Philosophy’s a bit of a fancy word. To us, it just means doing our best to do the right thing, to do it in a way that hasn’t been done before, and to respect everything involved along the way. The sheep, the people, the land. Every product (including Ewe Care & Grandvewe), we make on our property has to reduce waste and help the planet — environmentally, socially or both. In big boring business frameworks, they call it positive disruption but at Hartshorn, it’s just how we work. It’s a lot of thinking and a lot of hard yards but it’s pretty much the only rule we stick to.
How does it look in practice? The sheep’s whey used in our spirits is an already-existing byproduct from Grandvewe Cheeses. Instead of pouring it down the drain like most places, we worked out a way to use it and Bob’s your drunk uncle — Hartshorn was born. Each day since, we’ve challenged ourselves to innovate further, push the boundaries of the traditional distilling practice and punch out more world-firsts in spirit-making. And it doesn’t stop at our spirits, either. Once our gins are adequately infused, the used botanicals are taken over to Grandvewe and used again — this time fragrancing their sheep’s milk cheese. Trash-to-treasure, teat-to-tipple kinda stuff.
Doing good things differently has and always will be the focus of anything that’s made on our farm.
https://hartshorndistillery.com.au/