TREND WATCH INSECT GIN

IN OUR never-ending quest to find the next hot trend this may be a bit off the mark: gin flavored with ants.  Yes, those ants.  Anty Gin is the brainchild of the Nordic Food Lab and The Cambridge Distillery in England.  Miles Irving, a professional forager, collected over 6OOO red wood ants and placed them in a strong ethanol solution, before distilling it to make an ant concentrate.  The gin is the first in the world to be made using insects, and each £2OO bottle contains the “essence” of 62 ants.  William Lowe from The Cambridge Distillery said: “The reason people use red wood ants is they have a very specific flavor which is best described as citrus.  We did a lot of research and found that the reason ants taste like citrus is because they spray formic acid as a method of defense.  Hundreds of years ago formic acid was made by distilling ants, and so that’s what we decided to do.”  They mixed botanicals like stinging nettle, wood avens root and alexanders seed to mix with the distilled ant solution.  What does it taste like?  According to Lowe: “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.  It’s expensive because it’s so labor intensive – Anty Gin was almost a year in the making.  We want eyebrows to be raised.  The whole point of Anty Gin is to open people’s eyes to the possibility of insects being used as a viable source of food and flavor.”  If you’re interested you better move fast.  There are only 99 bottles of the unique gin on sale, available from the Anty Gin website cambridgedistillery.co.uk.