The Ghost of the Mountain
The snow leopard is almost never seen. Only its tracks give it away.
High in the mountains of Central and South Asia lives a cat so elusive that the herders who share its ridgelines call it the ghost of the mountain. It moves at dawn and dusk, silent, and leaves almost nothing behind, but for a fleeting moment. And for that moment, you will find the outline of its tracks in the snow. Not for long though. The snow and wind soon take even those.
That is the spirit Snow Leopard Gin was created to capture. Rare by nature. Quiet by design.
Reading the Tracks
The researchers who protect the snow leopard rarely see one. Instead, they read the mountain. A pug mark pressed into fresh snow. A scrape on a ridgeline boulder. A tuft of smoke-grey fur caught on juniper. Each trace is logged, photographed and mapped. Piece by piece, a picture forms. A study of absence. A portrait of an animal that refuses to be watched, built entirely from what it leaves behind.
The mountain gives up its secrets slowly. You learn to move the way the leopard does. Patiently, and mostly unseen.
The Cat
A snow leopard can leap nine metres in a single bound and bring down prey three times its own weight, yet attacks on humans are all but unheard of, and none has ever been fatal. Its long tail, almost the length of its body, works as a balance pole on knife-edge ridgelines and wraps around it like a scarf against the cold.
This beautiful, majestic cat is why the gin exists. £500 from the sale of every bottle goes to the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation and its work protecting endangered species - the snow leopard among them.
