Wild Thyme Spirits find use for distillery waste

One of the things we love about the Scottish Gin community is the innovative ways they find to reduce their impact on the planet and were really delighted to hear about this amazing wast-reducing initiative from Wild Thyme Spirits on the Isle of Colonsay.

Wild Thyme Spirits are delighted to announce an innovative use for their distillery tails, spent botanicals and pressed fruit husk waste material. They’ve teamed up with Colonsay Wool Growers who are using these waste materials to dye their wool. This is a perfect fit for their ethos of only using materials that are available around them and allows Wild Thyme Spirits to efficiently recycle the waste products from their distilling process.

The new range, called Pot Still Yarns, initially includes hats in two colours, either ready to wear or as a knitting kit, and is available to buy here.

Colonsay Wool Growers is based on Balnahard Farm at the northern end of the Isle of Colonsay, and produce yarns and fleeces from their flock of free-ranging sheep. They produce craft knitting wool, knitting kits and ready knitted accessories, which use yarn naturally dyed with plants foraged on the farm. The sheep are a mixture of traditional native hill sheep, crossed with the lustre breeds of BlueFace Leicester and Tesswater, to grow a softer, finer fleece suitable for all types of making and crafting.

Wild Thyme Spirits is fast becoming the go-to destination for gin fans and island visitors alike, offering, not only, distillery tours and tastings, but also, luxury weekend breaks at their Gin Lover’s Retreat.

Owned and run by Eileen & Finlay Geekie who left over 30 years of Oxfordshire life behind them back in 2016 when they moved to the island to live and work.

Despite the limitations of lockdown, they have recently launched new products to expand their Gin range, including their version of an Old Tom gin called Cait Sith (pronounced Caught She) as well as the first two jigsaws in their Ginsaw series, which sees Colonsay Gin label artwork as the subject of 750 piece puzzles.

Commenting on this new initiative Eileen said:

“It’s great to be working with Sarah from Colonsay Wool Growers and we’re excited to, at last and after a lot of prototyping, be able to launch these new products. It gives CWG the opportunity to widen their colour offering and quite clearly solves a waste disposal problem for us, and we look forward to further products in the Pot Still Yarns range being released in the coming months.”

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