In the name of luxury and opulence, the gut of the world is being rummaged. Having a taste for the fine things in life is nice, but why at the cost of invading nature and ripping its natural habitats and species? The world’s first gin tailor, the Cambridge Distillery of the UK, and Copenhagen-based Nordic Food Lab, a non-profit, open source organization that ‘investigates’ food diversity have launched a new gin – the Anty Gin. Yes, it has ants. Not any that you see crawling up your wall or kitchen, but red wood ants found in forests in the Northern Hemisphere. In order to protect their mound-like housing colonies, they spray formic acid on their invaders. This formic acid is a naturally occurring component primarily due to forest emissions (says Wikipedia). Distillation of ant bodies is how to extract formic acid, which serves as an agent for producing ‘delicious’ esters.
Each bottle will have the essence of 62 wood ants, taken from the preservation chambers of Forager – a team of wild plant specialists. They have more than 6,000 red wood ants collected from the forests of Kent, UK. The limited edition drink will cost $390 per bottle of 50ml.
[Buy at Cambridge Distillery]
