Fresh-faced and youthful, modern gins like San Francisco’s No. 209 are changing the way we look at this ancient spirit.
Luxury gins are enjoying a massive renaissance at the moment, and even Asia, a relatively new taker to the complex botanical profiles of gin despite a long British presence in many territories, is finding favour with modern incarnations of this timeless drop.
One modern rendition that’s turning heads in its native San Francisco, and certainly much further afield, is Distillery No. 209 gin. Owned by the Rudd Family of Dean & Deluca and Rudd Oakville Estate, who discovered the remnants of the original distillery on their Edge Hill property and decided to revive the operation, No. 209 gin marries the best of traditional Old World distilling techniques and time-honored ingredients with artisanal innovation, catering to new breeds of ginophiles.
Hand-fashioned and distilled five times at a Pier 50 facility in San Francisco – the world’s only distillery built over water – No. 209 gin is a smooth, modern spirit made from all natural botanicals sourced from around the world. In a step away from the traditional, juniper-heavy gins of the past, No. 209 gin is clean, fresh and distinctive, with an aromatic nose of predominantly floral and citrus notes and just a whisper of juniper.
“Everything at Distillery No. 209 is crafted with only the highest quality in mind, nothing less,” says a review in WineShop.com, one of America’s largest retailers. “Gin has never stood still and the research for No. 209 Gin held to this ideology in crafting a new offering. The spirit started as a very heavily flavored, sometimes rough spirit, and it was for a time almost excessively sweet, then very dry and ‘junipery.’ Leslie’s [founder Leslie Rudd] team has expertly taken the juniper berry heritage a step further by fusing it with citrus, exotic fruits, and spices.”
Created using botanicals sourced from the four continents, including bergamot orange, lemon peel, cardamom pods, cassia bark, angelica root and coriander seeds, the result is a spirit with citrus spice that lends itself perfectly to the new generations of gin cocktails being created at specialist bars like Hong Kong’s Origins. No. 209 Gin is handcrafted in a 25 feet tall copper alembic pot still, using single shot distillation, a traditional method rarely used today.
As with many small-batch spirits, No. 209 gin is only made with the heart of the distillation, ensuring unsurpassed purity, and every batch is made to the same exacting standard by one person, No. 209’s Ginerator Arne Hillesland.
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