Jersey tourist attraction La Mare Wine Estate has swapped wine and spirit production for making high strength hand sanitiser.
The estate is using its St Mary distillery to produce thousands of bottles of 80% ethanol hand rub during what would usually be its busy tourist season. It is hoped the supply will help local critical services as well as the wider community, following a shortage of sanitising products in the global market.
The high strength formula is made using a World Health Organization (WHO) approved recipe and its use is effective in line with government advice of regular hand washing to fight the spread of the Covid-19.
La Mare’s head of production Tom Walker said, ‘Working with high strength ethanol is part of our daily job when producing our popular Royal Gins and other spirits so we already have the equipment, skills and bottling processes to produce large volumes pretty quickly and using a recipe recommended by the WHO made good sense. The normal manufacturing process has been amended to comply with social distancing guidelines and is working well.’
Fifty bottles have been donated to Jersey Hospice Care to support the work carried out at Clarkson House, and it is available to buy from maisondejersey.com in a 300ml pump bottle and a 500ml refill bottle.
Managing Director Tim Crowley said, ‘As a business we are normally focused on tourism, weddings and events at this time of year, so we obviously needed to diversify. With such shortages of high strength hand sanitiser, our team are really pleased to be putting their skills to use in such a positive way.’
For commercial enquiries contact Karen Jones on 01534 481178 or email admin@lamarewineestate.com.
Feature image: Director Tim Crowley with the sanitiser