Page 16 - IAV Digital Magazine #515

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This Premium Gin Is Made From Distilled Elephant Dung
By Spooky
It’s hard to believe that ele- phant dung could be the main ingredient of a premium spirit drink, but it’s true. South African
gin Indlovu is made with botani- cals harvested from the pachy- derm poop.
Paula and Les Ansley, both for- mer professors in different fields of biology, decided to moved from the UK to South Africa, after retir- ing, and come up with a way to contribute to con- servation efforts in the region and support the local community. Neither of them had any idea
that elephant dung would play such a big part in their plan, it just sort of happened. Today they run a distillery that uses “botanicals for- aged by ele- phants” and har- vested from their poop to create
Indlovu gin, a unique spirit that doesn’t taste any- thing like you’d imagine.
The Ansleys came up with the idea of
their unique spir- it a few years back, while visit- ing an animal reserve in South Africa. A game ranger was explaining to them how ele- phants are very particular about the food they for-
age, but absorb less than half of what they eat, with the other half of their plant diet remaining intact in their dung. Les, a gin lover, asked himself why not let elephants col- lect the best natu- ral ingredients, and use them to flavor a unique gin?
Although neither of them had any distilling experi- ence, the two came up with a
plan to source and use elephant dung to make a high-quality spirit, and in 2018 they founded Indlovu Gin.
“We contacted Botlierskop [Game Reserve in the Western Cape] and we said, do you think you could send us some elephant dung?” Les Ansley told CNN. “They said, yeah sure, no problem, and they mailed
us some elephant dung and we started looking at how to prepare it.”
First, the dung is dried and then goes through a sterilization process. It is then rinsed and dried again, and finally infused into the gin. Apart from the classic gin ingredients, like juniper and coriander, Indlovu also gets its fla- vor from extracts of the elephants’ diet of roots, grasses, fruit and bark, including aloe and acacia.
Every bottle of Indlovu features the GPS coordi- nates of where the dung was col- lected from, as well as the date it was collected on. “Depending on where we collect the botanicals or which ele-
phants we collect botanicals from, the gin flavor is going to change slightly,” Les Ansley said.
The first batch of Indlovu gin was produced in November of 2019, and it has since reached various markets, including other African countries and Europe. Its reception has been mixed, which the Ansleys admit was to be expected, consid- ering the contro- versial nature of the main ingredi- ent used. However many of those who have tried it declared themselves impressed by its taste.
“It’s got an earthy, grassy-type fla- vor,” Les Ansley said. “We were very aware that if we are making a gin from dung, we have to make a good gin.”
The Andleys’ dis- tillery donated 15% of its profits to the Africa Foundation to support the con- servation of ele- phants.
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