It started with an abundant year in the hedgerows.
How a glut of wild fruit and a failed batch of hawthorn ketchup turned into three vinegars from the Blackwater Valley.
One autumn the hedgerows around the house were heavier than we’d ever seen, a kind of abundance you don’t get every year.
Rather than let it all fall, we started digging through cookbooks old and new, from old preserving manuals to modernist kitchen books, blending the two. It was inspiring to see how often these wild ingredients turned up in the old books, when nothing from the hedge was wasted.
One of those experiments was meant to be hawthorn ketchup. It didn’t quite work. But along the way we found something better: the cooked fruit, steeped in raw Irish cider vinegar, turned a deep red and tasted beautifully floral, bright, gently tannic and alive.
Elderflower and cleaver followed, each tasting unmistakably of the hedgerow it came from. Three vinegars and a shrub, all from the same hedgerows, all made by hand in small batches.
The fairy tree
Hawthorn runs deep through Irish folklore as the lone tree left standing out of respect. It felt right that it led the way for us.
Slowly made
Small batches, gathered and made by hand, with nothing added that the hedgerow didn’t give in the first place.
Nothing wasted
The whole idea grew from a good year going to waste. We make only what the season gives, while it lasts.