What Makes Our Gin Wild?

To sip Okavango Gin is to taste a place untouched by hurry.

Here in the Okavango Delta, one of Earth’s last great inland deltas, wildness is not an idea. It’s a presence that is felt in the rustle of reeds, or heard in the cry of a fish eagle. It is known in the quiet generosity of the land.

So, what makes a gin wild?

Our gin is not wild as in untamed, reckless, or loud. Our gin is wild as in free and rooted. Each bottle is a distilled expression of the rhythm of land and water; wild in that it is respectful of what grows without interference, what arrives seasonally and disappears without announcement. Wild as in made slowly, where nature decides.

Our gin carries this wildness. It is built from the Delta outwards, from the waterways and papyrus beds to the woodland trails where elephants pass and devils’ claw curls in the dust. Each botanical is foraged, not farmed. Chosen for flavour, and for the feeling it leaves on the tongue. We take great care in foraging our wild marula, that has been sun-ripened and rendered softly sweet. Our Mopane seeds — woody, green, gently bitter — offer a scent rising like smoke after rain. 

Our gin doesn’t shout citrus or drown itself in juniper. Instead, ours opens slowly, like the Delta itself — floral and earthy first, like stepping barefoot into water-warmed sand. Then citrusy notes unfurl: wild lemon and grapefruit peel, fresh and bright, a flash of light across the floodplain. Beneath it all, something rooted and round — herbaceous, with a whisper of dry heat. Our gin is a fingerprint of the Delta’s complexity, captured in glass.

‘Wild’ is a way of seeing, and a philosophy.

To live wild is to live close to the source, truly guided by the seasons. It means accepting that you are not in control, and understanding that nature has its own intelligence, older and wiser than our calendars and clocks. It means letting go of convenience in favour of connection.

We could have made this gin somewhere else. Somewhere easier; but we didn’t. We chose to craft it in the remote reaches of Botswana, on the edge of the Okavango Delta itself. Our stills are small, our methods slow. We distill in micro-batches, adapting to what the landscape gives each year. No two seasons taste the same and some years the marula is sweeter, others, the Mopane is bolder. That’s the nature of wildness: it moves. To taste a gin rooted in wildness is to remember that we, too, are of the earth. That our bodies, like marula fruit, swell and soften with time. That our moods, like the floodwaters, rise and recede. We are one part of the ecosystem, and one thread in the fabric.

This is a gin for those who listen. For those who let the liquid linger. For those who know that ‘premium’ is about purpose, and that luxury is in the story; how it was made, where it was made, and why it matters.

And so, when we say this is a wild gin, we don’t mean rebellious, instead we mean reverent. Made with care and made in conversation with land and season and species, and each other; our gin is made with gratitude for every forager, every elder, every sunrise spent gathering what grows untended.

Our wild gin reminds us of the first scent of summer rain on hot earth and the golden stillness before dusk. These are not tasting notes in the traditional sense, rather they are part of the experience, and  part of what it means to drink something that has never seen a conveyor belt or a cold warehouse: something that still carries the memory of place.

What makes a gin wild?

It’s a truth that flows from source to glass, if you let it.

And all you need to do is sip.