Herbs are crucial for a jenever or gin, that’s what makes a gin a gin. We also look for those herbs locally as much as possible, but some of them can only be found on the other side of the world. Fortunately, we only need herbs in smaller quantities, especially those that have to come from far. For example, we get vervain and St. John’s wort from our regions, we pick elderflower or Japanese cherry blossom ourselves, while juniper comes from Macedonia, why? Well, he’s just much better there. Japanese algae come from Japan, what did you expected, and Pu-er tea from the Chinese highlands. These herbs are always dried so that they can be transported by sea. Fresh we should fly them over, which is not in line with our vision.

We are also an organic-certified distillery, so it was quite a search to find those herbs in organic. Not all herbs are available in organic. Working with ‘natural’ aromas that should not be organic does not fit in with our philosophy, it is real or it is not. As for our bio gin, for example, which we wanted to distill London Dry, it is important to use all the herbs together and to fully distill it. Adding flavors isn’t one of them, period.

We have about 80 kinds of herbs/fruits in stock on a permanent basis. This allows us to develop tailor-made gins for our customers in the short term.