Capreolus Elderberry Eau-de-vie (2024 harvest)

To celebrate our 10th anniversary, it had to be something truly extraordinary, the most complex Eau de Vie Capreolus has ever released.
In 2024 they worked with elderberries for the first time in seven years; the last time nine of them had picked fruit for an entire day to yield just 9 × 375ml bottles…
And so, in partnership with their friends who grow elderflower less than 30 miles form the distillery, they allowed 2,000kg of fruit to ripen to perfection. Every single berry was hand sorted, destemmed and went through a slow 5 ½ week wild fermentation. Distillation was with baited breath. The result was just 16 litres of spirit from 2,000kg fruit, capturing the essence of 120kg fruit in each litre. Diluted it is a mere 62kg per litre…
To work to such extremes is both a folly financially and in terms of risk. However, as Barney sat monastic in that distillery, everything made sense. As each flavour came over sequentially he travelled through an entire woodland, from canopy, blossom, bark, wood, leaf, soil, life and decay. As they collected and rebuilt the fruit in that container before Barney he was awed at how complex something could be and yet how incredibly elegant and balanced the result - something far beyond something they could create with their own intellect, millions of years of evolution laid before Barney.
 
To try to write tasting notes for something like this is near impossible. Barney's impressions from his very first dive into this phantasmagorical world of flavour and aroma are written below.

Nose: At first, rich, dense, heather honey. Sandalwood, elderflower, dusty and sun warmed cocoa, hints of herbaceous notes and touches of lemon zest, Late summer warmth radiating from tree bark, leaf litter, Incredibly dense and creamy, great intensity, yet extremely soft in delivery, honeycomb. From canopy to forest floor, an environment - deciduous woodland transitioning from Summer to Autumn.
 
Palate: Cacao, coating, very viscous with touches of pollen grains, very floral, filled with elderflower leaves, both soft and lignified, honey, lifted notes of lemon zest, beeswax, wood. Ripe, green and decaying, soft spicing, touches of balancing acidity, hints of rowan berry, almond, a sense of wild fruit. Incomprehensibly complex.