THE GIN PASSPORT ATLAS - DISTILLERY STORY- PINNED ON THE MAP - AFRICA

A rather unconventional gin for the adventurous ginthusiast and anyone who likes their drinks with a good story. Indlovu is quite literally designed by African elephants, using botanicals they have foraged themselves. It's certainly not your everyday gin, but that's exactly what makes it so much fun — a little taste of Africa, with the elephants doing the hard work.


There are unusual gins and then there is Indlovu.


When I first heard that the key botanical is recovered from elephant dung, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. It sounds completely bonkers until you discover the clever bit: the elephants aren't actually producing the flavour. They're doing the foraging.


Elephants eat an enormous variety of plants, fruits, leaves, bark and grasses, but digest relatively little of the plant material. What passes through them therefore contains plenty of the botanicals they have been munching on.

That was the rather brilliant idea behind Indlovu.


The concept came to Les and Paula Ansley after Paula was on safari in Kenya. Listening to her guide explain the elephants' eating habits, she wondered whether it would be possible to make a gin using the botanicals left behind.

Well, they tried.



The result is a gin that is quite literally designed by elephants.

The dung is collected from naturally foraging elephants in South African reserves, then dried, crumbled, washed and sanitised before being dried again. The botanical material that remains is extracted and used to flavour the gin. So, no, you're not actually drinking elephant poo, even if the botanicals have passed through an ellie!


The really interesting part is that the recipe can change according to where and when the dung was collected, because the elephants' diet changes with the seasons and location. Each batch therefore has its own provenance, with the collection location and date recorded.


Alongside the traditional gin botanicals — juniper, angelica, orris root, coriander and citrus — the elephants may have been munching on plants such as buccu, acacia, guarri and erica. This gives Indlovu its wonderfully earthy, grassy and slightly spicy character.


It would be very easy for this to be nothing more than a novelty gin with a good marketing story, but it really isn't. The resulting spirit is smooth, complex and surprisingly elegant, with juniper and citrus alongside those earthy African bush flavours.


There is a conservation story here too. Indlovu currently donates 15% of its profits to HERD, supporting its work with rescued elephants and South Africa's first elephant orphanage.


"The Elephant Poo Gin"


It's clean, it's clever, it's genuinely fascinating — and, most importantly, it makes a rather good gin.

Sometimes the strangest ideas really do make the best stories.


With thanks to The Gin Archive for allowing me to visit and taste this extraordinary gin!