If you make sloe gin or elderflower liqueur you may sit back and have a sip and think this is good, but I know I can do better. You may think that mixing the elderflower with peppermint or even spruce tips would make a huge difference. Of course you may…

By far the best sloe gin I have tasted was during a talk I gave at the country’s largest branch of the WI. The maker had not added sugar and had left the berries infusing for 18 months. It was tart, complex and the colour of a good Claret. …

The smell of the autumn starts wafting in around early August; you can almost feel a shift in the momentum of the undergrowth. The heady floral scent of summer, the smell that mingles with suntan lotion, cut grass and perhaps a faint whiff of salty air is replaced with the…

Apples are more genetically diverse than humans and if you planted every apple pip from one apple they would grow genetically different fruit. This is why we cultivate apples, grafting branches from one tree onto the rootstock of another. There are around 7500 apple in the world that have been…

Lying face up on a rocky Hebridean island coast as the Atlantic crashed at my feet I realised that wearing a pair of brown leather brogues, pin striped trousers, a tailored shirt and a Harris tweed jacket might have made me feel the part, going someway to look like an…