Fresh from the farm: Is milk vodka the next big spirit?

One of our 10 Things You Need To Know About… Spirits

No one could blame farmers for hitting the bottle right now. As the price war rumbles on, the retail price of milk frequently dips below that of water. In post-Brexit Britain, farmers face an uncertain future without the EU subsidies they’ve become accustomed to. Times are tough.

But for farmers, salvation might actually lie at the bottom of a bottle. There are plenty of examples of British farmers who have built thriving businesses by diversifying into distillation, among them Herefordshire potato farmer and Tyrrells Crisps founder William Chase, and Warner Edwards Distillery, which creates gins flavoured with home-grown botanicals on a Northamptonshire farm.

Another is Dorset dairy farmer Jason Barber, founder of Black Cow Vodka. Not that the birth of this pure milk vodka in 2012 has much to do with the need to diversify in response to rock bottom milk prices in the supermarkets. For Barber, who’s spent more than £200k on developing his own still, the imperative was more personal than commercial.

“Why have I gone into vodka - have you ever milked cows?” he says. “I’ve done if for about 20 years and that’s enough to drive you to drink. This isn’t about diversification; it’s about my love of vodka. As a farmer you can’t afford the vodka so you think: hang on a minute, I’m going to have a go at this. And so I came up with the vodka.”

The result is no standard voddy, which is usually produced from grain or potatoes. Barber uses milk from his 250-head herd of cattle, separates the curds from the whey, using the former to produce Black Cow Cheddar, and fermenting the latter to produce a milk beer, which is then distilled, filtered and packaged in vessels modelled on the milk bottles of old.

“I go on the motto: work hard play hard,” says Barber. “If I want to go out all night and still get up in the morning, I drink vodka. I’ve always drunk vodka because it’s probably the cleanest spirit. so my head in the morning is fine. We make our vodka out of the lactose from milk. Because the raw material is so clean, it makes a really clean, smooth vodka with a creamy mouthfeel.”

Whether one’s head is any fresher following a night on the Black Cow is not a debate for here, but it’s clear that Barber has successfully followed in the footsteps of Chase and carved out a lucrative market for British-made vodka. Black Cow is now stocked by Sainsbury’s, Majestic Wine and M&S and exported as far afield as Australia, Singapore and the US.

Barber has bold ambitions for the brand: “I’d like it to be in every espresso martini that gets poured in a restaurant. Trust me – sling one part espresso, one part Black Cow and half of maple syrup in a shaker with ice and it makes the best espresso Martini; you get this creaminess coming through. We have more supermarkets asking for it, so we’re going to have make some decisions soon.”

Barber’s on course to produce 200,000 bottles of Black Cow this year. With 70cl of the vodka retailing for at least £28, that gives the brand a retail value of at least £5.6m. It’s not often you find that sort money at the bottom of a bottle, is it?

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