What did you do before creating your distillery? Before I built the distillery, I started and tended 2 bars, which in turn led to launching a record label and a festival. Before that I was an engineer. I still run the festival which works hand in hand with the distillery. What made you decide to create your distillery, and what's the inspiration behind Old Well Gin? Through a unique set of circumstances, I found myself making my own Amaro in 2013. Back then it was about fighting back against the man, in this case a businessman who bought up our local schnapps brand and doubled the prices overnight. I just decided to go for it and make my own and came up with a recipe that included bitter orange (the common bond of all our products), liquorice, cloves, caraway, rhubarb and the crowd at our bar ate it up. That’s where I first got the bug and dug into my family’s distilling history. Sometime thereafter I realized I had found my calling and quickly set a trail for Louisville, Kentucky to learn the tricks of the trade from bourbon distillers.
Can you tell us more about the distillery and your stills? My cabin sized distillery is a converted well-house that used to provide water to my village before the fall of the wall when all this was still East Germany. We are about an hour north of Berlin and the distillery sits in my backyard and I set about converting it into my laboratory around 2016. It was a slow process that involved a great deal of support from my neighbours who are all in the building trades. Inside it is driven by 2 Holstein stills, one 50 litre electric heated and the other 150 litre wood fired. Behind it I have a botanical garden and an apple orchard I just planted last October. Can you tell us more about the distillation process and botanicals? I steep my botanicals for 36 hours, lightly heating and agitating in between. Once that’s ready I load my vapor basket and slowly bring up the temperature. Once I make my heads cut, I dial it back and let the first half of the hearts run trickle in patiently, trying to get the most out of those Juniper berries I so carefully harvested. The process is completely unautomated and by hand. That human touch is important to make each of our batches special. Other botanicals I use include bitter orange, lemon peel, roots of angelica, orris, lavender, hibiscus, and a just a hint of cardamom. Between October and January I harvest all my juniper in nearby forests, sorting and selecting the right berries (from lots and lots of spiders), then washing them and setting them out to dry. Can you tell us more about your sustainability work at the distillery? In 2023, we finished our photovoltaic project that supplies enough energy to heat our Gin still. Therefore, Old Well can now say that in addition to being a Winner in the Traditional Gin category of The Gin Guide Awards in 2023, our Gin is made by pure sunshine. Our Brandy still is heated by scrap wood from local foresters. We also focus on regional sales to local markets. You can also find us well-represented in bars and shops in Berlin, 100 kilometres down the road. What can visitors experience if they visit the distillery? This summer, we will build on our weekly tastings, which began last year. On Thursday afternoons between easter and the fall harvest, we offer flights of our homemade spirits, which include our Old Well Gin, Absinth, Apple Brandy, Vodka, Akvavit, and some Herbal liqueurs. We included a serving of homemade Texas BBQ-style smoked meats and sides that we smoke right out outside the distillery; often, while we are distilling. I also offer tastings by appointment for small groups and weekend getaways, which can all be booked on our website: https://oldwell.de/termin
What have been the biggest challenges and achievements?
Easy. In 2021, curating and organising the Synästhesie Festival in Berlin, in between corona lockdowns, pulling it off in a way that was as normal as possible for our audience, all this with great uncertainty of if it would even happen and making it by the skin of our teeth. To make things really exciting I decided to hand-make every bottle of gin used at the festival, from picking the juniper in the forest, setting the botanical bill, distilling and finishing the gin, to bottling and labelling it. Having been there from the forest to the festival, watching people enjoying the gin was perhaps one of the the most rewarding feelings ever. In 2022 I repeated the process. How would you describe your Old Well Gin in 3 words? Fragrant, citrus, smooth. What's your favourite way to drink your gin? Neat or with a very dry Tonic Water and Grapefruit. Which gins would you always have on your gin shelf (other than your own of course!)? Monkey 47 Gin, The Botanist Gin, and anything new and exciting I come across. What's next for you and your distillery - any exciting plans? The expansion and switching to 100% renewable power. Nurturing our 100 or so young apple trees and introducing their harvests to the mix in coming years. You Might Also Like...
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