Aqua Vitae
For a high-quality gin, highly rectified alcohol is one of the crucial ingredients. The quality of the alcohol is significant for the smoothness and pleasant mouthfeel of the finished gin.
Unlike rum, whiskey, grain spirits, brandy or fruit brandy, however, the alcohol in gin is not obtained by fermenting the basic plant ingredient (juniper), but exclusively and mandatorily by distilling alcohol of agricultural origin (we prefer single-varietal wheat alcohol from controlled organic cultivation).
There is a simple reason for this. Juniper berries contain almost no sugar (less than 1%) and therefore cannot be fermented into alcohol like other berries. Not to mention that juniper berries are not berries in the botanical sense but berry-shaped cones.
Technically speaking, this would actually place gin in the category of high-quality flavoured spirits. However, for good reason the European Spirits Regulation devotes no fewer than four own categories to gin, namely (19) Spirits with juniper, (20) Gin, (21) Distilled gin and (22) London gin. No other spirit has received comparable attention in a legislative act of the European Union.
In this regard, the regulation sets the highest requirements for a London Gin. Our Hartingowe Dry Gin exceeds all the requirements for a London Gin. To be honest, we are missing a much stricter category in the regulation.
However, we didn't want to call our gin Hartingowe Distilled Dry London Gin.
But at least we wanted to mention that we are allowed to do :-)
