Stroll alongside the fields at Carron Farm on St. Martin's in spring and you may spot the first tender grassy shoots of a crop that at first glance looks like wheat. Actually, the plants are a lot more exotic - sugarcane.
It’s cultivated by islander-farmer Andrew Walder, who has already been spicing up Scillonian dinner tables with his seasalt. The cane is for his latest venture, a distillery called SC Dogs, the name - a blend of ‘sea dog’ and SC, Scilly’s fishing boat prefix - a nod to Andrew’s seafaring past. His dream, back then: to use the cane as the base for Britain’s first field-to-bottle rum.
“We’re already quite unusual in making rum from scratch using just sugar cane molasses,” says Andrew. “If we can now go one step further by creating rum from our own sugarcane, that’ll be hugely exciting. We don’t get frosts here, so Scilly’s the perfect place in the UK to try growing it.”
While he waits for his trial crop to mature, Andrew has plenty to keep him busy among the shiny steel stills and storage tanks in his micro-distillery, inside what used to be the farm’s flower packing sheds. Making his rum is a precision art: first he blends Caribbean sugarcane molasses with pure island water, and adds yeast. The ‘wash’ is left to ferment, then distilled in a pot still.
From the resulting 50% ABV spirit, Andrew crafts his other rums. They include a colourless ‘white’ rum that’s proofed down to 40% alcohol; and a 42% golden rum, created by adding a bit of molasses. He has also been bottling barrel-aged rum, made by maturing white rum in an American oak cask for two years. “The rum reacts with the oak, and draws out its unique flavours and colours,” says Andrew. “It promises to be pretty special.”
Perhaps most exciting, though, is Andrew’s honey-spiced rum using honey from Tresco. “The honey’s flavours are complex and utterly unique, thanks to the incredible range of exotic plants that the bees forage on in Tresco Abbey Garden,” he says. To ensure a reliable supply of the precious honey, Andrew has his own beehive which he houses inside a former whisky barrel located just outside the Garden. To make the rum, he steeps botanicals in his base spirit, strains it then sweetens it with a smidge of demerara sugar. Finally he mixes in the honey. “You need very little. It’s powerful stuff.”
So how did it all begin? After gaining a degree in photography, Andrew joined the merchant navy, then got a job on the British Antarctic Survey ship, the RRS Shackleton. “We spent the British winter in Antarctica but in summer (Antarctic winter) the ship was contracted to inspect oil and gas rigs in the North Sea,” recalls Andrew. “One day in Aberdeen the ship broke down, and we were sitting waiting for parts to arrive from Japan. The boss suggested a visit to the tiny Edradour whisky distillery in Pitlochry so off we all went off in a minibus. It was an inspiration. I loved the way distilling combined art and science. Something clicked, the idea was seeded!”
The long process of research began, as Andrew looked into buying equipment, obtaining arcane official licences (eight in total) and funding, and developing recipes. To find out which rums people liked, on his 40th birthday he invited islanders to a ten-rum tasting at the Seven Stones Inn - an evening he will never forget. “The majority preferred the spiced rums,” says Andrew. “But even the non-rum drinkers were surprised at the variety of rums out there, so it was quite an eye opener.”
He then devoted equal painstaking attention and artistry to the design and labelling of the bottles. Each rum is dedicated to one of Scilly’s own historical sea dogs, whose portraits (painted by local artists) are printed on the inside of the label and peer ghostlike through the liquor. “I hope my face will be on one of the rums one day,” he laughs. “You have to be dead to qualify though, so hopefully it won’t be just yet.”
By October 2019 Andrew had distilled his first rum - his white rum - and prepared for a boozy launch in April 2020. Then, in March, the pandemic hit, so plans for a launch party and face-to-face sales and tours were scrapped. Andrew quickly set up an online shop, and used his base spirit to produce a heavenly smelling sanitiser.
The quiet, visitor-free days of 2020 and 2021 were far from idle. In October 2020 he launched his golden and spiced rums, to enthusiastic acclaim. “People loved their rounded finish, with a tang of the sea,” says Andrew. He then extended his range of spirits by developing first a vodka, made by stripping alcohol out of white rum and proofing it down to 40%; then a whisky from his home-grown barley (ready in around three years); and finally, a limited edition cider brandy, the result of a collaboration with apple growers on St. Mary’s and St. Agnes.
So far, the distillery is ticking a lot of boxes. “It’s reinvigorated the farm and allowed us to diversify away from flowers, which were no longer viable due to the transport costs,” says Andrew. “I have control of all parts of the process, while spreading my risk by producing a range of different spirits. It’s also exciting collaborating with other Scillonian businesses and using their ingredients. Best of all, I can enjoy my wife and three children, rather than just seeing them for three or four weeks at a time on breaks from being at sea.”
SC Dogs Distillery, St. Martin's
Image credit: adjbrown.com
