Tolkien's Pine Tree

OWN A PIECE OF ‘TOLKIEN’S PINE’
30 bottles will be housed in a beautiful limited edition box made directly from the famous Black Pine tree. These bottles will also contain a limited edition print of the Black Pine tree by Stanley Donwood and a limited edition letterpress booklet. Each bottle will be numbered.

To celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the Oxford Botanic Garden, The Oxford Artisan Distillery is set to launch a limited edition whisky – Black Pine Whisky - to celebrate Hobbit Day on the 22nd September. The delicious Rye Whisky, inspired by ‘Tolkien’s Pine’, comes with either a limited edition box or coaster created from wood of the legendary Black Pine which grew in the Botanic Garden for nearly 200 years and is best known for its association with JRR Tolkien.

The iconic Black Pine (Pinus nigra), likely planted in the early 1830s, met a tragic end in 2014 when it shed two massive branches and needed to be felled. The pine was the favourite tree of JRR Tolkien, and was often referred to as ‘Tolkien’s Pine’.

The Black Pine is also unmistakably present at the end of Philip Pullman’s ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy, when its heroin, Lyra, sits underneath this famous tree.

Journalist Emma Townshend wrote “The tree, possibly as old as 215 years, has been totemic in Oxford for its associations to JRR Tolkien, who sat and wrote beneath its branches, creating his Ents (giant talking trees) in response to its whirl-patterned bark.”

The Black Pine Whisky is a truly special item bringing together local Oxford artisans.