96% alcohol 100% legal

HENMANIA!! Declan the local customs and excise officer has just told me I have the thumbs up to become a Trade Facility warehouse. This means I can buy in the 96% proof organic spirit that I need to fortify the liqueurs 'in duty suspension'. This is a big advantage business wise, not least because a 25 litre tub of spirit costs approx £880 duty paid but only £112 sans duty. I still have to pay duty but only on my finished product rather than on the raw ingredients so anything I lose in the making process will be a lot less costly.

It has been an extremely long and muddled 'journey' getting to this point in which I have received contrary advice/instructions from different departments at national level, which people at local level have, in turn, contradicted. Declan, however, has proved to be the acceptable face of the taxman, finding a way to apply the spirit of the law without getting eternally bogged down in the letter of it.

The final piece of the jigsaw is now in place and when I return from holiday I will begin fermenting my first commercial batch - a raspberry liqueur.

Not thrilled with this potential capsule for the blackcurrant - a tone too on the lurid side of Imperial. What do you think?

In the field I've conducted the first mini-inventory of the season, with slightly disappointing results for the currant tricolore row. 50% of the blackcurrant cuttings are showing no signs of life, despite the blackcurrant cuttings in the next two rows being 100%. Happily the red and white of the tricolore are faring better scoring 79% and 69% respectively. I have back up for all of them in a separate cuttings bed which I can use to replace those who have fallen in the line of duty at the end of the growing season.

Must try harder!

These currant cuttings are not ready yet but I imagine it an important rite of passage for a young stem when a bird first deems them robust enough to perch on. I was not quick enought to catch it but below witness an elder cutting that's recently 'been there'!