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A new distillery has launched in the heart of Jersey's traditional maritime industry, with its flagship product a botanical rum that producers hope will prove hemp-ting to spirit-lovers across the globe.
Founded by La Bastille's Mark Taft, and Luke Wheadon, creator of Guernsey's Wheadon's Gin, the Channel Islands Liquor Company has set up a new distillery in an old sail loft on South Pier.
They will be officially launching on Thursday, as well as unveiling their latest product, ‘Indica Rum'.
The golden spirit is infused with hemp - a legal component of the cannabis plant, which some claim has health benefits.
Video: Express took a sneak peek at the new distillery...
Inspired by the Jersey Hemp fields, the golden rum incorporates terpenes from the indica plant, otherwise known as hemp or cannabis.
It blends four aged rums from Barbados, Nicaragua, Panama, and the Dominican Republic alongside one distilled by co-founder Luke Wheadon.
“We’ve taken a beautiful golden aged rum minimum of nine years and I suppose with the uprising and growth of the hemp and cannabis business in the Channel Islands we’ve made our own rum which we are infusing into the golden aged rum which gives us the beautiful herbacious flavour,” Mr Taft explained.
“This rum is locally made, using locally grown cannabis or hemp plant from the Indica plant thus the name Indica Rum. It’s a beautiful product, we’ve actually just harvested our first harvest of the Indica plant!”
Video: A 'teaser' film for the new Indica Rum product.
Mr Wheadon said ‘Indica Rum’ is the result of a year’s careful consideration. “I am a purist when it comes to creating liquor and it was vitally important that all our products have integrity and make the most of the natural ingredients available to us here in the Channel Islands,” he said.
"It’s almost a world first we’d like to think,” Mr Taft added. “Something that is very different and something which we think will put both our brand and the Channel Islands on the map.”
The first batches of ‘Indica Rum’ have already been distilled and bottled from CILC new base in Jersey which boasts a brand new handmade still from Germany.
The “wonderfully crafted piece of engineering”, as Mr Taft described it, is capable of producing 370 litres or 500 bottles of liquor or spirit or gin or rum per distillation. In addition to this, the Guernsey distillation can produce 250 litres or 400 bottles.
“Once we’re getting up to full steam, the production is going to be quite high and we expect it to be high particularly when we start looking at the export market,” Mr Taft said. “We hope this will be a really great brand for the Channel Islands and something the Channel Islands will be very much recognised for and proud of.
“Certainly, we are very proud of what we’ve done and what we’ve built from this beautiful old sail loft building down at South Pier in St. Helier.”
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