw form, distilling completely transforms it.
Sweet Woodruff
Galium Odoratum
This shade loving plant can often be found covering woodland floors. It’s been used as a herb for centuries and it’s only recently that we’ve started to forget about it. In it’s fresh form it has an unremarkable smell, but when its dried it suddenly comes into its own. Smells like a mixture of honey, vanilla and hay.
Bog Myrtle
Myrica gale
Another unique fragrance that’s hard to describe. A heavy fragrance, somewhere between lavender and rosemary. An interesting bitterness, unwanted in most applications but positively encouraged in a Vermouth.
Elderberry
Sambucus nigra
More well known earlier in the year for Elderflowers, the berries of the Elder tree add richness and depth to our Sweet Vermouth. The berries are infused into spirit and left undistilled.
Gives a deep, rich colour and often leads to stained fingers whilst foraging!
Sea Wormwood
Artemisia maritima
Only discovered by our distiller recently, Sea Wormwood holds a special place at Still Wild. It grows on the Estuary between Lawrenny and Cresswell Quay.
Highly fragrant, dry and bitter. One of the three wild wormwoods we use.
Meadowsweet
Filipendula Ulmaria
This plant loves ancient hedgerows and damp soil. Something we have an abundance of in Pembrokeshire!
Like Wild Garlic and Mugwort, I often smell Meadowsweet before I see it. An almost overpowering smell of marzipan and vanilla.
