Aloe ferox, cut by hand in the veld above Albertinia

The cutting season

Aalwyn is forty hectares of wild aloe ferox on the hills above Albertinia, and almost none of it was planted by us — it was standing here long before the farm was bought in 1994. We cut in the veld rather than in rows. A tapper walks a slope, takes the outer leaves off a plant, and leaves it alone for about two years while they grow back. The cut leaves get stacked around a lined pan and the bitter sap drains out of them on its own for four or five hours. Nothing presses them and nothing heats them. That sap then dries on an open pan in the sun until it goes hard and amber, and it is broken up by hand off the drying floor. The inner leaf goes down to the workroom the same afternoon, gets filleted, filtered and bottled inside the week. The bitters taste the way they do because we do not wash the aloin out of them, which is the part that makes them work and also the part that makes people pull a face. If you were hoping for something sweet, this is the wrong farm.