Beyond botanicals
Local Berkshire company, Kennet Crayfish, has just launched a unique craft gin using crayfish claw shells and botanicals. No, it is not fishy. The distilling process releases not only the sweet delicate taste of the claws but a crayfish oil that creates a new top-quality mellow gin, smoothing the edges of the botanicals and which enhances the flavour of mixers rather than competing with them. Add to that the eco credentials of each drink helping to protect the waters and wildlife of Britain’s rare chalk stream, the Kennet, one of only 200 in the world and the Kennet Crayfish Gin has all the hallmarks of a winner.
Kennet Crayfish Company is the UK’s largest fully licensed plant for processing wild caught American signal crayfish caught in the riverbanks of the Kennet in Berkshire. The best size and quality crayfish are prepared and chilled for food distribution while the smaller crayfish are used for other products including animal feed for zoos. The season for these wild caught crayfish is from June to October.
Crayfish Gin is the result of a collaboration between The Kennet Crayfish Company, one of the finalists in the top category “Food Producer of the Year” in this year’s prestigious BBC Food and Farming Awards, and Hawkridge Distillers, which produces award winning gins including ‘Best London Dry Gin in England’, which it has won twice, as well as a cluster of gold and silver medals from the annual World Spirits Competition
Andrew Leech, crayfish guru and managing director of Kennet Crayfish Company explains:” We are proud of our quality crayfish product; however, I felt that there were opportunities for us to develop exciting and tasty products from the humble crayfish shells leftover after extracting the meat, and then I had the idea to create a gin. Mad as that sounded, talking to various professionals in the drinks trade I was encouraged to explore this further and so our gin journey began. I am delighted that after meeting, Phil Howarth, managing director of Hawkridge Distillers, he too thought that a crayfish gin could be winner, and I am delighted with the Kennet gin product that has emerged.”
Carolyn Bennett, CMO Kennet Crayfish Company, who is coordinating the gin project says: “If it takes an original story and original flavour to stand out in the craft gin market, then Kennet’s Crayfish gin hits all the right notes. Signal crayfish, the ones we eat, are an invasive species imported from America in the 1970s. Unfortunately, they escaped into the wild and proliferated so successfully that they are now found in huge numbers across British waterways and pose a real threat to river wildlife. They damage riverbanks by tunnelling, causing the banks to collapse resulting in siltation of the rivers. They also consume the rivers’ natural invertebrates and predate on fish eggs depleting an important food source for animals such as Otters.”
Bennett added: “As a licensed crayfish company, we are proud to be a sustainable food producer helping to protect Britain’s waterways. By fishing this invasive species, we are helping to keep their numbers down while producing a premium delicious food product. We wanted to feature this aspect of our operation and have incorporated a ‘tails of the riverbank’ illustration by Sophie Jonas-Hill, a British award-winning artist & illustrator into our label design. From the outset we wanted to create a premium craft gin that not only intrigued but also would delight the gin connoisseur and everyone who tastes it just loves it.”
Kennet’ s wild caught crayfish and the gin make for a magical pairing of food and drink. For instance, chilled crayfish tails with a selection of dips such as dill and red onion sauce, beetroot and mint and wild garlic and pesto mayonnaise.
This is just the beginning; Kennet will soon be launching a trio of crayfish butters as well as a crayfish bisque.
The Kennet Crayfish gin can be purchased directly the website. The Kennet Crayfish gin will be sold in two sizes – a small taster 5cl bottle at £6.50 and a full-size 70cl bottle at £40.