There are few things that sound quite as exotic to western culture as a whole as someone saying they've tasted insects (a notable exception being Mexico, where it's common to eat "chapulines," a form of grasshopper), but now a British distillery has managed to set itself apart with gin made with ants!
While this is the first-ever gin made with ants, Food World News has reported some odd occurrences in the world of food and alcohol making in the past, such as the Brazil release of a "feminist beer," a chocolate that slows down and stops the aging process and most recently another British invention, the gin and tonic ice cream.
According to The Spirits Business, though, one company has decided to take things one step further to make headlines with their gin made out of ants, as small Cambridge Distillery joined forces with the Nordic Food Lab to create Anty Gin, a 40 percent abv gin that takes the "essence" of about 62 wood ants.
The Telegraph reports that this gin made with ants was the brainchild of Nordic Food Lab (created by Rene Redzepi and Claus Meyer), who later recruited Miles Irving, a professional forager who collected more than 6,000 red wood ants to later place them in a strong methanol solution to then distill it and make the ant concentrate; to the news outlet's knowledge, this is the first-ever gin to ever be made using insects, and the creativity behind the move means the price can go quite high, as each 700ml bottle sells for £200, about $310.
So far, there are 99 bottles of the gin made with ants being sold in the market, and it's possible to purchase any of them through their website.
"As well as juniper we used foraged botanicals like stinging nettle, wood avens root and alexanders seeds to mix with the ant distillate," said Will Lowe, from Cambridge Distillery, speaking about the creation of the gin made with ants to Metro. "The result is a spectacular, one-of-a-kind gin that is being very well received worldwide. People are astounded at how good it tastes."
