All you need to get yourself a Dirty Sheepdog are the following: 50ml BLACKLION Vodka, 25ml freshly brewed espresso coffee, 5ml demerara sugar syrup, 25ml coffee liqueur and 3 coffee beans to garnish. Then simply shake and strain and pour the contents into a Martini or Coupe glass.
The vodka is the most important thing. You can’t make a Dirty Sheepdog without Europe’s first super-premium sheep milk vodka.
Sheaf House Farm, Blockley near Moreton-in-Marsh in the English Cotswolds was originally bought by Tim Spittle’s parents over 50 years ago. Taking over the farm and ensuring its survival together with his wife Tan, the couple has had to diversify, at the same time as helping to secure the survival of the Valais Blacknose breed of sheep.
These rare sheep originate in the Swiss Alps. Hence, the Matterhorn’s appearance on every bottle.
The Spittle’s turned waste into sipping vodka and a byproduct into cocktails.
Conscious of the need to care for their farm and all aspects of the natural environment, Tim and Tanya ensure that their business innovations and development of BLACKLION have been and remain environmentally sustainable at all stages.
BLACKLION vodka farm’s Black Lion dairy sheep that are cross bred from British milk sheep and the farm’s flock of Valais Blacknose. The flock grazes on limestone pastures.
The 2022 Farmers Weekly Diversification Farmer of the Year farm is the birthplace of BLACKLION Vodka. The farm offers tours and tastings and the chance to taste unique BLACKLION cocktails incorporating the unique premium vodka, such as an Ice Breaker, for which you will need 2oz (60ml) BLACKLION Vodka, 2 barspoons (10ml) sweet vermouth, 2 barspoons (10ml) dry vermouth, 2 bars spoons fig liqueur and 2 dashes of bitters.
Creamy on the nose with toffee notes on the palate, BLACKLION Vodka offers hints of burnt apples and caramel with a light spicy mouthfeel. The vodka still has hints of alpine edelweiss and subtle sweetness with cacao nibs and a cracked peppercorn finish.
Its unique flavour comes from the fermentation, triple-distillation and filtration of the whey left over after cheese making. Plus, local Cotswolds Spring Water.
The idea for BLACKLION Vodka came while the Spittle’s were vacationing in Spain, with Tim saying:
“We knew it was unique; a revolutionary idea of taking waste and making it super premium.”
During the cheese making process, somewhere between 75 to 85 per cent is surplus whey. Because of the 190 days that sheep are milked, there are only a few weeks that are a “golden spot” when the collected milk’s fats, proteins and sugar are fairly even. The rest of the time the milk is unsuitable for cheese.
Tanya adds:
“We thought we could take the whey, ferment it with an enzyme and throw it in a still and then bottle it. But it wasn’t that easy! Clarification was an issue. Filtering the tiny fat globules of sheep’s milk.
“We had ricotta tasting vodka to gone-off milk to sour vodka. But we persevered.”
Most vodka is made from grain or potato. However, here, 1,200 bottles of vodka use anywhere from between several hundred to several thousand litres of whey. The entire process, beginning with lambing and grazing to milking, then cheese making, collecting the whey to fermenting and distilling, takes two years. Hence the small batch, super-premium £55 ($70) price tag.
For more information on BLACKLION Vodka, please visit: www.blacklionvodka.co.uk.
Author Bio:
Kevin Pilley is a former professional cricketer and chief staff writer of PUNCH magazine. His humour, travel, food and drink work appear worldwide, and he has been published in over 800 titles.
Photographs courtesy of BLACKLION Vodka
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