At the beginning of April each year we have only two weeks to collect all the birch sap that we need to make a year’s worth of our Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin. This is the time of year in Aberdeenshire that the sap rises in the tree and does not happen at any other time of year. As we’re a bit further North here we’re probably a few weeks behind most of the rest of the country. We can’t just nip down to the shops for birch sap and have to gather this, and many other ingredients ourselves.

Tree tapping season is one of our favourite times of year. You start to get a little bit of warmth in the sun and the long dark nights of winter start to get a little lighter. We’ll often head up to tap the trees as a family, maybe with a picnic and the dog likes to run around at full pelt, occasionally slowing to have a sniff in the gorse. Although, at this time of year the weather can be warm and sunny one minute and freezing and snowy the next. We’ve seen it in previous years where we tap the trees in shorts and t-shirts, then the very next day when we go to collect the sap, it is frozen to the trees and a blanket of snow covers everything!

This year, after a sunny start to spring, the season has started maybe a week earlier than previously. In the woods surrounding the farm here at West Aquhorthies, we have a large number of mature silver birch trees. We try to select different trees to tap each year, so that we are not relying on the same trees and to give them a chance to heal up after tapping. To tap the trees, we drill a small hole, place a tap or piece of pipe into the hole and then strap a “Sap Sack” onto the tap. The sap drips into the sack and gradually fills it up over a day or two. We have tapped 5 trees this year on the farm, two at the top woods and 3 down near the ponds. The early season almost caught us out but the trees down by the ponds are down in a hollow and it’s a bit damper down there so the sap is running well here. The tree locations this year are ///skidding.staple.pocket ///pets.searching.infuses ///ironclad.number.status ///flute.breezes.fattening and ///bath.purist.escorting You can use the what3words app to look them up on Google Earth.

We can’t leave the sap on the tree for too long as the sugars in it would start to ferment quickly, so we check and empty each sack daily, filter, then bag the sap in 1 litre portions, labelled with the collection date and geotag information. The sap is then stored in the freezer to keep it fresh before we need it for distilling. Each tree can produce between 2-10 litres of sap per day. The birch sap is a key botanical for our Aberdeenshire Foraged Gin, it helps add sweet caramel notes and contributes to the sense of petrichor within the gin. Once the sap stops running, we remove the sacks and taps then place a small wooden spigot in the drill hole to protect the tree. As the tree heals the spigot is pushed out, after a year or two it’s hard to see that the tree was ever tapped.

After birch tapping season we start to monitor the beech trees for the first signs of the new leaves emerging, our next foraging job. Will the early Spring this year mean the leaves arrive early as well? We’ll just need to keep a close eye on them!