Capreolus Distillery Garden Swift Dry Gin 500ml

Production Notes

The Garden Swift is the product of an obsessive and uncompromising pursuit of botanical complexity. Barney Wilczak — a distiller whose background lies in isolating the perfection of individual fruits — approached the Garden Swift as a vast palate of colour and shade, assembling a store of seeds, spices, flowers, herbs, roots, and fruits that were grown, traded, and collected from around the world. Hundreds of individual distillations and blends were made, testing which plants’ perfumes were best liberated by direct maceration in the liquid or by suspension above the rising vapour. The majority of ingredients were discounted, leaving a final selection of 34 botanicals — a recipe held as a closely guarded secret.

Individual examples include fresh Sicilian blood orange zest, cut on site and never dried (drying destroys the floral nature entirely, and Capreolus use not a trace of bitter pith), and flowers from the British native small-leaved lime tree, Tilia cordata — an aroma of interlaced flowers and honey. The sheer quantity of botanicals fills the still itself, which is housed in a converted lean-to greenhouse. Botanicals are either macerated directly for 40 hours or suspended above for a gentle liberation of aroma through the rising steam — a process that limits production to a small number of bottles per batch. Nothing is added but local water. The gin is hand bottled and finished with traditionally printed letterpress labels.

Producer History

Capreolus Distillery was founded by Barney Wilczak in the Cotswolds, England — a distiller whose years of experience in teasing aroma from myriad fruits, flowers, and spices gave him both the knowledge and the conviction to create a gin of seamless complexity. The distillery takes its name from the roe deer (Capreolus capreolus) native to the British countryside, and its spirits — gins and Eaux de Vie — are made without compromise, without chill filtration, and without shortcuts. The Garden Swift, named after the beautiful day-flying moth, is the distillery’s signature expression and one of the most celebrated craft gins in the world.