Every good drink starts with a story. The story of Wild & Wonder Drinks - our small-batch Scottish botanical spirits brand - starts several thousand miles from East Lothian, on the outskirts of Oslo, Norway.
A childhood in the villmarken
That's where Tom Chisholm grew up, right on the edge of the villmarken - the wild forest that surrounded his home. Weekends were spent out foraging for berries and mushrooms with his grandmother, learning to read the woods: what was ripe, what was ready, and what was worth the walk to find. It's the kind of upbringing that either fades into a nice childhood memory or turns into a lifelong obsession. For Tom, it was very much the latter.
Wild & Wonder Drinks was founded by Tom Chisholm and Martin Peel, and it was born from Tom's twin obsessions: the drinks trade, and that early love of wild, foraged flavour. Years spent in and around the Scottish drinks industry taught him what makes a spirit genuinely good. Years spent foraging as a child, and hillwalking and getting mud on his boots ever since, taught him where the best flavours actually come from - and it isn't a lab.
Somewhere along the way, Tom teamed up with Martin, whose knack for building and growing food and drink businesses is the reason there's now an actual company here, rather than just a very enthusiastic man with a foraging bag and a dream. Tom's palate and Martin's head for business turned out to be a rather good combination - and together they set about building an independent Scottish spirits brand that did things differently.
"We wanted to create a brand that celebrates the quality of our native flavours, and make them relevant to today's drinking experiences," says Tom, "whether that's a cocktail in a high-end bar or at the garden BBQ with family and friends."
That's the whole philosophy in one sentence, really. No airs, no graces - just proper flavour, done properly, for however you like to drink it.
Forests, not factories: our East Lothian home
Our HQ sits on the beautiful East Lothian coast, but the real work happens further afield — in hedgerows, field edges, coastlines and, most of all, the forest. If you want to understand Wild & Wonder Drinks, picture Tom approaching a Scottish woodland the same way he once approached the villmarken as a kid with his gran: certain that the bark of this or the seed of that must taste of something wonderful, if you're patient enough to go and look. More often than not, he's right.
That's where our ingredients start their journey: rowan with its marzipan notes, hawthorn blossom destined for syrup, birch trees tapped for their sap in spring, and elder trees offering up blossom first, then berries by the crateful come September. It's a slower, stranger, more hands-on way to make a spirit than most big brands would bother with. We wouldn't have it any other way.
Every bottle is still hand-crafted in small batches, close to home in East Lothian. Not because it's easy - it very much isn't - but because it's the only way we know to get the flavour right. Somewhere out there, our backs are still recovering from a particularly heavy elderberry harvest.
Doing things differently, on purpose
We're an independent, challenger brand going up against some very big names, and we like it that way. Instead of chasing what everyone else is doing, we ask why not do it differently. It's how you end up with a vodka made from birch sap, or a liqueur built on hand-picked elderberries and wild herbs, rather than another me-too spirit doing the rounds of the supermarket shelf.
Our values are simple, and we try to live by them every day: do right by our people, our ingredients and the landscapes that provide them; stay curious about better ways to make better drinks; refuse to settle for "good enough"; and stay honest about who we are, even when that means not being everyone's cup of tea.
From the wild to wherever you are
Already stocked in some of the best bars, restaurants and retailers across Scotland and the UK, Wild & Wonder Drinks is our pledge to share the flavours of these landscapes with as many people as possible - served neat, shaken into a cocktail, or poured over ice at a garden gathering that's gone on rather longer than planned.
We call it a liquid walk in the woods. Pull on your (responsible) drinking boots, and come and join us.
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FAQs
Who founded Wild & Wonder Drinks? Wild & Wonder Drinks was founded by Tom Chisholm and Martin Peel, combining Tom's background in the drinks trade with Martin's experience building food and drink businesses.
Where are Wild & Wonder Drinks made? Every bottle is hand-crafted in small batches at our home on the East Lothian coast of Scotland, using wild-foraged and locally sourced botanicals.
What makes Wild & Wonder different from other Scottish spirits brands? Our range is built around wild, hand-harvested ingredients - elderberries, rosehips and birch sap among them - rather than mass-produced flavourings, giving each bottle a genuine sense of provenance and place.
