Wyesham WI reconvened in September, after the summer break and President Daphne Evans welcomed members to the meeting.

They enjoyed a very relaxed evening of Gin tasting, given by Nina of Silver Circle Distillery from Meend Farm at Penallt.

Nina was very generous with her samples and they were all given large measures, with tonic of course! She explained that in the past she had been working in music in Berlin, but did bar work to supplement her income. From that she got a job in a small distillery and eventually acquired a certificate in distilling.

Moving on to 2019 and the Silver Circle Distillery was founded and ready to open, just before the dreadful Covid pandemic hit. Nina explained that their vision was to have a craft distillery where the public could interact with the product – not a mass- producing factory, but the day that the product launched was the day the country went into lockdown.

Fortunately, local tv personality Kate Humble and her husband Ludo championed the product, Wye Valley Gin, when it featured on a Countryfile special report to show how small businesses were fairing. Kate and Ludo produced a short documentary and from that, sales of the gin soared.

Nina then moved on to tell them how gin is produced. It is distilled in pot stills. Juniper (imported from Macedonia where it has high quality limonene content from a lot of sunshine) must be the predominant ingredient but any flavourless alcohol can be used as a base – this is generally vodka. In Wye Valley Gin coriander seeds, angelica root, with sweet woodruff and mugwort being foraged locally are used to further infuse flavour! We learnt that sweet woodruff contains cumarin – a marzipan flavour and that mugwort is a witchy herb, giving very vivid dreams!

or Wye Valley, juniper and coriander is placed in the pot, with the other botanicals placed in the collar. As the alcohol vaporises so it passes up the collar and through the botanicals before cooling as pure alcohol. A most enjoyable evening full of high-spirited laughter!!

At the October meeting, they had the pleasure of hosting Chris from Bees for Development that evening.

Chris, originally from South Africa, gave a most enlightening talk about the charity, based here in Monmouth, where all the profits from the shop go to the charity.

This year, over 1,000 knitted bees had been produced by various groups and individuals to help the promotion of the charity, some of which could still be seen in the shop (pictured).

Amongst supporters of the charity are HM Queen, Monty Don and Kate Humble, the latter two will be giving a talk at The Blake in January.

The mission of Bees for Development is to help people living in poverty to improve their lives through beekeeping. They encourage nature based beekeeping, encouraging people to make hives using materials around them to suit their own varieties of bees.

The presence of bees in SW Ethiopia is helping to reduce the speed of deforestation – only 3 per cent of the forest survives as they are cleared for roads, housing and timber for building - but if a healthy profit can be earned from bees then this is an argument to stop the deforestation. Hive owners are encouraged to provide a border against felling and provide fire breaks to minimise impact from forest fires.

Finally, any donations made to the charity between 3rd and 10th December will be doubled by the charity as the ‘Big Give Christmas’ campaign. Wyeham WI wish them every success with this.