BRILLIANT BOTANICALS - Highland Brew and Meadowsweet High Ball

During the summer, wild food enthusiast, Rob Booth, embarked on a ‘Tribe in the Wild’ foraging trip with Brad Price from our UK Sales Team.

Rob – a chef and also a musician – is the inspiration behind Forage & Field and uses foraged natural ingredients to create exciting dishes and drinks which he shares on Instagram and Facebook. Rob and Brad are old friends and their trip had a clear objective – foraging herbs, flowers and fruits in England’s Peak District (identifying what and when to pick and how best to understand and extract flavours) in order to create syrups and cocktails in the wild. Armed with sugar, stoves, cocktail kit, lots of waterproofs and (naturally) a bottle of Highland Park, the pair met at 7.30am at Lady Bower, in the Upper Derwent Valley at the heart of the Peak National Park, on the wettest day of summer.

Over the course of the day, they foraged a host of natural ingredients including wild raspberries, pineapple weed, water mint, meadowsweet, blue spruce, hazelnuts, sorrel and rowan berries – and we’re delighted to share two delicious Highland Park serves that they created with blue spruce syrup and meadowsweet syrup.

Try creating these serves following the instructions below.

Highland Brew

30ml 12 Year Old Viking Honour

15ml Blue spruce* syrup

70ml Coffee

Layered Vanilla Cream

1. Make the blue spruce syrup by combining 5 large blue spruce spears with 300ml of water, 500 gms of sugar and half a peeled orange – warm through, stirring until the sugar has fully dissolved, and leave to simmer on a low heat for 15 minutes. Allow to cool for one hour, then finely strain and bottle.

2. Combine all of the ingredients for the Brew together and garnish with a spruce tip.

*Blue spruce are large trees found in most woodland areas. Usually pyramidal in shape, they have sharp, sturdy needles (similar to rosemary) and grow all year round – vibrant and woody with citrus flavours. 

Meadowsweet High Ball

50ml 12 Year Old Viking Honour

15ml Meadowsweet* syrup

10ml Lemon juice

½ pipette of a Miraculous Foam Bitters or 20ml egg white

70ml Ginger ale

1. Make the Meadowsweet syrup by combining 5 heads and 5 to 10 leaves of Meadowsweet with 250ml of water, 500gms of sugar and one peeled lemon over a low heat – warm through, stirring until the sugar has fully dissolved, and leave to simmer on a low heat for 15 minutes. Allow to cool for half an hour, then finely strain and bottle.

2. Shake all of the ingredients together in a cocktail shaker without ice. Then add ice in and shake again to emulsify the Foam Bitters/egg white.

3. Double strain, top with ginger ale and garnish with a Meadowsweet flower and leaf.

*Meadowsweet is part of the rose family and it flourishes in damp habitats such as meadows and river banks where it’s found between June and September – sweet flavours of honey, vanilla and almond.