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At first glance this issue’s main features might seem very much like an eclec tic collection. They range from sake being brewed in Arizona, to Kenyan gin made with fresh juniper berries, to London absinthe, to Brighton’s leading distillery.
Little in common, you think.
No, there is very much a common thread with all, for what do you do in a crowded or unforgiving market? You stand out with innovation and quality, so nobody mistakes you for another.
I had read a short article in National Geographic Traveller which mentioned a Japanese master sake brewer creating award winning sake in the middle of no where-Arizona. I thought there had to be much more a story than NGT reported so while on a trip to this stunningly beautiful western state, I decided to meet Atsuo Sakurai and bring back his story to you.
The day started off bad. I was about two-hours away from Holbrook where Arizona Sake is located and thanks to picking up a nail in a rear tyre, hitting the road at 8am turned into a 10.30 leaving time. This being mid-February and being in the red rock mountains of Sedona, not only had an ice storm come through the night before, now there was a forecast for heavy snow later that day. Leaving at 8am would have meant dodging the snow; leaving at 1030 meant hitting it on the way back, just as night was falling.
Atsuo was welcoming but puzzled; unbelievably modest, he couldn’t figure out why I drove that far to see him and in such bad weather conditions.
I’ll be honest, as I looked at the sky
turning gun barrel grey, I was beginning to wonder the same. Although in Japan he had married an American Navajo woman who taught English, Atsuo would never be confused with one of her ace students. But bit by bit, he started telling me his story.
If you’re ever in Seattle and down by the marina next to the Ballard Bridge, you’ll see some black, wooden fishing boats, dating back to the 1920s. They’re not museum pieces but active fishing boats which steam north to Alaskan waters for halibut, perhaps the most regulated fishery in the world. While the catch is valuable, what is extremely valuable is the fishing licence. There hasn’t been a new one granted for a serious number of years. If you want to catch halibut, that piece of paper will cost you a lot more than your boat.
In Japan, Atsuo faced something similar. The Japanese government controls the number of sake distilleries and if you want to break into the market, be pre pared to spend at least $1 million to buy out an existing sake brewer and get their licence. Atsuo is a certified master sake brewer and he’s worked for some famous sake houses. But he wanted to start his own craft sake brewery. He wanted it to be innovated and creative, something he couldn’t explore where he worked.
When his wife suggested they move to America, he was all for it. What he was not expecting was how isolated Holbrook is, which they went to first since it’s next to the Navajo reservation where his wife’s family lives. I won’t go further into his journey; you can read the story. But I’ll leave you this: A lesson he had to learn was, it’s not the water or the ingredients or the salt air that makes a beverage, it’s the brewer/distiller.
Procera Gin set high standards for themselves. The botanicals are to be all African, the bottles – hand blown at a plant that can only average about 100 a day – and the juniper berries have to be fresh. Wine isn’t made with dried raisins; why should gin, they reasoned. And speaking of high standards, the price tag for a bottle of their least expensive to £80 pounds. You want to stand out? Procera brings this notion to new heights. But it’s actually working. How? Read the story.
A young couple’s Devil Botany Distillery is creating London-based absinthe for the first time ever. Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett are taking one of Europe’s most misunderstood spirits and putting an East London spin to it.
And Kathy Caton of the Brighton Distillery is proving you can be ethical, transpar ent, inclusive in hiring, one of the nicest people in the industry – and still be successful.
Not trying to toot my own horn – okay, I am – you’re going to love these stories and what else is in this issue. Enjoy the read.
And more than just as PS...
The joint Brewers/Distillers Congress will be held on 9 December, 2022, at Lon don’s Business Design Centre. This joint show will consist of lectures, exhibitions and a huge assortment of free beer and spirit samples. Running from 10am to 18.30, the BDC is just a few minutes walk from Angel Tube Station. For ticket information, please contact Josh Henderson at: josh@reby.media I will see you there!
GREEN GLASS Want to craft an eco-concious bottle? Speak to our team.
The future of glass manufacturing is now, and we are committed to reducing our environmental impact, striving towards a net-zero future.
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As the gin market cools in the UK and Spain, it is beginning to heat up in Canada, Japan, Brazil, South Africa and India
Nobody seems to have told New Zealand tonic brand East Imperial that the UK market is sewn up tight. This fast growing tonic will be here soon
Casks made from exotic woods can add a special finish to your spirit. However, finding and buying these barrels can be a real challenge
For craft producers, it feels like you need to be a robber to get your bottle into a bar. Understanding what you’re up against is the first step
If you think nothing is easier than giving away free samples of your spirit, think again. How you do could be like walking in a mine field.
Ask a bartender – colour
Nothing brings more expectation to a drink than its colour. Not enough looks bland; too much looks artifical. This is even more important with low/no
Can good guys finish first in the spirit industry?
Kathy Caton and her hard bike peddling team are out to prove they can
No one disputes the human nose in producing spirits; no one disputes how easy it is to throw it off. Time to take a scientific view of gin quality
Absinthe gets new life Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Everett of Devil’s Botany are distilling absinthe for the first time ever in London. Green Muse or Guillotine of the Soul, you decide.
Wine is made with fresh grapes, not raisins, so why isn’t gin made with fresh juniper berries?
The hardest lesson Atsuo Sakurai had to learn was:
It’s not the equipment, ingredients, water, or fresh salt air that makes a drink, it’s all down to the distiller/brewer.
One hundred bottles of gin
There is a reason why Sean Murphey is grinning, he’s written The Scottish Gin Bible.
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The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) has said that the new UK gov ernment is delivering on promises to help the industry.
Mark Kent, chief executive of the SWA, commented on the freeze on spirits duty announced by the Chancellor. “Prime Minister Liz Truss said that it was important to back the Scotch whisky industry to boost growth, and today the government has delivered.
“The Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng has frozen duty on Scotch whisky and other spir its, meaning the planned double-digit inflationary increase will now not go ahead. This will save consumers £1.35 on the average priced bottle of Scotch whisky and help the industry as it deals with the dual challenge of rising energy costs and supply chain pressures.
“On behalf of the SWA’s members, I want to thank the government for listening to the concerns of the industry and taking action to Support Scotch. The duty freeze will not only support our sector, but the hospitality industry and the wider econo my.
“Further action will be needed to bring down the 70 percent tax burden on Scotch whisky in the UK, which remains the highest in the G7 and one of the highest in the world. We look forward to working with the new HM Treasury team to ensure Scotch Whisky can deliver investment, employment, and growth in Scotland and across our supply chain.”
This is highly important to the industry as the tax burden on the average priced bottle of Scotch whisky it at 70 percent due to high rates of spirits duty. A recent survey revealed over half of Scotch whisky distillers have seen their costs double in the last 12 months and expect further increases in the next year. In the survey conducted by the SWA, it found that 57 percent of distillers have seen energy costs increase by more than ten percent in the last year, with nearly a third (29 percent) seeing their energy costs double. Nearly 40 percent of business es, which produce the UK’s number one food and drink export, reported shipping costs doubling in the last 12 months, with 43 percent also reporting supply chain cost rises of more than 50 percent.
The survey also found most distillers see costs rising further over the next year, with 57 percent of businesses expecting energy costs to go up by a further 50 percent and nearly three quarters (73 percent) anticipating another 50 percent increase in shipping costs. However, despite rising costs, the industry expects to continue to invest in opera tions and supply chain. 57 percent of distillers reported an increase in their number of staff in the past 12 months, with all respondents expecting to need to add to their workforces in the coming year.
As the gin boom cools in established markets such as the UK and Spain, growth opportunities emerge in a num ber of non-traditional markets, including Brazil and India.
The quest for new markets will be ever more important, according to spirit data collection agency IWSR, with the total UK gin market forecasted to decline at a CAGR of -4 percent between 2021 and 2026,
Data from IWSR shows that the UK and Spain have now reached ‘peak gin’, with volume consumption plateauing – but both markets are set to remain important sources of innovation and value for the category in the future. Meanwhile, flavour diversification is a major trend driving gin for established brands in particular, but a new wave of locally produced premium gins is also exploiting growth opportuni ties in non-traditional gin markets, such as India and Brazil.
According to IWSR forecasts, global volumes of standard-and-above priced gins are poised to grow at a CAGR of +5 percent between 2021 and 2026. While volume growth in the three largest gin markets of the US, UK and Spain will be subdued, strong gains are expected in other top 20 markets: IWSR expects dou ble-digit CAGR volume growth in markets including Canada, Japan, South Africa, and India from 2021 to 2026, alongside CAGR volume growth of just under 10 percent in markets such as Italy, Brazil, and Australia.
“While established gin markets have seen category growth starting to peak, there are a number of other non-tradi tional markets that are seeing gains. The ongoing recovery of the key on-trade channel post-Covid has reinforced previously emerging tailwinds for gin in these markets,” said Jose Luis Hermoso, research director at IWSR.
In India, locally produced IMFL gins dominated the market for many years,
but – as in South Africa – the emergence of a local craft scene has transformed the category. Meanwhile, imported gins are growing strongly, but from a small base. Total gin volumes increased by 50% in 2021, remaining below pre-pandemic lev els. However, volumes for the standardand-above price bands have more than doubled since 2019, and are expected to almost treble by 2026, according to IWSR figures.
“The Indian craft category is expected to go from strength to strength, with the strong likelihood of more brands and more investment, from large and small players alike,” said Jason Holway, market analyst at IWSR. “Leading international players are also able to offer a well-re garded gin brand, which should help to maintain momentum at the premi um-plus end of the category, moving the centre of gravity gradually upwards.”
George Clooney’s Casamigos Tequila is the fastest-growing spirits brand, almost tripling in value since last year and is now valued at $450 million, up 177 percent. After its sale to the UK-based multina tional alcohol company Diageo in 2017 for around $1 billion, Clooney’s brand contin ues to perform strongly with tequila sales skyrocketing globally. Not only has the brand followed sector-wide trends, but it has also pushed further than others by doubling sales this year.
The brand has also announced its plans to invest over $500m to expanding pro duction capabilities in Mexico, with the increased investment expected to assist in securing further growth for the brand in coming years.
Every year, leading brand valuation con sultancy Brand Finance puts 5,000 of the world’s biggest brands to the test, and publishes around 100 reports, ranking brands across all sectors and countries. The world’s top 50 most valuable and strongest spirits brands are included in the annual Brand Finance Spirits 50
Tequila is the fastest growing spirit brand and the envy of all other celebrity spirits
ranking.
In addition to brand value, Brand Finance determines the relative strength of brands through a balanced scorecard of metrics evaluating marketing invest ment, stakeholder equity, and business performance.
Ramsbury Brewing & Distilling Compa ny has announced the appointment of, Nikolas Fordham, as general manager. Fordham will oversee the operations of the Ramsbury Brewing & Distilling Com pany, which produces Ramsbury single estate gin and vodka. He has joined Ramsbury with over a decade’s worth of industry experience, following his first position as distillery manager at Chivas Brothers Limited back in 2008. Before joining Ramsbury, he was head of operations of Tarquin’s Gin since 2017, where he was instrumental to its growth and success as a business, from NPD to site wide operations. Prior to that, he was master distiller and head of oper ations at The Bombay Spirits Company. Fordham said: “I’m thrilled to be appoint ed to general manager of Ramsbury Brewing & Distilling Company. Operating
a true grain to glass approach, every ele ment is harvested from the Ramsbury Es tate, from planting and growing the trees that fuel our biomass boiler to harvesting the Horatio and Spotlight wheat, all on a single field.”
The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax Trade Bureau has started to create an official
“American Single Malt” designation, reports The Denver Gazette.
The rules to qualify as an American Sin gle Malt whiskey are as follows:
u Made from 100% malted barley
u Distilled entirely at one distillery u Mashed, distilled and matured in the USA
u Matured in oak casks of a capacity not exceeding 700 litres
u Distilled to no more than 80% ABV u Bottled at 40% ABV
The Bureau is currently in the public comment phase of the process to “set forth the standards to identify distilled spirits,” according to its website. TBB offi cials said the proposal came after years of industry lobbying, mostly by the Amer
ican Single Malt Whiskey Commission. US distillers of single malt whiskey feel that by having the designation, it will put them on the same par as bourbon, Irish whiskey, and Scottish whisky.
Data sows shows that ready to drink (RTD) product launches are increasing ly leaning into super-premium pricing, packaging with less plastic, fewer direct health claims, and greater diversity of alcohol content, with half of all new RTD products having an ABV of 5% or higher. New RTD brand owners, as well as established producers, are increas ingly introducing products with higher ABV rather than focusing on the more traditional 3-5% ABV range. Around half of all new RTDs launched in the second half of 2021 had an alcohol content of five percent or higher. This trend has been led by China, the US, and Australia, but is not universal. Other countries such as Ger many and Japan are seeing a decrease in new innovations with higher ABVs.
The RTD markets continues to fly. This is true across the key RTD markets –Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, the UK, and the US – which represent 85 percent of global consumption of RTDs.
“The ability to respond to consumer needs goes some way to explaining the rapid rise of RTDs,” says Brandy Rand, COO Americas at IWSR which conducted the research.
The number of RTD products using plastic-only packaging is reducing. Data shows that just one percent of new RTD products used plastic-only packaging in the second half of 2021, down from five percent in the first half of the year. In the UK, a strong majority of RTD beverages are sold in metal cans.
Scottish Construction News reports that a pre-planning application for the
RTD consumers are willing to pay more for premium brands which are eco-friendly with packaging and have a higher ABV
redevelopment of an industrial site has been submitted to the City of Edinburgh Council with plans to invest £150 million into building a whisky warehouse. The £150m investment in redeveloping the industrial estate will go towards 40 new bonded warehouse buildings which will accommodate 80,000 square metres of regulatory compliant maturation space together with associated disgorging and ancillary accommodation.
While like in here in the UK the number of alcohol drinkers drop each year as the latest generations seemed turned-off by spirits and beer, US cannabis laws are allowing pot lounges and here is where growth is happening, according to Sev enFiftyDaily.
A Gallup poll found that 49 percent of US adults have used cannabis compared to 45 percent two years earlier. It appears in early studies that younger generations, the first to have widespread legal access
to recreational cannabis as soon as they turned of age, have an even stronger preference for cannabis. A survey by the cannabis research firm New Frontier Data found that 69 percent of people aged 18 to 24 preferred cannabis over alcohol. However, while this might be the trend of the moment, no one is sure if it’s got legs. Brandon Dorsky, CEO of cannabis edible brand Fruit Slabs, says he excepts the draw of cannabis lounges could be short-lived.
“While consumption lounges are a great option for tourists, people with children who cannot consume at home, and those wanting a novelty experience, they are still expensive relative to consum ing outside of the lounge,” Dorskey told SevenFiftyDaily.
An issue, too, is that many users of cannabis in the States prefer the use of edibles as opposed to inhaling cannabis. If users are partaking edibles in a lounge, what will they do for the one to two hours before the effects start kicking in?
In the UK, cannabis lounges for the time are not an issue. However, many people believe that the laws pertaining to can nabis will change if and when the Tories leave office. Already the UK is Europe’s largest legal grower of cannabis, and most UK police forces are not enforcing
drug laws when it comes to personal use. For the past 300+ years, almost every UK law regarding spirts has revolved around taxation, not public health. Distillers Journal believes that this will spur the government into legalising cannabis.
According to data collection agency Shepper (see elsewhere in issue), the UK’s tonic water market is sewn up be tween Fever-Tree, Schwepps, and a few in-house brands. The problem for anyone trying to crack this market is bar/pub space availability – a bar’s refrigerator can only hold so much product. Nobody, however, seems to have told New Zealand’s tonic brand East Imperial this, which will be hitting the UK soon, according to its website. So far, East Imperial has been a mere fly to Fever-Tree’s elephant. Despite a huge downturn in business last year, for the first half of 2022 Fever-Tree made a pretax profit of £17.6 million (this is opposed
to £25.3m for the same period last year). East Imperial made around £3 million during the same period last year. However, a problem East Imperial has in selling in the all-important US market will soon be solved when a bottling deal
New Zealand’s East Imperial brand tonic water is entering the tough world of international brands led by Fever-Tree and Schwepps
is signed in the States. This will eliminate costly shipping across the Pacific. Will this be enough to start taking a significant share of Fever-Tree’s market? Only time will tell.
We live in exciting times as more and more spirits are arriving on the market with
increasingly exotic ageing and finishes: Marsala, Saké, Vin Santo, Amaro, Mizunara oak, Colombian oak, etc. But sourcing the casks to obtain these glamourous spirit finishes can prove to be an adventure in itself. Indeed, it would be easy to assume that new and used casks are readily available and easily purchased. However, from the point of view of the cooper or cask supplier, it can be an involved process, especially when it comes to exotic casks.
Let’s examine the case of new oak supply such as Japanese Mizunara casks, made from one of the most qualitative and expensive oaks in the world, or Quercus Humboldtii (Andean oak/Columbian oak), another innovative option from Latin America. The demand for this type of oak has increased in recent years and rightly so. However, not only is it expensive and qualitative, but it is also extremely rare and protected. What are the hidden challenges behind sourcing this type of cask that one needs to consider?
Time to test the barrels: At a cost of several thousand euros, Mizunara oak casks are typically purchased in small quantities at first. The testing time frame for liquid development can be several months and by the time this testing is complete, the availability of supply to reorder these barrels may have changed significantly. For a larger order, both production and shipping times must be added, thus the landscape and lead-time of purchasing might have changed.
Logistical challenges: When acquiring exotic barrels, we have to be prepared for exotic situations. This also applies
to logistics. We are facing certain extreme situations in some parts of the globe, with typhoons and heavy rains, damaged roads, criminal activity, etc. If the cooperage is located in a remote area, as is often the case, this can cause challenges and delays to transport goods to the port of departure.
Lead-time: This depends on the buying process. The local supplier must find a reliable and legal wood source, often including a license to fell trees. In the case of Mizunara oak, high level government officials have to sign the extraction permits. Time is needed to then dry the staves sufficiently. The cooper then works the wood and makes the casks. Often, the more exotic the wood, the harder it is to work. All of these stages, which are equally important, result in quite an important lead time which should be considered when buying casks.
Volume supply: There is a worldwide pressure for wood but not always because it is scarce. The demand from multiple sectors such as construction, whisky industry, etc. has dramatically increased, therefore leading to competition in the supply of wood. It is clear that forest protection is one of the vital issues facing our industry and therefore puts some additional pressure on the volume available of timber. It is worth noting that wood suppliers often favour their long-standing customers with whom they already have established a relationship of trust: this can result in longer lead-times for new buyers.
Knowledge of these different elements is useful when defining purchasing and supply strategies in order to avoid any unexpected delays. Good suppliers should be able to give context on this
because they are used to dealing with these challenges across the globe. The points discussed above also often apply to select second-hand casks.
There are many things to think about when buying select, quality, used barrels. First is seasonality. I need to replenish my stock of casks of a specific wine. Are these casks available at the moment? If not, when is the harvest period for this wine? Given that harvest time can vary by several months and therefore delay the availability of barrels.
Is the wine from the barrel I am using for finishing in a growing or declining consumer market as we have already seen in the sherry industry?
Will I scale this product? If so, discuss possible volumes in good time with the cask supplier.
Can I be less specific on my labelling to ensure a wider sourcing to meet my volumes in the future.
We hope the elements in this article may help you in supplier conversations to allow simple changes in foresight and planning of cask inventory. In the current context all of us are looking for sensible and sustainable solutions for future sourcing while maintaining excellent impact of wood on spirit maturation.
The cask specialist team at Alter Oak in France
BIG GIN MIGHT HAVE A GRIP ON THE UK HOSPITALITY TRADE, BUT THIS DOESN’T MEAN YOU CAN’T GET IN. GETTING THE RIGHT DATA WILL HELP YOU UNDERSTAND YOUR MARKET AND COMPETITORS.
On the surface it doesn’t
look great for craft gin distillers who want to get into the hospitality trade.
Despite the massive
boom in local and small batch craft gin brands, big gin is favoured in the UK’s ontrade and hospitality industry, according to Toby Darbyshire of data collection agency Shepper. Darbyshire tells Distillers Journal that around 50 percent of the UK marketplace is dominated by Beefeater at 22 percent, Tanqueray at 18 percent, and Bombay Sapphire and Gordons combined at 10 percent. But, he adds, this isn’t a closed market and you can get in with the right information.
This research was conducted by Shepper’s community of data-collectors – called ‘Shepherds’ – and was based on a sample of 1,000 independent freetrade sites, alongside some regionally
and nationally managed pub and bar groups, showcasing the gin and tonic buying experience. How accurate is this data?
“I view this as very much real people collecting real data in real places. We don’t use any sort of data, web scraping for information, we’re not building our insight out that way. We collect the state of the nation information as it’s happening on the shelf, giving you an instant view of reality,” says Darbyshire. While most of the time Shepherds are gleaming information for specific clients, in this case Shepper itself was the client. How it would normally work would be for a company to approach Shepper, let’s says Brown’s Whisky. Brown’s wants to find out if its whisky is being place on supermarket shelves as its distributor is claiming. It wouldn’t be practical for Brown’s to send out its own employees
to visit 500 supermarkets, so it hires Shepper, which in turns sends out its Shepherds.
Besides checking Brown’s product placement, its Shepherds can also look at Brown’s competition in these markets. With this real data, Shepper can advise Brown’s about its distributor/distribution, any apparent missed opportunities, trends, or even if the market is saturated.
With gin, Shepper was curious about the whole market – not a specific brand –and saw this as an opportunity to create a report distilleries would be interested in buying.
“I think for everyone, gin is a leading category. Within spirits, there’s huge choice and I was interested to see how that differs and alters amongst the trade landscape,” says Darbyshire. “My professional history sits in in alcohol sales and predominantly spirits. So, this was something quite close to my heart and I was interested to see the results, having witnessed this market over the years.”
According to Darbyshire, the Shepherds were giving the instruction of going into a pub, bar, restaurant, or hotel and order a gin and tonic.
“They didn’t ask for a specific gin; they showed no preference. The base point was getting a really organic serve and organic operational behaviour,” he says. “Most customers don’t ask for a specific gin; they just ask for a gin and tonic and we wanted to duplicate this.”
The lower priced G&Ts were around £5.60 with the most expensive over £20, which begs the question: Why? “Location, it is all about location. We looked at the entire landscape, with the most expensive G&T served at the American Bar in The Savoy, which when you think about it, it’s probably not that surprising,” he says. “We wanted to keep some of those real prestige, exclusive venues in there just to understand the game, to have a real sort of broad spectrum of segmentation in there. “In the Midlands and East Midlands, the average price was coming out at about £5-6, with the absolute cheapest found in Nottingham at £3.20. But certainly, London had a disproportionate number
of expensive gins. I think the next one after that was somewhere in Mayfair, Kensington, for about £16.50. So yeah, location is king!”
“When the report came in, we could see that Brighton has got huge local support for its local Brighton Gin, it’s ubiquitous in the town. It’s also got support of a couple of established pub groups as well, which gives it more of a reach than maybe your regular independent gin,” says Darbyshire. “There’s also a similar thing in Scotland, where we ran our survey in Edinburgh and where Edinburgh Gin was seen in maybe 50 to 100 places.
(53 per cent) serving the mixer. It was followed by Schweppes at 16 per cent. Only one in four outlets served a tonic other than one of these two brands. Franklin & Sons was over-indexed in the East Midlands, which is close to the home of the brand.
“This would be a very hard market for someone to break into,” says Darbyshire, with one of the main problems being the lack of space in a bar/pub’s refrigerator.
When looking at Edinburgh Gin or Brighton Distillery, one thing that both of them got right was to become masters of their own territory, says Darbyshire. [See Brighton Gin in this issue.] In addition to this, you need to get on a bar’s menu so consumers will ask for your gin.
“Historically the menu is the biggest key driver of a purchasing decision. Whether it’s giving the consumers a real call to action, or perhaps providing additional liquid credentials, or price point, or even a flavour profile,” says Darbyshire. “All these things aid their decision in asking for your gin.
“If I was a gin brand and going into an ontrade environment, I know my first port of call would be trying to get featured on that menu to really try and change consumers buying decisions. We see this everywhere. Menus are ubiquitous, they’re use to try to get people to make a more informed decision based on what their preferences are.”
What is interesting that we didn’t see this duplicated in Leeds, Manchester, or Liverpool as much.”
One thing Shepper hadn’t expected was that the shape of the glass could influence what the price of a G&T was. “It appeared that the higher the price point, the more a balloon glass – or those typical – were used. Less than £6-7 pounds and they weren’t used, so that seems to be the price point when consumers are expecting a nicer glass,” he says.
Another thing the report discovered was how wrapped up the tonic market is. Fever-Tree was by far the most customary tonic on offer with over half
For more on this report with Toby Darbyshire, be sure to listen to Distillers Journal’s podcasts.
This article tries to distil
(sorry!) the complex rules of what is a bona fide giveaway of alcohol compared to sales of alcohol requiring a licence. We are looking at England and Wales; Scotland has different rules.
Given the rise in popularity of low alcohol and zero alcohol spirits, it is worth noting that any drink below 0.5% ABV at the time of sale falls outside of the definition of an alcoholic drink and therefore is exempt. Let’s start with the basics. Licensing legislation in the context of alcohol is concerned with sales from regulated premises. For these purposes, the world is neatly divided into premises where alcohol can be legally sold and the rest of England and Wales where it can’t. But matters are not quite that simple. Sales of alcohol are defined in S1 (a) Licensing Act 2003 as relating solely to ‘sales by retail’ of alcohol or, for completeness, supply of alcohol in the context of private member’s clubs.
So, firstly, wholesale of alcohol is not regulated. This is explicitly set out in the Licensing Act (s.192(2) – for those who are interested – as an exemption from the definition of sale. Therefore a ‘sale’ to a trader, a personal licence
holder, a premises licence holder, or a premises user in relation to a temporary event notice permitting sales of alcohol – where that person is then selling the alcohol on – is not a ‘sale’ in the eyes of licensing law.
The reason is this: only the person selling the alcohol to the consumer needs to hold a licence. In practical terms, a distillery does not need a premises licence to sell alcohol, so long as the sales are wholesale. This is well understood, of course.
So, a sale will only ever be a sale if it is to a consumer. But we still have not clarified what a ‘sale’ in this context is. For instance, if you buy a ticket to an event which includes a ‘free’ drink, would this be a sale? What if you give alcohol away to customers, but ask for a voluntary donation, or perhaps, make it necessary for the person receiving the free drink to buy a place mat, for, say the price of a gin and tonic? All of these have been tried in the past. Most have fallen foul of the law. This is because the first offence set out in the legislation relating to sales of alcohol makes it illegal to ‘carry on to attempt to carry on’ a sale of alcohol from any premises not licensed to do so, or at times not licensed to do so. This is why the old fashioned ‘lock-in’ is illegal.
The offence, if a sale is made, can occur anywhere.
So why would it be a sale, for instance, to give away free drinks as part of an event where customers buy tickets to attend? Sales, in this context are broadly defined. Where there is a requirement to purchase a ticket before receiving any ‘free drinks’, this would be considered a sale as there is a clear value assigned to the gift of the alcohol, whether your guests take you up on the offer or not.
Other enlightening examples of how this works in practice would be where a hairdresser or bridal boutique offers an alcoholic drink to their customers. Where you are incentivised to purchase something, or you are offered a drink once you are in the barber’s chair or trying on dresses, you have value for the drink. This would therefore constitute a sale. To be a genuine give-away, and therefore not a sale, you would technically have to offer the same drinks to anyone passing by who
asked, irrespective of whether they then committed to a bit off the top or to tie the knot, or not.
Some people have attempted to get around having to hold a premises licence by offering drinks to anyone who asks, but then suggesting a ‘voluntary’ donation is made to keep the premises going, or a ‘voluntary’ purchase of a beer mat at a suggested price more akin to a cost of a pint than a circle of printed card.
If the ‘voluntary’ element is in fact more like a ‘wink wink voluntary’ donation, again, there is value for the alcohol and this would be illegal. By the way, it is irrelevant whether you make a profit or not.
It is worth noting that the offence of selling alcohol without a licence, can lead to unlimited fines and potentially up to six months in prison for those found guilty of offences, so there can be serious consequences for trying to grift the system.
On the positive side, let’s look at what
you can do without a licence. Giving away samples, for instance, would not be classified as a sale, as there has been nothing of value received at the time of the give-away. This is, of course, so long as there is no requirement for the sampler to buy anything.
However, some caution is needed to ensure that, if you are providing samples in public spaces, you have the relevant permissions from the council to do so. It is also worth bearing in mind that samples should be exactly that. Also, putting in place measures to ensure you are not giving away alcohol to children and that samplers are not relying on your largess to get merry makes good practical and legal sense.
What is the key take-away here? Well, it can be summed up nicely by reference to the ‘sniff test’. If it smells like a scam, it is likely to be a scam. If you start with the premise that giving something away should come with no strings attached, you are unlikely to go wrong – but if in doubt, seek advice.
We’ve all done this. You’re at a pub, bar, or even a restaurant. You know what you’re going to have when suddenly a drink or a plate of food catches your eye. “I’ll have one of those instead,” you say. Why? Most probably it was the colour. This plays an important part in what we choose to drink and if you’re not thinking about colour, you could be missing out on sales.
According to research by Charles Spence on the psychological impact of food colour – published by BioMed Central – colour is the single most important product-intrinsic sensory cue when it comes to setting people’s expectations regarding the likely taste and flavour of food and drink.
the younger group’s judgment of the overall flavour intensity of the chicken bouillon was influenced by the amount of colouring that had been added to the sample. More colour, more flavour. Some researchers have conducted a number of psychophysical studies showing that the addition of food colouring can deliver as much as 10 percent perceived sweetness. In other research, it has been shown that people will consume more candy if it comes in a variety of colours than if presented in just a single colour even if that colour happens to be the consumer’s favourite one. Increasing the colour variety – as in Smarties, M&Ms and Jellybeans – increases the amount consumers eat.
A huge amount of laboratory research has demonstrated that changing the hue or intensity/saturation of the colour of food and beverage items can exert sometimes a dramatic impact on expectations. You see something with a brilliant fruity red, you’ll expect the drink to have just as intense flavour as its hue. One study examined the effect of food colouring on perceived flavour intensity and acceptability ratings in samples of chicken bouillon and chocolate pudding. These foods were presented with no colour added, with the normal (commercial) level of food colouring, or with twice the normal level of colour added.
The participants tasted and evaluated the three samples of either food, using visual analogue scales. Younger adults (20 to 35 years of age) were found to be more affected by the presence of food colouring than were the older adults (60 to 90 years of age). Interestingly,
While for years in the States, cereal manufacturers were telling children that multicoloured cereals such as Trix, Fruit Loops, and others were flavoured according to the colour. For example, red was cherry, yellow was lemon, and orange pieces were orange flavoured. Manufacturers have since come clean and admitted Trix and Fruit Loop pieces all have the same flavour, despite for years kids arguing that they could taste the different between each colour. However, should the colour not match the expected taste, then the result may well be a negative.
Given the ambiguity in the meaning of colour in foods and beverages, it can sometimes be important that the name and description of a food or beverage set the right sensory or expectations or else help to disambiguate between the different possible meanings that may be associated with a given colour.
Researchers demonstrated that when the meaning of food colouring is misinterpreted – it sets the wrong
sensory expectations – then this can have an adverse effect on people’s subsequent taste ratings.
In a study, participants were given a bright pink ice cream to taste. One group of participants was given no information about the dish, another group was informed that the food was called ‘Food 386’, and a third group was told that what they were about to eat was a frozen savoury smoked salmon mousse – which is what it was.
Those participants who had not been given any information about the dish, were led by their eyes into expecting that they would taste a strawberry-flavoured ice cream.
Expecting this and getting smoked salmon turned them off to the mousse, with most rating it as being too salty. By contrast, those participants in the other two groups rated the seasoning of the dish as being just right, and what is more, liked the savoury ice far more as well. In one famous study, dinner party guests were invited to dine on a meal of steak, chips, and peas. The only thing that may have struck any of the diners as odd was how dim the lighting was. However, this aspect of the atmosphere was actually designed to help hide the food’s true colour.
Part-way through the meal, the lighting was returned to normal, revealing that the steak had been artificially coloured blue, the chips looked green, and the peas had been coloured red. A number of the guests suddenly felt ill when the lighting was turned to normal levels, with several of them apparently heading straight for the bathroom.
Different cultures perceive a colour as tasting different. This can be extremely valuable to know if you’re thinking of marketing a product to a foreign country. For example, in the UK a bluish drink is assumed to be raspberry flavoured. In Taiwan, it’s mint. Red in the UK is seen as cherry or strawberry flavoured. Again, in Taiwan, it’s seen as being cranberry flavoured.
A few years back Burger King, and then followed by McDonalds, used squid ink to create a black bun for sales in Japan and the Philippines. While this was a
massive hit in Asia due to people having more exposure to different seafoods, it was a flop in the States when Burger King tried to market it as a Halloween burger. There appeared to be two major factors. The first was that in the West, people perceive food which is black as being rotten. The second was that the colouring used in the bun would turn your stool green.
And then there’s no colour.
In the USA, commercial slots during the Super Bowls are more expensive than any other time of the year and the most anticipated. Hit it right, you’ll make a fortune like when Apple introduced Macintosh Computer in 1984. Hit it wrong and you’ll be remembered for that. Halfway through Super Bowl 1993, a commercial broke with ‘Right Now’ by the rock band Van Halen, and featured an astronaut, a rhino, and a woman drinking an oddly clear drink. “Right now, we’re all thirsty for something different, introducing Crystal Pepsi!”
It was a drink giving you all the great flavour of Pepsi, but clear. Millions of Americans were excited to try it and millions did – once. There were few second takers, and it was a massive flop, later called one of the biggest product failures of all time by Time Magazine David Novak, the former Pepsi marketing executive who created the soft drink said in reflection, long after Crystal Pepsi had been pulled from the shelves: “It could have been more than a novelty,” he said. “It was probably the best idea I’ve ever had – and the most poorly executed.”
While there are a number of theories out there in marketing literature about what went wrong, one suggestion is that when such drinks are tasted away from their packaging, then it’s likely the drinker gets an experience that they are not expecting. People saw a clear liquid in a glass and were expecting it to taste like lemonade or soda water. When the flavour they tasted, however, was cola, the non-expectation of this led to a negative experience.
For those wondering just how important colour is in a drink, award-winning bartender, mixologist, TV drinks’ expert,
and creator of Crossip – a non-alcoholic adult drink – Carl Anthony Brown tells Distillers: “Ultimately, flavour is the most important aspect of any finished drink. But when it comes to the full experience of drinking a cocktail, the presentation of that drink is incredibly important, hence why cocktails have been developed with specific glassware, garnishes and even the flamboyant manner with which that drink is made. The colour of the finished drink is a key element of this presentation that should not be overlooked,” he says.
When behind a bar, do people choose drinks by colour?
“I personally would not say that colour is the driving factor for people choosing specific drinks, otherwise cocktail menus across the globe would feature images rather than a list of ingredients. But there’s no doubt that oftentimes, people will come to the bar and ask for ‘what he/ she’s having’ because of the allure of the colour and presentation of a drink they’ve spotted.”
With a cocktail, you want to give people something new and exciting, but would you say you also have to give them something they’re expecting, especially when it comes to colour?
“Subconsciously, I believe that people look for a drink whose colour is authentic. Yes, a bright colour may be attractive, but it must be created using the true colours of the ingredients themselves. Creating a flavourful drink and then, say, using food colouring to match the expectation of the person ordering it, just doesn’t sit well with me.”
With Pepsi Clear, do you think it could have worked or are we too entrenched that cola drinks are dark caramel coloured?
“It absolutely could have worked! Times are changing, as are perceptions. In my world of non-alcoholic drinks, 15 years ago, the notion of a No & Low beverage that was full of flavour was unthinkable. The perception was that non-alcoholic drinks were poor substitutes of the real thing and required compromise. That perception has now changed, but it needs to be developed over time with the right messaging, which is where I believe Pepsi Clear went wrong. The
narrative around the product was a bit confused, as they tried to market a product that was full of sugar as being ‘pure’!”
During the five years it took to produce the first Crossip beverages, you’ve mentioned how you were after certain mouth sensations and flavours. Did colours also rate pretty high?
“Colour was always rated highly, but not at the detriment of the flavour experience. I refused to compromise on this for the sake of presentation. I always had the confidence that the hues of the raw natural ingredients would produce a final colour that was fitting of our brand with an air of authenticity and quality.”
Did you make any trial Crossips which while tasted good, but looked horrible? “’Horrible’ might be a strong way of terming it, but we absolutely had to play around with the filtration process until we had a final liquid that was fitting of the look and feel we were looking for. Ultimately, we didn’t want to lose the flavour quality of the liquid but recognised we couldn’t offer a liquid whose colour was a touch ‘bartender brown’!”
Do you use any artificial colours or is it all natural?
“There are absolutely no artificial colours used in any Crossip flavour. We’re extremely proud of this.”
With something like your Pure Hibiscus, it being red is no surprise. But with Dandy Smoke, were you after a specific colour? “Dandy Smoke was borne out of the flavour profiles of rum, whiskey and mezcal based cocktails, so there’s no doubt we were happy that the final colour was akin to these traditional alcoholic spirits. But that was not the goal from the outset, it was more a happy coincidence that we had an inkling was likely due to the colours of the lapsang tea leaves which are the core ingredient in Dandy Smoke.”
With your newest flavour, Blazing Pineapple, what are your thoughts regarding its colour?
“Blazing Pineapple is bright and powerful,
that’s for sure!! It really does emulate the flavour profiles of the tiki tropical ingredients with the fiery nature of the scotch bonnet peppers. When I created the first batch of Blazing Pineapple, I saw the colours as the raw ingredients were being macerated and I knew we were onto a winner.”
You’re at numerous trade and consumer shows with Crossip, if people for some reason don’t notice the bottle’s name of Pure Hibiscus, do they immediately twig on that being the flavour or do they guess something else?
“Pure Hibiscus can sometimes be the most difficult flavour to articulate. Ultimately, it’s a bitter, floral and herbal taste experience, which perhaps does not tie into the pink hue which many perceive as being sweet. When we speak with the trade and consumers at the events you mentioned, it’s often Pure Hibiscus that has the biggest impact because of the sensory disruption; we love seeing their eyes light up at the first sip,” says Brown.
Carl Anthony Brown, is an award-winning bartender, mixologist and TV drink’s expert. Some of Carl’s accolades include winner
Light floral on the nose with rose peeking through backed up with crisp lemon and herbal bitterness on the palate.
35ml Crossip Pure Hibiscus
20ml Lemon Juice
10ml Rose Syrup
10ml Aquafaba
Add all ingredients to a shaker with no ice and shake. Fill shaker with Ice, shake again and strain into a chilled fancy glass. Garnish with rose petals.
of ‘The Young British Foodies’, IMBIBE
‘Drinks List of the Year and many more.
He’s worked for 18 years in the bar and drinks industry, including creating the drinks concept across the Dishoom group.
His latest venture has been launching the alcohol-free spirit, Crossip in 2020.
He is best described as a man who is seldom without an opinion.
A SPIRIT BY NATURE CAN HAVE A SMELL AND TASTE WHICH REFLECTS THE NATURAL AREA WHERE IT WAS DISTILLED AND AGED. BUT A SPIRIT CAN ALSO REFLECT THE VIBE AND FEEL OF THE CITY WHERE IT WAS MADE. DON’T BELIEVE THIS? JUST ASK KATHY CATON. VELO MITROVICH REPORTS
Rome might be the eternal city, New York the city that never sleeps, and San Franciscans say their city is actually European
– a claim made by people who have obviously never been to Europe. But Brighton is…well…it’s Brighton. While on one hand it would be easy to take the micky out of the City of Brighton & Hove – there has to be more nose ring piercings here per capita than any other part of the UK – survey after survey lists Brighton as being one of the happiest places to live and work. It’s also considered among the friendliest cities in the UK.
ABBA won the Eurovision song contest here; the first Body Shop opened in 1976; it’s the LGBTQ capital of Britain; and it’s a place where locals support independent shops and cafes.
During a recent data survey conducted by Shepper [see elsewhere in magazine] that looked at which gins were being poured in pubs, bars, restaurants, and hotels. Except for only two areas in all of the country, it was the three leading gin producers that ruled. The exceptions were Edinburg and Brighton, where local gins from Brighton Distillery prevailed. Could Brighton Distillery, ut existat, been founded anyplace else? That is extremely doubtful.
Kathy Caton, founder and managing director of Brighton Distillery – and one of the nicest people you can ever hope to meet – is asked whether her distillery just happens to be located in Brighton or is it a Brighton distillery?
“So, for full disclosure, I’m not Brighton born and bred, but I’ve been here now for 23 years. The identity of Brighton runs through me like a stick of rock,” says Caton. “For me, it was so important that something be locally identified, and I always wanted my Brighton gin to be called Brighton Gin. It’s made and
produced in the glorious City of Brighton & Hove.”
However, since we’re talking about full disclosures, Caton is the first to admit that not all is wonderful in setting up a distillery in Brighton. Londoners, wanting to escape from one of the UK’s least friendly cities, have sold high, allowing them to buy in Brighton and at the same time, drive up prices.
“It comes with lots of complications, with that this is an incredibly expensive place to live and work – any suitable space that would have been great for a distillery has all been turned into luxury flats a long, long time ago.”
There is, too, considerable bureaucracy and hoops to jump through in setting up a distillery in the area and just as many in even moving an existing distillery just a nudge into a new location.
“But for me, it’s just really, really important that something that has the has the name on the tin, is made and done and created in the place that it’s identified with,” she says.
“I think Brighton Gin is about the people who make it, that’s a really core thing. At the distillery, we’re a small team of friends and family, incredibly diverse by almost every measure. People who really actively engage in the community, people who go out a lot – everyone goes to the theatre, to the cinema, to see gigs and to love all the things that Brighton has to offer.”
To be fair to you readers, if you haven’t guessed already, with Caton all answers lead back to Brighton. But to be fair to Caton, it’s easy to understand why. If there was ever a meeting of the Lesbian Gin Distillers of Britain, Caton would only have to book a room with one chair. As progressive as many of us believe the industry is, Distillers Journal has been told otherwise by gay and ethnic minority distillers.
Kathy Caton (middle) surrounded by most of the Brighton Distillery team. The eCargo delivery bicycle is how most local deliveries are made.
Why do people in Brighton buy Brighton Gin? You could start by saying it’s because the numerous award-winning gin is excellent. Its botanical list includes Macedonian juniper, milk thistle, fresh orange and lime zest from unwaxed fruit, angelica root, locally grown coriander seed which gives a spicy, lemony flavour, and it is distilled with an organic wheat alcohol base. A course, being made in Brighton, it’s certified vegan – including the packaging. And a course, the used botanicals are put into a compost heap.
Caton is a huge gin & tonic fan, drinking G&Ts back when they weren’t cool for her age group. Although she’s now become a bit of a straight-gin sipper, from day one she wanted to produce a gin that worked well in a G&T, as well as tasting wonderful in a martini or negroni.
But with the UK’s gin drinkers having more choices of gin available than anywhere else in the world – Distillers estimates this number could be as high as 2,700 to 3,000 – there is an overabundance of good to excellent gins in the £30 to £40 range.
So there has to be something else that makes people in Brighton buy Brighton Gin. Maybe it’s because you just look at the bottle and think Brighton.
The concept of Brighton Gin’s bottle is to reflect the city’s famous pier. Bespoke made by Allied Glass, its squarish shape reflects Brighton’s pier – or at least its pre-fire shape. The colour used in the label and wax is a take-off of the pier’s colour and the sea, and indeed, this colour is used in all of Brighton Distillery’s marketing. This includes the colour of the distillery’s bicycles.
“One of the very few perks that you get when you join Brighton Gin – apart from lots of gin – is that everyone gets offered a bicycle. We have lots of reconditioned former post office bikes that have been spray painted Brighton Gin-green,” says Caton, adding, however, that a drawback with this is if you ride like an idiot, everyone can recgonise that you’re from Brighton Distillery.
Local deliveries to pubs, bars and restaurants are made with a Brighton
Distillery painted eCargo bike, which Caton says “basically looks like a nicely decorated coffin on wheels” which can hold a considerable amount of gin bottles.
“It’s battery boosted so it’s possible to actually ride it around town even with all the hills. It’s been one of those wins, where it not only is much quicker and so much cheaper to do deliveries, but also works with our eco credentials.
“Being as ethical and sustainable as we can be in every way is a key thing for us and it also looks great. Rachel Blake seems to be the one making deliveries and she’s had a few times small children shouting, ‘Ice cream, stop, stop’ and her
shut down 85 percent of our business overnight. We were in the fortunate position in that we were able to get our licences in place to be able to sell direct through our website. We went absolutely hell bent for leather on that front,” she says.
But Caton being Caton, she sees the silver lining of this time.
“There are always positives from any crisis. One is that we’ve really got to connect with our customers again. We were all out on our bicycles, masked up, doing safe, safe deliveries to people’s doorsteps, and talking to people.
“It was quite a humbling thing. We donated around Brighton & Hove 10s of 1000s of bottles of hand sanitizers that we made. I was delivering gin and hand sanitizer to a woman in Hove on my push bike, rang the doorbell and stepped back by several metres. As she came and collected her bag off the doorstep, she said: ‘I’ve already got three bottles of your gin inside, I just want to see you guys survive.’ I have to say I had a proper cry into my face mask at the side of the road.
going ‘I can’t sell you what’s in this bike till you grow-up’,” says Caton.
In total, the distillery team has completed over 3,600 miles worth of deliveries in town, with the majority of staff commuting by bike as well.
For the on-trade, the distillery is offering them refillable five-litre vats. “As one of the bike delivery bods, I can say it’s great fun delivering gin by the five-litre vat!” says Rachel Blake who champions Brighton Gin’s green and sustainable efforts.
If home delivery was just a fun idea, it turned into a serious one when the Covid pandemic struck and on 23 March 2020, the majority of Brighton Distillery’s business customers shut their doors.
“It was a terrifying moment because that
“People were cute, really cute. They sent packages of gin to friends and family around the country for lots of missed occasions, which we could see through our handwriting the cards. You know, ‘Sorry, we won’t be together for your 30th, your 40th’. In one case it was a woman’s 100th birthday and in another, it was a young man being ordained to the priesthood. All these people celebrating milestones in their lives, during this time, and doing it with our gin. It was really humbling.”
Also, during this time Brighton Distillery started a ‘Buy for a Friend’ campaign, in which people were asked, when ordering a bottle, to consider buying another one which would be donated to essential workers.
In what has taken up a considerable amount of time for Caton has been the very recent move of the distillery into a larger, but nearby location.
You would think that because you’re making the same product, in the same area, with the same number of staff, etc,
Sometimes you have to take that nervous swallow, take your risk, take your chance, and hope for the best” Kathy Caton
Above: The team following Caton into the English Channel last November.
Right: Rachel Blake making a delivery.
that it would be just a case of changing the address line on the licence and Bob’s your uncle. Nothing could have been further from the truth and Caton explains that it was like she was setting up a distillery for the first time.
While elsewhere part of the problem would have been neighbourhood opposition – the distillery is located very much in a residential area – with the building licenced for commercial use and with the previous tenants being rumoured cannabis growers, neighbours were actually thrilled with Brighton Distillery moving in. And indeed, while Distillers was at Brighton Gin, a local woman walked in to have her bottle filled at the refilling station, saving £5.
“For the move, I think the whole process took two years and then of course, ironically, now that we’ve actually been able to make this happen and take
on the new space, we’re lurching into this tremendously challenging time in terms of costs, whether its energy or spiralling costs of raw materials,” says Caton. “Sometimes you have to take that nervous swallow, take your risk, take your chance, and hope for the best.
“But now in terms of mental and physical well-being, it’s incredible to have more space and to be able to actually move safely without clogging your head on a pallet rack or stuff. We had totally plateaued; we couldn’t do any more in our previous space. We’re now just hoping that the world doesn’t totally, totally collapse.”
You want your distillery to be a thing of beauty, to have your still be eye candy to attract customers, but Caton says that there are advantages in staying with smaller stills.
If money was no issue, a course she’d go
big and copper. But with money always an issue, she has found that she can keep up production by running three small stills (the third is a recently bought used i-Still) in parallel and to run them more frequently.
“I should be honest, we have what we can afford. But we figured this is what we got, so let’s work out how to make it work,” she says. “But also, if something goes wrong with one – we had an issue with a heating element the other day, and a power surge, and all sorts of things – it means that there’s a backup and that we can keep our production going.
“This depends slightly on whether there’s a pandemic going on or not, but I’m guessing we do around 28,000 bottles a year,” she says. “We’re still at the stage where I talk about things in terms of bottles. Somewhere we’ve got a spreadsheet with nine litre cases on it but yeah, we’re still in the bottles territory. It
Right and centre: 79-year-old Judith White, Caton’s mother and working member of staff.
Lower centre: Refilling station
still seems like a bloody lot, considering they’re all done by hand, and I’ve got my poor mum lugging things around.” [Her mother, Judith White, is the distilleries oldest employee at 79. She is often referred to as St Jude.]
As it stands today, Brighton Distillery has two core products – Brighton Gin Pavilion Strength (40% ABV) and Brighton Gin Seaside/Navy Strength (57% ABV), which are hand bottled at the distillery. The distillery also has three RTD cocktails which are canned off-site. Originally when it was decided to go with RTD drinks, Caton used small glass bottles but quickly realised that Brighton’s pebbly beach and a glass bottle was not a good combination. This was probably a good move considering that the team at Brighton Distillery
“Our RTD cocktails are all natural, they’re made with beautiful quality ingredients, and they’re delicious. They have given us the chance to let more people try Brighton gin who might not want to invest in a £38 bottle from the off licence – but I’m at a gig and I really fancy this lemon verbena garden Collins. So, they’ve given us an interesting new route.”
When looking at any distillery’s future plans, it is always interesting to note what they call themselves. Does their name limit them to only one product?
Caton’s distillery is called Brighton Distillery – not Brighton Gin – although everyone, including Caton, usually refers to it by that name.
So, what else is in store?
“We have two core products and that’s
been a deliberate choice. It’s also been quite a hard one to stick to. I love making new things. I get very excited. And we could do this and that. For me, the idea is the easy bit, it’s the execution that is the difficult part,” she says. “We need to have blinders on and stay in our lane. I would rather do a couple of things brilliantly than a lot of things not.
“When we release something to the world not only do I want to know that it’s the best we can do, but also that it’s repeatable. This is one of the issues with very small production, does each bottle taste the same?”
There are new products which have been developed, but as of yet, they haven’t passed approval of Caton or head distiller, Paul Revell.
“There’s a definite hope and aspiration that we’ll have more spirits in our spirits list. Gin is always going to be my absolute
first love. Bartenders used to laugh in my face when, as a young person, I’d ordered a gin and tonic I absolutely love it. I think it’s magic booze. But I’m also really interested in exploring experimenting with other things within the team.
“I know that there’s lots of interest in brandies and I would love to make absinthe. We’re a seaside town so I’d say yes to rum. Whiskey will be an amazing thing. But that’s a whole different setup. We always have this tension between all of the things we’d love to do and in the meantime being practical and keeping on the lights.”
The lesson for all distillers to take from Kathy Caton and Brighton Distillery is the importance of tapping into your local community, becoming part of it, and perhaps the most important, having the right team.
Caton knocks completely on the head the belief that becoming a success hinges on having the right equipment, the right software, the right building, and the right location. For six years her distillery’s location was nicknamed ‘The Cave’, due to the basement room having zero windows and natural light. The only plant she had was a plastic cactus and even that didn’t look too lively!
But she and her team have succeeded.
If her three stills were placed out on the street, it’s doubtful a rag-and-bone man would stop for a millisecond and eye them over.
But she and her team have succeeded with over 20 regional, national, and international awards coming from liquid made with those stills.
Just like everyone else, Caton has her list. She would love to have a beautiful copper Muller still, a distillery in Brighton central or even better, right next to the
sea. She should have much, much more international sales. Although Brighton Gin sells well in Germany – thanks in great part to having two members of staff who speak German – the City of Brighton is well known in the LGBTQ communities around the world. Why the world’s Pink Dollars aren’t beating a path to Brighton Distillery shows that on her wish list needs to be added a marketing wizard. Still, in many ways, it is easy to see that Brighton Distillery could become a major player with craft gin and in some ways they already are. Is the child’s book The Little Engine that Could be required reading for new hires?
But, as you leave Brighton Distillery, getting handshakes and hugs from Kathy and the team, you have to think: Things actually are pretty perfect the way they are.
Before we even begin a story about a Kenyan gin, there is a jumbo of an elephant in this savanna of a room that needs to
be addressed. Only you will be able to ultimately answer the question this pachyderm brings up.
In the UK currently there around 820 gin distilleries, ranging in all sizes, and at least 80 contract gin distillers. If you take a very low-ball number of three gins from each distillery, at any given time the British consumer has access to 2,700 different gins. Add to this mix are gins from Finland, Sweden, Iceland, the USA, Vietnam, India, Indonesia, Panama, South Africa, and other locations, leaving at least 3,000 different gins available here.
So, do UK consumers really need another gin, do they need a gin which will set them back anywhere from £80 to £110 per 700ml bottle, and do they need a gin from Kenya?
If you spend any time talking with the team at Procera, your answer will be a resounding ‘yes’.
Roger Jorgensen was minding his own business in South Africa when Guy Brennan contacted the master distiller and wine maker. He had heard of Jorgensen and his expertise and sent him some fresh African juniper berries from the mountains of Kenya.
Brennan, born in Australia, originally worked as a banker and his job was to provide micro-credits for Africans, which
took him to almost all the countries of sub-Sahara Africa. He finally landed in Kenya where he met his American wife.
One evening he was sitting on the terrace with friends, all enjoying G&Ts, when it struck him that most of the botanicals in the gin were grown in Africa.
Brennan asked: “Why are we sending all these botanicals to London for some guy to distil, to put it in a bottle, and then send it back here for us to drink. Why don’t we just make gin here?”
And then this question followed. “And why don’t we make this gin using fresh African juniper berries?”
Juniperus procera, commonly known as African juniper, the African pencil-cedar, or about a half-dozen other names, is native to the mountainous regions of the Arabian Peninsula and eastern Africa, from Ethiopia down to Zimbabwe. A fairly close relative of the familiar gin berry producer, Juniper communis, it has the distinction of being the only juniper found naturally south of the equator.
It grows naturally – and is farmed – as a tree, not a bush. The wood of the African juniper is used in building houses, poles, furniture, and fuel; the bark is used to make beehives. But with the berries (cones), there is no real usage – or at least until recently.
Brennan and a few Kenyan partners thought the berries could be used to make gin, but were not having much luck, thus they turned to Jorgensen. He thought why not, basically scribbled some instructions on the back of a cigarette pack and sent it to Brennan.
The Australian understood many things, but not how to make gin based on some scribbled instructions. He invited Jorgensen to Kenya who was immediately taken with the whole idea of making gin from fresh juniper berries.
After all, with his wine making he never used dried raisins, always fresh. With something such as juniper, which has such a huge impact on the flavour of gin, Jorgensen started questioning why gin distillers for the last 300 years have been content to use dried instead fresh?
Having now a master distiller at the helm, the potential of using fresh African juniper berries became clear, even when sampled immediately off the still. However, as important as use of the berries was, Brennan wanted everything to be African, from all the botanicals to the glass bottles, which would end up having to be hand-blown. And then there are the hand-carved stoppers….
If you’re suddenly hearing the sound of a cash register going off in the background as all these costs are added up, you’re not far off the mark.
“If you look at the history of the spirits category, every single category has premium distillations with the exception of gin,” says Brennan. “It’s happening now in agave spirits, it’s happened in vodka, bourbon, whisky – every spirit except for gin. It’s a good question as to why it hasn’t happened.
“At Procera we feel is that there’s never really been before a justification for an expensive gin product, which is why there has never been a gin
Procera Gin team on a Kenyan juniper tree. Guy Brennan (centre in tree) , Roger Jorgensen (bottom right)
premiumisation category.
“When you look at the business model we’ve undertaken and the incredible cost structure of using handblown bottles, hand-carved stoppers, collecting the juniper berries ourselves from trees –not bushes – and producing less than 100 bottles a day, there’s a reason why Procera has to be more expensive.
“We don’t want to sound immodest, but there’s a lot of gins out there and we believe gin has been made the wrong way for the last 300 years. Sometimes it takes a place with no history of distilling – like here in Kenya – to look at things a little bit differently, to be a little bit irreverent. And to ask: ‘Why do you use dried juniper in gin?’ If you make an apricot brandy, you don’t use dried apricots, you will use freshest apricots you can find,” he says.
Does using fresh juniper, however, make any difference or is it just clever marketing?
Not surprising, Brennan and Jorgensen say it makes a HUGE difference and it is actually very, very, very difficult to get them off the subject. But, in looking at reviews from the UK, USA, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, everyone seems to agree with them.
Some of Master of Malt reviews state: “The smooth taste of this gin is something to behold. Even non gin drinkers have tried this and loved it. As advertised, [it is] much smoother than most other gins with a deep unique flavour. Everything about it including the bottle and stopper just smacks of being a one off.” “Super Smoooooth. Being a member of a gin club and having accumulated over 60 gins, I can honestly say this one is head and shoulders above the rest. Outstanding delicious and worth the money.”
Other gin sites describe Procera as being “a full-on experience” and “worth the money”. In Paul Jackson’s The Gin Guide Review, he says: “With Procera Gin’s enviable and unique bottles, and such importance given to the species of juniper used, it is a gin with a lot to live up to, but it delivers on the promise triumphantly. The abundant juniper is ever-present and beautifully balanced,
An aerial view of Kijabe
and the mouthfeel is full and oily.” And in 2020, the IWSC awarded Procera a gold award, giving the distillery 96 out of 100 points in blind tastings across the range.
Procera produces three gins: Blue Dot, Green Dot, and Red Dot which differ by ABV, botanicals, and price. At this point Distillers Journal should mention that the colour dots are the only thing that comes close to a label on the bottles, although there is a small tag around the bottle neck.
Blue Dot is the original Procera gin and is 44% ABV. It has 10 botanicals which, according to Jorgensen, include: Kenyan pixie oranges – which are more like tangerines – Kenyan Swahili limes, pink peppercorns from Madagascar, West African Selim peppers, Moroccan coriander seeds and orris root powder, Kenyan green tea, and assorted spices from the Tanzanian islands of Zanzibar and Pemba, including cardamom and mace (the outer part of a nutmeg pod), and Somali acacia honey.
“It’s a real tour around Africa,” says Jorgensen. “We know where the ingredients come from, we know the people we buy them from. For example, the Selim peppers are a spicy, pungent, smoky type of pepper from Nigeria or Sierra Leone. Mr. Mitaka farms our cardamom in Pemba, we know him.”
“The honey is a little pet sort of thing of mine. A few years ago, I discovered that honey distils beautifully in gin, you pick up none of the sweetness in the distillate, but lots of the floral aromatics.
“Originally, I wanted to put acacia blossoms into the gin, but if you reach your hand into the branches, there are so many thorns you’re going to come away being very sad. Looking at the blossoms for an answer, I saw that bees love the blossoms, so we have the bees collect our acacia element.
“I tasted maybe 26 different honeys from across East Africa to find the one we wanted. The one that topped the list was actually from Somalia. So, we use some Somali acacia honey as our secret weapon in the gin.”
The other two gins, Green Dot at 47%
ABV and Red Dot at 51% ABV, differ by having more botanicals. For example, Green Dot uses lightly toasted wood from African juniper trees, while Red Dot has a bolder taste than the other two. It uses five different peppers – Selim, black, alligator, elephant, and Ashanti – along with oyster shells and seaweed.
“At the heart of our recipe is Juniperus procera,” says Brennan. “Procera means ‘tall’ in Latin and when you walk through the Procera forest of the Kenya highlands, you understand why straightaway, as you’re dwarfed by these majestic giants growing at 2,200 metres in the Kijabe Forest, about 70 kilometres from Nairobi.
“We partner with the Kijabe Forest Trust, an organisation founded to protect the native forests of Kijabe from poaching of both animals and trees. They in turn work with the local communities to collect the Procera berries once they are fully ripe at the end of the short rains around the middle of the year. We know it is time to start harvesting the juniper when the
Sometimes it takes a place with no history of distilling, to look at things a little bit differently, to be a little bit irreverent” Guy BrennanGuy Brennan examining Juniperus procera berries
local family of baboons start veraciously devouring them due to their sweetness. “The Procera berries had never been used commercially before we started harvesting them and hence, we’ve had to learn everything from scratch. From where the best berries grow, to when to harvest them and how to process them, every step has been a journey of discovery. It is crucial not to let the berries ferment once collected and they must be air dried for about a week before they can be flash frozen to maintain optimal freshness and brightness for distilling throughout the entire year.”
A subject near and dear to both Brennan and Jorgensen is the idea of terroir associated with these berries. Instead of using dried common juniper berries collected and dried from just general countries, by using fresh berries from a very specific area, they say that you can actually taste different vintages like with wine grapes.
Due to EU and Gin Guild laws/ regulations requiring the use of Juniperus communis for a spirit to be called gin, some dried berries of this variety are added, not for flavour but just to be able to put gin on the bottle.
“Gin needs to be made under EU regulations with Juniperus communis, which we felt was completely ridiculous and so we had a ridiculous solution, which is we put in a handful of communities berries to be able to call it gin,” says Jorgensen.
“But it made us think and, as people who are really proud of the African continent, we thought we should be looking at our own geographic protection. Kenyan Juniper Spirit should be a geographic protection that has to be made under certain conditions in Africa – made in bottled in Africa with African botanicals and African juniper. We should throw off those colonial legacies and not call it gin, it’s Kenyan Juniper Spirit!”
The making of the gin is accomplished with a 230L Muller Aromat copper pot still and a pillowcase. Yes, a pillowcase. “Our base spirit is the most neutral
ethanol that we can find, and it’s produced here in Kenya from sugar cane, which is at 96.2% purity, literally colourless, tasteless, and odourless,” says Jorgensen. “But it’s a perfect blank canvas for distilling gin, because gin is going to paint so many layers of flavours onto that blank canvas.”
“We choose our botanicals and weigh them out. All fresh whenever possible and we crush them and put them in a pillowcase – literally – and we soak or macerate them in warm ethanol overnight. We remove the pillowcase, squeeze out the ethanol, rinse the botanicals in water and add that rinse water back to the pot.
“We are not distilling any actual botanicals in that pot. If you fire up a still like ours and with botanicals inside it, the run is going to last six to eight hours. “Now imagine you’re putting all that plant material and subjecting it to heat and ethanol for six to eight hours. Imagine what happens to the cellulose structure of all that plant material. It absolutely disintegrates and releases all the heavier congeners and dense cooked flavours. You’re basically stewing botanicals for eight hours. By distilling only the essence of the botanicals, there are no cooked, dense, burnt-heavy flavours,” he says.
A different flavour enhancer, which comes with each bottle of Procera, is a small bottle of Indian Ocean salt which has been blended with the botanicals in Blue Dot which have been dried.
“You put just a little pinch of this botanical salt on the gin. What happens first, the salt cuts through the sweetness of tonic water. Salt is a flavour and palate flavour enhancer and stimulator. The botanicals then hydrate in the tonic water and release flavours that mirror everything that is already in the gin,” says Jorgensen.
“What we’re doing is amplifying the flavours of the gin without the basil or rosemary route. And we find that very satisfying and it’s very popular with clients. The barman actually like it once they get used to the idea because they can make a show out of it for their customers. Yeah, it’s a great success!” says Brennan
Despite being slightly off the gin trail, on the distribution side things are going smoothly. In March 2022, Procera signed a deal with the UK’s Axiom, which specialises in the ultra-premium craft spirit market.
“Axiom is one of the best in the game,
with only one product in each category,” says Brennan. “They’re an amazing team.”
Procera also distributes in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, the United States, and a course Kenya.
“In Kenya, with it being our home market, we’re very active. It’s much easier to be involved on your home turf, between the local market in Nairobi and Kenya’s tourism sector, and then direct to consumers as well,” says Brennan.
But no matter how great of distribution network Procera might have, the bottle neck is with production. By insisting on using hand-blown bottles, done locally at Kitengela Hot Glass, Procera is limited to producing 100 bottles a day. That’s only 70 litres a day, which the big boys
probably spill in an hour.
“That’s a big challenge, the lack of capacity. We’re in quite a few markets and the demand, it’s almost turning out to be on an allocation basis already this year and so that’s a really big challenge,” says Brennan.
“We want to share this product with more people. We’re working with the glass makers to double their capacity again next year as well. But that’s still only 200 bottles a day so that it doesn’t get us as far as the demand would want,” he says.
While you think with all the community work and even tree planting (about 15,000) that the team from Procera does, the Kenyan government would be 100 percent behind Procera, but that hasn’t been the case. The main issue is, Procera
is the first craft distillery in Kenya, so existing regulations are far from being straightforward.
While it might seem slightly crazy to create competition, Procera is helping six other distilleries currently in the wings navigate Kenyan bureaucracy.
The team’s logic is, the more distilleries there are in Kenyan, the more berries are used, thus the fewer trees then are cut down as farmers realise that these trees truly are the goose that lays the golden egg.
“The more this juniper is used and the more we collect with local communities, the more families will have money for school fees,” says Brennan. “Already Kenya has great agricultural products such as coffee and tea that are renowned around the world. Juniper could be the next cash crop. As it now, there are 10s of millions of dollars’ worth of juniper berries falling on the ground with no value.”
If for one second you can get Brennan and Jorgensen NOT to talk about African juniper berries and you get a word in edgewise, you might tell them this.
If pundits are correct, we’ll be soon entering another recession if we’re not in one already. Each day the papers have a new story about how we’re all paying more for food, petrol and soon, fuel for the winter months. In some ways, it seems like an odd time to be promoting gin in a hand-blown bottle which will cost about the same as a week’s groceries. However, as Diageo and some of the other big distillers are saying, now is time to move into ultra-premium spirits. Customers might not be able to afford a winter holiday, but they can afford to have a couple of brilliant bottles of spirits during their holiday celebrations which will a real pleasure and treat.
If what we observed during the 2008 recession and Covid-related downturn holds true, people will be drinking less but will drinking better. Procera could very well be at the right place at the right time with the right product. You want that extra special bottle of gin for a present, to celebrate with, to have an occasional perfect drink, can we ever recommend a bottle to you.
Mary sorting fresh juniper berries
With Scotch whisky, there is no question about regional taste and flavour. Put five different whiskies in front of an expert and they’ll be able to tell from which region each whisky came from. However, does this flavour come from the actual physical location of the stills – combined with local weather, yeast, and grains – or more from just regional distilling traditions, i.e., more peat flavour or sherry casks?
While some might dispute how the different flavours come about – including distillers themselves – no one would argue that they don’t exist in whisky, no matter where it’s distilled in the world, ranging from Scotland to the tropical notes of Taiwan’s Kavalan whisky to the woodiness of Texan whiskey.
But what about other spirits and in particular, gin? Would you say that there are distinct regional flavours, based on water and local botanicals, or do you belong to the other side that says gin is gin – 37.5% ABV juniper-led and is the same wherever you go in the world. It’s a hard call to make. But as Sean Murphy discovered, regional taste and flavour does matter – even if it’s just part of your story – when you’re trying to get your gin to stand out.
Not only is Murphy a gin judge, but the Glasgow native has also written two
books on gin, including the recently published The Scottish Gin Bible. Nearly 300 pages long, it is the most beautiful and interesting book on gin Distillers Journal has seen.
A fact that many gin fans might find surprising is 70 percent of the UK’s gin is made in Scotland. Murphy set out to discover – and sample – 100 Scottish gins, sharing the stories which makes each of these distilleries unique. The following interview has been edited and shortened for clarity. For the full interview, go to Distillers Journal Podcasts at distillersjournal.info
Distillers Journal: During this spring’s Distillers Lecture held in Edinburgh, a question was asked to the audience if there was a difference between Scottish and English gins. As arguments broke out among the Scottish crowd, I realised that a safer question would have been: ‘Which team is better, Celtic or Rangers.’ You’ve sampled the gin and you’ve written the book, is there something that sets Scottish gin apart?
Sean Murphy: I wouldn’t say physically, all these Scottish gins are pretty much made exactly the same way. But I think gin has a real sense of place and I think Scottish gin stands out a little bit more because it’s not only got a real romantic idea of where it’s made, but it also is
building upon centuries of distilling heritage. Scots, too, are renowned for their storytelling capabilities and I think that is transferred readily into the some of these gin brands. Scottish gin makes more of an effort as it’s got a real idea of identity, and this can be from the smallest producer to the largest. They all have a keen sense of place of who they are and what they bring to the table.
Distillers Journal: Every gin distiller you interviewed either flat out said or hinted strongly that they were doing something unique to stand out, be it their choice of botanicals, to where they were distilling, their ABV, to even the colour of their gin. In reading all 100 descriptions and reviews, you realise what a challenge it is to stand out in an ever-growing crowded market.
Sean Murphy: If you’re producing any kind of product, to stand out requires innovation, it’s maybe constant change, or even more gregarious packaging. But I think with gin, what it takes for you to really stand out is a strong idea and identity of what you are, and a lot of the gin distillers spoke about this. If you can create a gin that has a really strong identity, has quite clear clean packaging, or has an interesting story about where it came from, but also has a good liquid you will do well. In the book are real clear examples of this. You
Sean Murphy, author of The Scottish Gin Bible
know, I have 100 Scottish gin distilleries featured, but each of these has its own story, its own brand. They’re not trying to be other gins or do something that somebody else has found to be successful, a lot are doing their own thing.
If you can right off the bat create something that has a real belief in what it is, then I think it will sell. It’s a real credit to the Scottish industry that so many of these gins are surviving in a vastly competitive market.
Distillers Journal: A gin drinker looks at your bottle. They’ve never tasted your gin – maybe they’ve read a review or word of mouth – but more likely, that first glance on a crowded shelf is the first time they’ve seen your gin. Are you going to stand out or just become a background blur?
Sean Murphy: I’ve got a few really good examples that I always refer to when we talk about bottles. One of the most obvious is Isle of Harris Gin. The distillery originally created the gin as a keepsake for tourists who were visiting the whisky distillery in Harris to take home with them. But what they accidentally did was create such an exciting product, that more and more people were wanting to
see and try and drink. If you look at that bottle, it has the really strong sense of where the gin is from. It has curved lines to look like sea glass that’s been on the beach, it’s imperfectly made so not to look perfectly symmetrical, and it looks like a crashing wave. Another example is Seven Crofts which has a really tall bottle with green that flows up the bottle getting darker at the top. One ugly example is Achroous Gin which is made in Edinburgh and has a really exciting bottle, but for a very different reason. It’s a very vibrant luminous orange and every time I see it, it really stands out on the shelf, and does exactly what you want it to do. It really pops and looks cool.
Distillers Journal: In this quest to stand out you can even have the colour of the gin be different. While there’s been a black gin, if there was an award for pure colour, it has to be Boë.
Sean Murphy: I had a laugh about this. The ultraviolet really stands out and Boë has been really successful for that reason. In Scotland when we were all younger, we’d eat this these little sweets called Parma Violets. That’s the colour of Boë gin so there is a nostalgia aspect of it.
Distillers Journal: Most gins are around 40 to 43% ABV. There are a couple Scottish gins that push the envelope to 47% ABV – which isn’t exactly earth-shattering. But then there is Stirling’s Battle Strength Gin at a mouth numbing 55% ABV.
Sean Murphy: This is really exciting. I come from a whisky background so obviously I drink a lot of cask strength whisky which tends to be around 60% ABV straight from the cask. So, for me I really like the flavour that comes from strong spirits and their high alcohol, but you obviously need a little bit of dilution just to break it down and get a full sense of the flavours. I think in this higher strength gin the juniper really shines and it’s one of the reasons that I do enjoy Stirling’s Battle Strength Gin. And higher alcohol ABV gins are great because they last longer since you don’t need as much in a drink.
Distillers Journal: On page 226 of the Gin Bible is the Isle of Bute’s Oyster Gin, which uses fresh oyster shells to give it a coastal flavour. But a few pages beyond is Colonsay. With this gin, the husband and wife distillers say the market is crowded with flavoured gin infused with unusual botanicals, so they’ve taken the opposite
Far left: The cover of the Scottish Gin Bible
Left: The bottle of Isle of Harris reflects where it is distilled
Right: A bottle Murphy describes as ugly but one that stands out
approach with their classic London Dry. I pose the question to you, straight or creative gin? Is there a right or wrong answer?
Sean Murphy: The short answer to that would be no, I think it’s horses for courses. I think the exciting thing about gin is there are no rules. And I think that accessibility of spirit – not just in the sense that anyone can drink it – but you don’t have to have any kind of rules like whisky. A lot of people have this perception that you need to know a lot about whisky to drink it and wine’s the same way. But you don’t have to do that with gin. For distillers, you can play by the rules and make straight London Dry Gin or don’t. To me this is lovely, and I really enjoy that with gin.
Distillers Journal: Loch Ness’s distillers won’t reveal what botanicals they use, keeping it as mysterious as the monster, but they will admit to using botanicals taken from around the loch. It almost seems that using local botanicals is becoming a requirement with craft gin.
Sean Murphy: That’s a really interesting point. And again, I think it ties back to that provenance idea and the acuity
and sense of place. How do you want to stand out? You can use the tools at your disposal, so if you live in an area that’s surrounded by at one particular botanical which you might not get in other parts of the country, then it really is to your benefit to use that to stand out. I don’t think it’s a requirement, but I do think you will see it more and more because people are beginning to understand the idea of flavour, where that fits in your gin, and how you’re not restricted to the big five or six traditional botanicals that everyone used previously
Distillers Journal: In your Scottish Gin Bible, there is a recipe chosen to bring out each gin’s unique flavour. I know for a fact you’ve tasted all 100 gins, however have you made your way through 100 gin cocktails?
Sean Murphy: Maybe not all the cocktails! They were picked out by the distillers to get the best from their gin. I have been slowly working my way through, it’s one of the fun things about the book. And it’s something that I hope will translate to other people. When they pick it up the book, maybe they’ll want to try all 100 gins and all 100 cocktails.
Distillers Journal: In talking with gin distillers, there seems to be two very opposing views regarding the classic drink, gin & tonic. In creating a flavour for their gin, some go for producing a spirit which will compliment tonic – that is their number one goal. Others, however, see gin moving on to take a more prominent role in other cocktails and drinks, and do we bravely say, creating a gin for sipping neat.
Sean Murphy: A lot of people tell me that they don’t like gin. And I’ll say okay, what have you tried, what don’t you like, and they’ll reply: ‘Oh, I’ve had gin and tonic.’ You suddenly realise it’s actually tonic they don’t like, not the gin. What I’m excited about is the growth and variety of mixers that are being brought forward for craft gin. A really good example being Cushiedoos which is Scottish tonic that doesn’t have quinine – great for people who are put off by the strong quinine flavour.
Distillers Journal: Sean, you’ve sampled 100 gins in producing this book, which is your Desert Island gin?
Sean Murphy: I’m always wary of picking favourites because I’m a huge fan of pretty much all the gins in the book and I loved learning all about everyone. I do have one gin that I go back to quite a lot and that’s just through preference as it’s one of the first gins I fell in love with. NB Gin, North Berwick, does a very classic London Dry Gin that really helps me in all the right places. So, I probably would pick that one that because I enjoy sipping it, I enjoy it with a tonic, and I enjoy it with other mixers – it’s about perfect. NB are regular sponsors of the BRIT Awards after-party, but it’s not just music royalty who’ve noticed the quality of their gin. The late Queen chose NB as the only gin brand to appear in her official commemorative publication for her ninetieth birthday celebrations.
The Scottish Gin Bible by Sean Murphy. Available through Amazon, Waterstones, WH Smith, and numerous independent bookstores.
RHYS EVERETTE AND BROOKLYNTRANSPLANT ALLISON CRAWBUCK FIRST CREATED A LONDON BAR FEATURING THE UK’S WIDEST VARIETY OF ABSINTHES. NOW THE DUO IS DISTILLING ABSINTHE AS WELL –FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN LONDON. BUT CAN THEIR PASSION SPILL OVER TO PROFITS? VELO MITROVICH REPORTS FROM THE DEVIL’S BOTANY DISTILLERY
ever there was a spirit cursed with a double-edged sword, it’s absinthe. On one hand, its many nicknames include the Green Fairy and the Green Muse. Drinkers of it include such notables of potables as Edgar Degas, van Gogh, Gauguin, Picasso, Oscar Wilde, and maybe it’s most famous drinker of all, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.
If
Ernest Hemingway called it: “Opaque, bitter, tongue-numbing, brain-warming, stomach-warming, idea-changing liquid alchemy. It’s supposed to rot your brain out, but I don’t believe it. It only changes the ideas.”
Ah, but then there is the other side of the sword. Another nickname for it is the Guillotine of the Soul. What gives its lead flavour, colour, and bad press is its most well-known ingredient, wormwood. This has to be the only spirit ingredient that gets its own mention – twice – in the Bible. In the ‘Book of Revelations’, wormwood is used to symbolise a fallen star that turns a third of the world’s water too bitter to drink. Shakespeare references wormwood in Romeo and Juliet by writing that Juliet’s wet nurse weaned baby Juliet by rubbing wormwood on her nipples, making them too bitter to be suckled on.
In 1907 The New York Times called it the “green curse of France”.
In 1915 Allied troops land at Gallipoli, which will become a disaster for the Australians and Brits. Italy declares war on Austria, which will become a disaster for the Italians. Russia invades Germany, which will become a disaster for the Russians. And then there is the first gas attack by the Germans against British and French troops. What does France do in the face of all of this? It bans absinthe. And if it can only get worse, it does. What’s the Ukrainian word for wormwood ¬– Chernobyl!
Absinthe, with its ingredient wormwood, was seen as the source of society’s ills – probably by those secretly jealous of early hipsters – and by 1915 absinthe was banned throughout most of Europe and the USA. While the UK never banned absinthe, this was mostly due to the fact it was seldom drank here except in very posh hotels and restaurants. Worldwide, the ban was seen as a way of protecting folks against thujone, a chemical component in wormwood which was once believed to be the cause of absinthe’s seizures and hallucinations.
Absinthe’s sky high ABV – which makes whisky seem like a child’s drink – never seemed to be considered as a reason for its potent punch. Vermouth, which the word itself comes from German meaning wormwood, gets some of its flavour from the same. But in the ban against absinthe, vermouth and other wormwood-based spirits never got a mention. But that was then, and this is now. All bans have been lifted and for the first time ever, absinthe is being distilled in East London by Rhys Everett and Allison Crawbuck at the Devil’s Botany Distillery.
According to Crawbuck, absinthe is a botanical spirit that at its essence, is made in a very similar way to gin. “You’re going to start out with a neutral spirit and then you’ll redistil it with a mixture of botanicals. If you were to make a gin you need juniper, and if you’re going to make an absinthe, you need what is known as the holy trinity of botanicals. That’s grande wormwood, green anise, and fennel seed,” she says. Etymologists have theorised that the Old English word ‘wormwood’ comes from the bitter taste of the plant (wermo is a very early Germanic term for bitter) or from the plant’s ancient use to treat
Allison Crawbuck and Rhys Ever ette at the Devil’s Botany Distillery in East London
intestinal worms – wyrm. There is even speculation that wermod may have been an aphrodisiac in Anglo-Saxon times, combining the Old English wer (man) and mod (mood).
There are more than 200 plants in the wormwood genus Artemisia including southern wormwood, petite wormwood – which is used in colouring absinthe –and grande wormwood. It’s an extremely common plant and it’s a safe bet to say that there is at least one species of wormwood growing in every climate in the world, including Artemisia borealis, found north of the Arctic Circle. Everette says that the best-known species of wormwood is Artemisia absinthium – called either grand or grande wormwood – and is the only type that can be used in the distillation process for a spirit to be considered authentic absinthe.
It was late August 1905, where in the small Swiss village of Commungny, a funeral was taking place for a mother and her two young daughters. The husband and father, Jean Lanfray, wept, insisting he didn’t remember shooting the three, according to the Science History Institute. A few days before, labourer Lanfray started his day with a shot of absinthe diluted in water, with a second absinthe shot soon following. At lunch and during his afternoon break at the vineyard where he worked, he consumed six glasses of strong wine. Before leaving, he had another glass of wine, followed by some brandies at a café on the way home.
Back home Lanfray finished a litre of wine as his wife watched in disgust. She called him lazy. He told her to shut up. She told him to make her. He took his loaded rifle from the wall and shot her through the forehead. When his 4-year-old daughter Rose came to investigate, he shot her too. Then he went into the next room, walked to the crib of his other daughter, Blanche, and shot her.
From this domestic tragedy the people of Commugny drew one inescapable conclusion: it was the absinthe that made him do it.
The murders energized prohibitionists and absinthe became a Swiss national concern, a pariah of liquors. The canton of Vaud (containing Commugny) banned it less than a month after the murders. The canton of Geneva, reacting to its own “absinthe murder,” followed suit. In 1910 Switzerland declared absinthe illegal. Belgium had banned it in 1905 and the Netherlands in 1910.
In 1912 the US Pure Food Board imposed a ban, calling absinthe “one of the worst enemies of man, and if we can keep the people of the United States from becoming slaves to this demon, we will do it.” By 1915, absinthe had been exiled even from France. Au revoir, mon amour
during the French Revolution and there he was inspired to use wormwood as a tonic. Unfortunately – or fortunately –wormwood was too bitter to drink as it was thus, he came up with his recipe.
Through marriage, Henri-Louis Pernod obtained the recipe and went on to establish the Pernod spirits dynasty when he opened his first distillery in 1805. ‘Extrait d’absinthe’ soon outgrew its fame as a local Swiss tonic and became a phenomenon in France. By the end of the 19th century, over 2 million litres were being drunk annually in France.
“Just like London had its gin craze in the 18th century, France had an absinthe craze in the end of the 19th century when absinthe was made without any regulations,” says Crawbuck. “There were examples of it being produced with chemical adulterants – copper sulphate was added as well as other toxins – and it was being made without any real understanding of the dangers of improper distilling, with heads, hearts and tails all being put into a bottle and being sold on to consumers.
Did – and does – absinthe deserve the negative reputation is still generates today? Perhaps a better question would be: Why and who did absinthe get its less than sterling reputation from? The answers can be found in shady distilling practices, poor science-led assumptions, other jealous alcohol producers, and a view that it was leading to the degeneration of the French race.
Absinthe was first created in Switzerland at the end of the 18th century when expat French doctor Pierre Ordinaire combined grande wormwood with anise, fennel, and about 12 other herbs. He then distilled the mixture in an alcoholic base as an herbal health remedy for his patients. Ordinaire had fled to Switzerland
“It was also a time when there was the phylloxera crisis going on in France and grape vines were being destroyed by a vine louse that came over from America. This made wine and brandy prices go up. But at the same time, absinthe prices went down, and it became the drink of choice in France.
“This was all happening in an era where there were a lot of other things legal at the time, which wouldn’t be legal today such as opium dens. From this crazy time, absinthe got a bad reputation, and it became the scapegoat for all the madness of the era,” she says.
From the 1880s and on, it was primarily French scientists who looked into wormwood and its associated active chemical thujone as a possible toxin. In studies with mice, after giving them very high doses of thujone, it brought about seizures and death.
The public was ready for this news. Absinthe was seen as a commoners’ drink, the drink of prostitutes, thieves, and the morally degraded. French civilisation and society were “passing through a
From this crazy time, absinthe got a bad reputation, and it became the scapegoat for all the madness of the era” Allison Crawbuck
Devil’s Botany London Absinthe turns milky after water is added
period of vulgarity”, caused by absinthe. When members of the French Academy of Fine Arts started seeing postimpressionists, expressionists, cubists, and other non-traditional art, what else could they assume but the art was produced under the moral depravity and hallucinogenic effects of absinthe. Manet’s first major artwork was rejected in 1859 by the Salon de Paris and his master, Thomas Cotour, summed it up: “An absinthe drinker! And they paint abominations like that! My poor friend, you are the absinthe drinker. It is you who have lost your moral sense.”
By 1890 and the publication of leading anti-absinthe scientist Valentin Magnan’s The Principal Clinical Signs of Absinthism, common opinion in France largely agreed with his conclusion: Absinthe was the cause of all of France’s woes. So strong were the beliefs against absinthe and thujone that nobody challenged them for around 100 years. It was finally discovered in the US that while thujone could harm humans, it would require taking a massive dose of it
– just the same as almost any substance ranging from salt to cheddar cheese.
Still, like a pit bull and its bone, researchers did not want to give up on this idea and reasoned that there must have been a high level of thujone in 19th century absinthe. Why else were there so many problems associated with it? However, in examining vintage Pernod bottles of absinthe, and comparing the levels of thujone to those of modern commercial and home distillers of absinthe, the vintage Pernod actually had the lowest level of thujone.
If absinthe actually caused hallucinations, madness, male sterility, and a hundred other issues, it wasn’t the wormwood or the other botanicals, but instead adulterants being added into the distilling process, much like what is happening with illegal moonshine around the world in the past and today [See Distillers Journal Autumn 2022].
According to Everette, its bad reputation continues today due to how some of it is made and then drunk. “They are using
colourants to turn it green, making it very high strength, and then encouraging people to set the liquid on fire, shoot it, and become very forgetful about what happened in their evenings.
“We fight daily absinthe’s bad reputation from 100-years-ago, to its reputation today where some view it as a drink to get drunk with, not to savour and enjoy.
“If we go back to the 1920s and 30s, after it was banned across France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, and North America, here it was being sold predominantly in hotel bars. We have the Savoy Hotel in London that released a cocktail recipe book which contained over 100 absinthe cocktails. At the Hotel Cafe Royale, famous people like Oscar Wilde would drink their absinthe.”
When you hear Everette and Crawbuck describe the first time they sampled absinthe, it seems amazing there was a second time. The absinthe looked like mouthwash, there wasn’t the beautiful cloudy effect when water added – like
It’s all about reintroducing absinthe and making it relevant to today’s drinkers”
they had heard about – and the flavour left something to be desired.
“We thought: ‘Well, there’s definitely something wrong here.’ So, we then started doing research into what traditional absinthe was and found a couple of examples that were available in the UK at the time,” says Everette.
Their “research” led to them consuming quite a bit of absinthe which they found to be rather enjoyable. It was at that time they decided to somehow contribute to the spirit category.
What does “proper” absinthe taste like? For starters, it doesn’t have the strong black liquorice jellybean flavour you might be expecting. With anise and fennel as ingredients there is a liquorice flavour but, depending on the absinthe, it can be more like a hint. Expect instead nuances of flavours running the gamut of bitters and herbs to floral overtones
and spices. The colour doesn’t have to be green – it can be colourless or white –and, indeed, if it looks day-glow electric green, the chances are there are dyes in it.
“We travelled to places in France and Switzerland where there are a small number of producers still making absinthe in the traditional, pre-ban manner. We got to know these distillers, how they made their absinthe, and gained knowledge as to what we believed true absinthe should be,” says Crawbuck.
It was these road trips, too, which provided the source of absinthes for their bar and the inspiration for their recipes when they decided to distil their own. Everette says that the name they choose for the distillery, Devils Botany, plays on the wicked reputation that it absinthe once had.
“Our inspiration comes, too, from the apothecaries and their recipes. The apothecaries were considered to be a friend of the Devil for their work in distilling botanical spirits. This is a play on that past but also celebrating the botanical element of it and reintroducing absinthe as a botanical spirit at its core.”
Using a small kitchen still to experiment with – along with a licence – they created two recipes. The first one took about 18 months, helped in part by all the Covid lockdowns affecting the bar and giving them time to focus on creating their own absinthe. It was still considerable work, filled with many more failures than successes. Although absinthe was never distilled until now in London, they found a recipe dating back to 1719 in an original
apothecaries recipe book which had a tonic called ‘Spirit of Wormwood’. Like the marshes around them, this, too, helped to inspire their London absinthe recipe. Luckily for them, a botanist at the time, Nicholas Culpeper – whom they named their still after – had translated the recipe from Latin to English.
If their first recipe was a nod to the traditional absinthes of France and Switzerland, with their second recipe they wanted a London focus, though oddly enough they call their first one London Absinthe and the second, Absinthe Regalis.
Devil’s Botany London Absinthe is copper pot distilled with premium British wheat spirit and 14 botanicals, including English and Swiss grande wormwood, green anise, fennel seed, Devil’s claw root, lemon balm, meadowsweet, peppermint elderflower, and other herbs and spices.
It’s colourless and is 55% ABV. Absinthe Regalis is copper pot distilled, also with wheat spirit, and has 22 botanicals including grande wormwood, green anise, fennel seed, sage, cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamon, galangal, and Devil’s claw root. The resulting distillate then gets its green hue colour naturally in a second maceration process which includes a new mix of botanicals, including white dead nettle and milk thistle, which can be found growing wild throughout London. It comes in at 63% ABV.
In creating cocktails, they feel that London Absinthe, having a very floral flavour, works well with spirits like gin and vodka, but also with tequila and mezcal. With all the spices in Absinthe Regalis, they believe it lends itself well to cocktails with aged spirits like bourbons and cognacs.
An easy cocktail to make with either of their absinthes is a Rattlesnake. This is a whiskey sour with a bit of absinthe added and is popular in the USA as a way of introducing people to absinthe.
Of course, many drink absinthe in the traditional style, diluted with a bit of still or soda water; with or without a cube of sugar added.
Using the small 2.5 litre kitchen had the advantage of allowing them to push through ideas quickly, but it wasn’t practical for commercial distilling. At their distillery today is a 150 litre Mueller copper still, which they are very happy with.
Neither were distillers before starting this venture. Everette got a distilling certificate from IBD and then worked with a distillery consultant to create Devil’s Botany. With always an eye of finances, much of what they’ve accomplished with
Far left and left: 150 litre Mueller copper still used for distilling Devil’s Botany spirits; Above: Rhys Everette and Allison Crawbuck using a absinthe fountain at The Last Tuesday Society’s Absinthe Parlour
installation of the still and its usage has come through trial and error, combined with good luck.
What gets overshadowed with their absinthes is a London Dry Gin they make. Master of Malt describes is as: “An attempt to capture the ‘quintessence’ of an 18th century classic, this London Dry Gin from absinthe producer Devil’s Botany is distilled in a copper pot still with a British wheat spirit and botanicals including juniper berries, coriander seed, cubeb berries, lemon peel and liquorice root. What makes it stand out though is its use of two botanicals more common in absinthe: Devil’s Claw root, used to sharpen the appetite, and Roman Wormwood, which adds a uniquely herbaceous flavour profile. Perfect in a Martini or Negroni.”
At this point you might be thinking that life for Crawbuck and Everette is as grand as grande wormwood. Since 2016 they have had their absinthe bar, The Last Tuesday Society’s Absinthe Parlour, located inside The Viktor Wynd Victorian Museum of Curiosities. Based in Hackney, it’s close to the Central Line’s Bethnal Green Station. Inside the Parlour, they wow and amaze people with the ritual of preparing an absinthe drink in the traditional manner with a special fountain.
Every single one of their cocktails on the menu has absinthe in it. People may walk through the door and say that they don’t like absinthe, but Everette and Crawbuck are going to try to make them change their mind before they leave.
With Brexit in place, making it extremely difficult for small independent clubs/ bars/restaurants to import spirits from Europe, hats off to anyone who can duplicate the number and varieties of absinthes they feature.
Of course, featured in the saloon are Everette and Crawbuck’s own absinthe, also available online and at the numerous shows and events they attend. They have published a book: Spirits of the Otherworld: A Grimoire of Occult Cocktails and Drinking Rituals, and they have their
beautiful distillery.
If you were at Imbibe or other shows, you would see the two introducing people to absinthe. Outside of dyeing their blood green – using only natural botanicals a course to do so – there seems to be nothing else they could be doing to promote absinthe and their business.
So why isn’t the world beating a path to their door?
Like for so many of the UK’s small craft distilleries who also have brilliant ideas, the answer is simple: Limited staff and marketing funds.
In the USA there is an expression: “The pioneer gets the arrow; the settler gets the land.” The first person/company to do something new creates the market; it is those that follow reap the reward.
When you talk to Crawbuck and Everette, you realise they and their absinthes would do fantastic at Whitby’s Steampunk Weekend. Glastonbury and Green Man Festival – oh hell yes, they would clean house there!
But, with only 2.5 staff and limited funds, that ain’t going to happen – at least for the time being. And they are the first to admit, there is only so much ground they can cover.
With gin, distillers don’t have to change people’s perception of the drink. The horrors of the early 18th century gin graze have long been forgotten. Gin drinks have been for years the most popular cocktails in the UK. If UK bartenders were paid 5p every time they heard a G&T being ordered, they would all be retired millionaires.
It’s not quite the same with absinthe. Misconceptions about absinthe abound – with what other spirit do you have to convince people that at best it won’t make them hallucinate? And exactly how many bars and pubs stock a bottle of absinthe?
However, Crawbuck and Everette aren’t competing against 800 other absinthe distilleries. While in the back of their minds is the fear that someone bigger, with more resources will step in and start creating absinthe, Distillers Journal doesn’t see that happening for a long, long time.
How then to get a bottle of London
Absinthe into the hands of a consumer?
“That’s the million-dollar question,” says Everette. “It’s all about reintroducing absinthe and making it relevant to today’s drinkers.”
After Imbibe’s B2B show, they’ve seen a huge increase in trade sales, with their distributor doubling orders. For Crawbuck and Rhys, the show put a lot of people that they wanted to see all under one roof.
“It has raised our profile amongst the bars in London. We’re still trying to catch up with everyone that we spoke to at the trade show, and it certainly put us in a stronger position since before,” says Crawbuck.
Everette thinks for a moment. “We are going to work towards pushing absinthe into the 21st century. We are inspired by the past, but we are all for reintroducing it to the modern absinthe drinker and creating the next generation of absinthe drinkers.
“We’ll play around with different production methods, different flavour pairings with our cocktails, and we’ll see where we can take this spirit category.”
Holbrook Arizona is not a place where you stop and gawk. Located on Interstate 40 – part of old Route 66 – people drive through the small town in the blink of an eye. If they’re tourists, most likely they’ve come east from the Petrified Forest National Park and are heading west towards the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.
At the local museum – with faded postcards giving silent testament to
few customers – the single person working there tells you she was moving to California 10-years ago when her car broke down. With no money to repair it, in Holbrook she’s stayed ever since –ultimately marrying the auto mechanic who took pity on her and fixed her car. For people who somehow get lost after exiting to get petrol, there are several dusty shops selling pieces of petrified wood and geodes, with large plaster-cast dinosaurs out front as a lure to kids in the backseat.
At Tom & Suzie’s Diner, Tammy the waitress takes it upon herself to sample fries as she brings oversized plates to tables to make sure they’re cooked. She jokes that she’d like to get a tiny branding iron and brand every slice of homemade pie with her name so all will know she’s tasted it and approved. When a travelling salesman from Albuquerque asks about what vegetables the diner has, she pats her Rubenesque figure and shouts from across the large dining room: “Honey, do I look like somebody who would know?”
Atsuo Sakurai has travelled far from Japan for sake and love
Is sake a spirit, wine, or beer? The truth is, it is an alcohol category unto itself. Makers of sake usually refer to themselves as ‘brewers’, although it is far from being a rice beer. Some, like Atsuo Sakurai, say what they do is more similar to wine making. It doesn’t run through a still, but it can pack a wallop, going up to 22% ABV, and base spirit can be added to it.
Just to make it all even more confus ing, in Japan, sake is a general term for any alcoholic beverage, and what Westerners know as sake actually refers to “nihonshu,” the traditionally brewed and fermented drink.
There are over 10,000 variations with different flavours, colours, and with even some being sparkling. What does hold all together are the four key ingredients: Polished rise, koji mould, yeast, and water.
What temperature should you drink sake? In the 1967 James Bond film, ‘You Only Live Twice’, you may remember this immortal line: James Bond: “I like sake. Especially when it’s served at the correct temperature, 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit, like this is.
While Bond might prefer is sake at near body temperature (36.88 C), you can drink it cool or even cold and nobody will bat an eye.
the USA, but Sakurai is the only certified first-grade master sake brewer. Yes, he says, he has won some prestigious awards with his sake, but perhaps nobody else entered the competition that year.
Still… as long as you’re already here….
Growing up in the greater Tokyo region – the most populous metropolitan area on earth with more than 37 million inhabitants – Sakurai tells you he had no background in sake and had zero thoughts of moving to the United States. Although his parents hoped for him to go into automotive engineering or something like that, the idea of being a salary man, wearing a suit, and working for the system did not appeal to him. In what was not a popular decision with his family, he went to university in the north of Japan where he studied agricultural sciences with an idea of becoming an environmental activist and fight against ocean plastic pollution and climate change.
But, while at university he was introduced to premium sakes by upperclassmen and found he had a taste for it.
sake brands, Sakurai won first place. After graduating in 2005 he got a job in a sake factory and learned the trade from the bottom up through on-the-job training as opposed to formal training at a college.
“I started out cleaning the plant – floors, windows, and tanks – and maintaining equipment. These jobs are boring, but I knew they were very important. Contamination can be a big problem in sake production,” he says.
The sake master took a shine to Sakurai and his work ethic and began to mentor him.
“It is difficult to learn sake production by oral communication or books, you just have to watch a master. On days off he would take me to the nearby forests and mountains, and we’d collect wild edible plants. He taught me that to make good sakes, you need to love nature.”
Three years into the job and Sakurai had moved up the company’s food chain and, besides being in a senior position, he was now giving tours in both English and Japanese. One day a 25-year-old Navajo American woman, who was living in Japan and teaching English, arrives for the tour. For both Heather Basinger and Sakurai, it was love at first sight.
But someone she does know – as seemingly do all the other characters in this arid, high plains desert town – is Atsuo Sakurai. “Oh, the sake maker, he’s the nicest man in town.”
The 42-year-old native of Yokohama is a bit of a self-made enigma. Very soft spoken and modest beyond belief, he honestly believes that he has done nothing special, is of zero interest, and is at a complete lost why you drove over two hours from Sedona – after getting a nail in a tyre – just to see him. There are around 20 sake breweries in
Although you might think thanks to James Bond and other films, that the favourite beverage in Japan is the national drink of sake, you could not be more wrong. By far, the most popular drink is beer and then followed by whiskey. Sakurai says that with sake, there are class issues at stake with sake being seen as a drink of the working class and/or older adults. Young people much prefer beer, and middle class and above drink whiskey to impress – not sake.
If for no other reason, you have to suspect the slightly eccentric, classconscious Sakurai took on the mantel of sake just for these reasons. While still at university, he took a course on the history and production of sake, which was taught by the owner of a well-known sake company. At the end of the term, in a blind tasting contest to identify different
The pair soon married and moved to the west coast of Japan where they had two of their three children. Sakurai worked for a local sake company where, as he says, he was still learning sake by trial and error. The first year there were many errors. In a competition with 150 other regional sake companies, his sake was rated 120 out of 150. The next year, however, he came in third. While the recognition was fine, Sakurai was not happy. What he envisioned himself doing was opening up a small craft sake brewery. While anywhere else this goal would be attainable, in Japan it’s not. Sakurai still feels very bitter about this, and it comes out strongly as he speaks.
“I completed the required seven years of training, I passed an exam that certified me as a first-grade sake brewer, but…”
In Japan, the national government decides how many sake breweries there can be and for years it has decided there can be no more. The only way for someone like Sakurai to open up his own sake brewery would be to buy someone else’s.
“There are no opportunities in Japan to be an entrepreneur in sake. The government says there are enough sake companies so it will issue no new licenses. If you have a million dollars, you can buy an existing sake brewery. Since I do not have a million dollars, I would always have to work for an established big sake company and obey the strict government rules on how sake is made. You cannot be creative.
“Possibly I could have found investors or tried fundraising, but I wanted to start my business from scratch. I wanted to start my business with my own money. I cannot relate to investors or fundraising stuff – all can cause compromising problems later on.”
In 2014, Sakurai and his family packed their bags and moved to the USA. At first, they went to Holbrook, near to where Basinger had grown up on a Navajo reservation. However, Sakurai was shocked by Holbrook. The town was small, it was in the middle of nowhere, and the arid desert climate could not be any more different from Japan’s, which Sakurai thought had to be a prime requirement in sake.
There are zero Japanese restaurants for easily hundreds of miles and if you look the town’s ethnic demographics, the 1% Asian is most probably Sakurai and his children. You have sake regions; Holbrook is a sake anti-region.
He says they moved to the Pacific Northwest, looked at Seattle and then settled on Portland, Oregon, where the damp, cool climate is similar to western Japan. However, he says they couldn’t get a permit to make liqueur, they had no connections to get a loan – they had no connections period – and the cost of living was high.
“We tried to make it work but being total strangers, it is really hard to settle into a new place,” he says. They ended up returning to Holbrook where at least Basinger could get a job teaching and with her family nearby, there would be help with the children.
Unemployed, depressed, and with seemingly zero opportunities, it truly seemed like the end of his sake dream. However, one day while he was watching his kids as they played in a park, he started talking to a local. Sakurai says that the man was a good listener and he poured out to him his problems, still believing that he his future had to be in the Pacific Northwest.
After listening, the man told Sakurai: “Why? We have the big Coconino aquifer here and the water is good. Why not make sake here?”
Sakurai thought the man could have a point. While training and in speaking to fellow sake makers in Japan, there was
Atsuo Sakurai holding two of his sakes
Looking at the koji mould doing its magic on sake rice
always a belief that the rice had to be Japanese, the water local, and the area humid. But water is water, rice is rice, and humidity led to the constant problem of contamination. It was the brewer who created the sake, not the ingredients. Just like how award-winning whiskies, gins, and other spirits can be made around the world, why not sake?
Much like beer and whisky, there are only four ingredients that go into sake: rice, yeast, water, and koji, a type of mould which is also used in the production of soy sauce. While Sakurai might tell you that special equipment is needed to make sake, he himself quickly realised he could make do without when he started brewing sake in his garage. Although in theory sake can be brewed with any kind of rice, the best sake is produced from medium or short grain rice. The key with any rice in sake production is the “polishing” of it.
For sake, rice is first milled to remove the outer surface of rice. The core of a rice grain is rich in starch, while the surface of the rice has lots of fats, vitamins, and proteins.
The taste of sake made with unpolished rice is noticeably deeper and thicker, giving it the impression of being strongly flavoured and smelling of rice.
In Japan, rice must be polished at least once, according to its grade, by a mechanical grinder and takes about 50 hours. As a general rule, the more polished away the original size, the better the sake’s grade/quality.
What gets confusing is in Japan, the percentage on a bottle of sake does not reflect its ABV, but its polishing ratio. To compare it with white rice we us for cooking, about 10 percent of the rice is polished off, which would give it a polishing ratio of 90 percent. For premium sake, a minimum of 30 percent is removed.
So, if you read 40% on a bottle of sake, that means 60 percent of the outer layer has been removed and only 40 percent is used in the production for this particular sake. The actual ABV percentage of sake
is around 15 to 16%.
Surprisingly, sake is made in the USA for Japanese Americans and sake fans. The appropriate varieties of rice are grown and polished in the rice growing region around Sacramento, California – about 850 miles from Holbrook as opposed to 5,700 miles to Japan.
You can have the proper rice, polished to exactly the percentage you want it to be, and it’s now been steamed and is placed in a large container in a hot, humid room. Indeed, Sakurai lifts a lid and up comes a sweet chestnut-like aroma coming from the rice. In looking at the rice, however, each grain appears to be coated in a white frost.
“That is koji on the rice, a type of mould,” he says, “it’s what gives flavour to soy sauce, rice vinegar, and miso.” And then he goes silent.
Sakurai studies you for a moment and you come up short. “The koji process, it is very confusing, much too confusing for this interview. We should just move on to the next step,” he finally says. However, your research shows that in a process discovered around 1,500-yearsago, Aspergillus oryzae allows sake rice or soybeans to be converted into sugar that can be fermented. Koji (also known as koji-kin) is delicately distributed over steamed rice and is carefully cultivated for 48 to 72 hours to grow evenly on the rice.
How important is koji to Japanese cuisine, in 2006 the Brewing Society of Japan officially named koji-kin the “national fungus” of Japan.
There are several different types of koji, with each giving sake a distinct flavour. Some in the industry believe craft sake brewers outside of Japan will start to experiment with even more different types of koji and developing different flavours.
As it is, Sakurai has developed different sakes using plants found in Arizona such as prickly pear cactus – giving it a stunning pick colour – and Navajo tea (greenthread, or Thelesperma). If he has plans as well with using different kojis,
he’s not talking, but you have to suspect that’s on his to-do list.
After the koji has developed on the rice, it’s mixed with a sake yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and water.
In regard to water, Sakurai has opinions he is willing to share. In Japan, soft water is considered the best for sake; in Arizona, the water is anything but soft containing high amounts of calcium carbonate and magnesium. While in previous interviews Sakurai describes the water from the Coconino Aquifer as being perfect for sake, with you, he tells a different story.
“So, we are in a desert region right, and our water is not very super good for sake, but this is the water I use” he says. “As a master brewer, your job is to work out what you have – rice, quality of water, whatever – and make the best sake you can.
“You might think you have limited opportunity, but you can still make the best sake or whatever, that is my philosophy, that is what it means to be a master brewer.”
After the adding of the yeast and water, it’s aged for anywhere from one week to a month, or longer. While in Japan some sake brewers add sugar, artificial flavours, colours, additional alcohol, and other ingredients, Sakurai’s sakes are natural. With traditional sakes he makes pasteurized and unpasteurized, and with flavoured sake he uses the forementioned prickly pear cactus and herbs found on the Navajo reservation.
After fermentation, the sake gets pressed, filtered, bottled, and labelled, and finally, shipped. From start to finish, each batch of 1,000 bottles takes Sakurai three months to produce.
After being inspired by the local man, Sakurai realised he could make sake in Holbrook. He wasn’t sure of what the quality would be, but he could definitely make it. The challenge would be in the selling.
He says he started filling out applications to brew sake in his garage. In January
After fermentation, the sake is pressed
2017 he was granted a permit to brew. By 2018 he was breaking ground on a purpose built 1,000 square foot facility. in June 2018, only 18 months after completing his first batch, his Junmai Ginjo Arizona Sake won a gold medal at the Tokyo Sake Competition, as the best internationally produced sake.
But stepping back to the days in the garage, when he made and bottled his first batch, he had zero customers lined up. No one.
“My first sale is a kind of miracle. While driving in Phoenix, I saw a Japanese market. I went in and explained to the owner what I was doing – he was a very nice man, a very nice guy – but he said he didn’t know how to sell my sake –would anyone want a sake brewed in Arizona instead of Japan? But he was willing to put a bottle of my sake on a shelf.
“Two minutes later, a customer walks in, sees my bottle, and buys it. The owner said, ‘Oh my god’, and both of our eyes went wide with surprise. It was a miracle.”
With the brand name Arizona Sake in bold letters on the bottle, Sakurai realised that customers would buy it not expecting it to be a Japanese sake, but
something local with a different terroir.
Sakurai is selling throughout Arizona, California, Hawaii, and a few other states. Some well-known Japanese chefs in both Arizona and California make a point of serving his sake, so business must be good. But you might as well be asking Sakurai about koji. You realise though, it’s not that he wants to keep it a business secret, but he would feel it would be boasting. That’s not something he’ll do.
He mentions that he’s getting ready to expand but one thing that worries him is labour. It’s a challenge in Holbrook finding good workers.
“You can find workers here with no problem, but it is a big problem finding good workers. If someone is good, they already have a job. If not…well…there might be a reason.”
For this reason, when he does expand, he says he’ll automate processes as much as possible.
When Sakurai entered the world of sake, he had dreams of what he ultimately wanted to do. He would have a craft sake brewery, he would be making sake
the way he wanted, and he wouldn’t be wearing a suit.
Making a huge amount of money, that was never part of the plan or dream and he’ll be the first to admit that if that was his goal, he’s surely gone about it the wrong way.
Arizona Sake is at that stage where if he wanted to import rice from Japan or filter the heck out of the Holbrook water and create a Japanese-like soft water, he could. But he won’t. His sake was always going to be American, using American ingredients, it’s where he and his family live. All he wants is for people to taste his sake and say: “That’s good sake.”
You suspect that Sakurai is not a Grateful Dead fan but as you say goodbye to him, as he stands outside his sake brewery in Holbrook, Arizona, the words to one of the Dead’s songs come to you.
Sometimes the light’s all shinin’ on me Other times, I can barely see Lately, it occurs to me
What a long, strange trip it’s been
Most wise and evolving distilleries work continuously with quality control and process improvement.
But quality is a word with a wide meaning and it incorporates many aspects of production. Everything from raw materials to consumer and workforce safety. It has to do with taste, scent and character, but also yield, efficiency and economy. A frequent question among gin producers is how chemical analysis can help them better understand their product and make a more consistent and maybe improved product.
It is obvious that the more quality control aspects you put into your process the more accurate and consistent it will be. However, it is easy to get carried away and create a vast array of control points in your agenda, and you might end up
putting more effort into following your SOP’s and filling out charts, than actually analysing the results.
Before getting into the technical aspects of analysing gin, it must be stressed that there are no substitutes for a human panel. A trained panellist can give many angles and insights into a gin that can be hard to find through chemical analysis. A human being also has the benefit of working simultaneously with all senses.
When getting served a perfect gin and tonic, a human (normally) would first get wooed by a nice glass with a beautiful drink looking cold and refreshing. Then they touch the glass and the experience starts; a cold refreshing sensation goes from your fingers to your brain and that will affect your other sensors. When bringing the glass to your nose the first thing you get is a wonderful scent of juniper and most often citrus and some
flower, then follows the fizzy sensation of cold, carbonated tonic. Next is a slightly bitter taste note followed by a gentle acidity accompanied by the perfect companion of alcohol as a wheelbarrow for scent and taste, sometimes this is followed by a light sweetness.
This experience could of course be elongated and expressed with so many more words. In this case it was truncated to show how this can translate into chemistry. There are three major reasons to do chemical analysis on gin. Firstly, to make sure your product is safe and up to code. Secondly, to ensure your quality, taste and scent are consistent and potentially improved. Finally, to help improve yield, economy and sustainability.
Let’s look at my first point; ensuring that your product is safe and up to code through chemical analysis. Even though a panel might be able to do very good judgement on taste and scent, there are potentially harmful compounds that might end up in your product that have
no taste or scent, but still pose a risk. Furthermore, even if a panel might pick up something wrong, it would not be very nice to serve poison to them. To be honest, a distiller of gin would be far fetched creating something dangerous.
If you start out with neutral alcohol and flavour it with juniper, coriander and citrus combined with botanicals that are on FDA GRAS list, the risk is very low. What might occur could be phthalates from process, glycol from a chiller or a contaminant from unknown source. These are risks that could be eliminated in SOP’s and lift the need for chemical analysis. However, to make sure you are up to code it is recommended to send an occasional product for ABV testing and maybe do a fingerprint GCMS (to be explained later) to make sure your product is legal and within the borders of TTB category. The sample you send could then be used as your reference for in-house testing.
If by any chance you source your neutral spirit from a source that does not supply a full chemical certificate of the spirit you should always test it so it is within code
for your category.
How does chemical analysis ensure your quality, taste and scent are consistent and potentially improved? As expressed earlier, panels and professional nosers are irreplaceable to create a great gin. They are also needed to have the instrument of combined sensory analysis.
Great minds have created wonderful equipment that can chemically and physically measure most aspects of a gin, but even if AI is evolving, we still see ourselves as irreplaceable to analysing the results from that equipment, using our experience and knowledge to interpret that into valid results and perfection.
So how, why and when do we use chemical analysis to assure our product according to sight, scent, taste and feel?
Visual: The human eyes are good. Highperformance liquid chromatography (HPLC), refractometry and spectroscopy are better. If you have a sweetened or coloured product like pink gin, oak aged gin, sloe gin, then you need to make sure sugar levels are correct. Doing sugars by
line = Base Gin (TK50
Pink line = Juniper Distillate (LA09976)
Blue line = Coriander Distillate (LA09977)
Brown line = Lemon Distillate (LA09978)
‘Nosing’ difference in juniper, citrus and gins
calculations and spreadsheets are more often wrong than right. Also, if you have a coloured product you want to make sure the colour is the same from batch to batch.
This is troublesome for the naked eye, but fairly easy with spectrophotometry. Turbidity is another factor to check with the product to make sure it looks good and that your filtration is done to perfection.
Scent: This is where chemical analysis really can help many distillers. When a producer has set a recipe that is what the consumer expects that brand to deliver. Much of scent quality control can be done by panellists but there are aspects that are harder to address.
First of all, panellists have good and bad days, machines tend to most often do what they are told. Also, distillers tend to have multiple suppliers of plant material, these might have variations between harvests and there might be challenges with certain crops.
With chemical analysis, a lot of headache and unnecessary work can be avoided. The main go-to is GCMS analysis. This is an analysis where you take a small sample of a product and inject into a machine called Gas Chromatograph. It could be done in a multiple of ways but the general principle is that the injected sample comes into a column placed in an oven. The column is a 65-260 ft fibre
with the thickness of a hair. This fibre might have different characteristics to promote separation.
When the sample is injected into the fibre the components it is made up of will wander through the column at different pace. To help separation the oven gradually heats up to make certain compounds run at another pace. When they eventually come out on the other end of the fibre, a mass spectrometer will analyse the compounds and a “curve” is created.
Looking at this, it is possible to identify and quantify not all components but most that have a vapour pressure point below 600F. To a distiller this can be a great and inexpensive tool to analyse new harvests of plant material to make sure the botanical load to the charge is similar to reference product, but also to optimise recipe utilisation. This will save raw material and hence work but also guide in how to maintain and improve quality and sensory triggers. It might also discover unwanted substances.
It would be evident that if you use the information from a GCMS analysis of a product and the distillation run, this could be used to optimise botanical load per ready bottle. This might be just to find the sensory thresholds, but also to make sure you get most out of your charge. Anyone that does not take out at least 90 percent
of their charge in LPA to be bottled would get return on investment on a chemical consultancy.
This is not just to make money, it will also save energy and work with waste management. Best of all if you get more bottles out of every run. Ultimately, that actually saves energy, money and the environment. A true sustainable distillery uses chemical analysis to decrease their climate and environmental footprint.
