ABOUT Porter’s is a premium gin with a bold juniper body and a unique citrus profile. Created by a trio from Aberdeen, Scotland, we combine a fusion of old and new by utilising modern “cold”, or “vacuum”, distillation and traditional copper pot-still distillation. The resulting gin has a bold juniper body and a unique citrus profile.
PRODUCT INFORMATION
Bottles Size: 700ml
ABV: 41.5% ABV
Distillation Location: Porter’s is distilled in2 parts, Aberdeen, Scotland (modern/colddistillation) & Warrington (traditional/pot-stilldistillation). Both parts are combined duringbottling. No additives post-distillation.
Base Spirit: 100% British wheat grain spirit
Awards: IWSC Gold 2016
BREAKING DOWN THE KEY ELEMENTS Flavour Precision – Porter’s was created with a precise flavour profile in mind. Achieving a bold juniper body with a light citrus mid-palate was the priority, and botanicals were chosen only for this purpose. The rotary evaporator allows volatile delicate flavours to be extracted from certain botanicals, while others are better distilled in copper pot stills.
Created in a bar by a talented trio – Ben05Iravani, Alex Lawrence and Josh Rennie are the men behind the brand. After hundreds of small scale distillations, the recipe was created and perfected by the team in one of Scotland’s top bars, Orchid
A fusion of old and new – created by a process combining traditional copper pot-still distillation and modern vacuum distillation using a rotary evaporator. Robust, heavy botanicals such as juniper are best distilled in a traditional still, whereas certain volatile light flavours can only be captured using the rotary evaporator. By combining both methods a unique flavour profile was achieved. This partnership suits the Porter’s philosophy of fusing old and new, respecting tradition while Innovating.
STORY OF PORTER’S GIN Josh, Ben and Alex all have a passion for good quality food and drink, and they had the collective aim of making a gin that tastes better than existing brands, is good to drink straight or with tonic, and has a subtly unique flavour. Professor Andrew Porter of the University of Aberdeen sourced a rotary evaporator which allowed the team to create the flavour they wanted through distilling alcohol with botanicals at very low temperatures, often known as cold distillation or vacuum distillation.
This led to hundreds of experiments with the flavours that can be extracted from a huge variety of botanicals, from common plants like heather and grass to rare herbs like Muira puama and calamus root. Interestingly they discovered that there were huge variations in flavour even from small changes in temperature, how the botanicals are cut, maceration methods and the quality of the botanicals themselves.
They also discovered that making a good gin is extremely difficult and takes a huge amount of care over balancing the flavours from each botanical. A large number of gins in the market seem to have struggled to use unique botanicals in an effective way because it’s easier to stick to traditional recipes and it’s very difficult to balance an unusual botanical, so they tend to either have a one-dimensional flavour profile which is led by few ‘unique botanicals’, or simply stick to the traditional recipes with slight tweaks.
Josh, Ben and Alex took the challenge of developing their own recipe, and spent a year testing and balancing botanicals. After hundreds of tests, each of the 12 botanicals selected were only included to improve and balance the flavour of the gin. They found that Buddhas hand, a rare citrus fruit, and pink peppercorns worked extremely well with cold distillation whereas traditional botanicals generally worked better in a traditional copper pot still. For the traditional distillation the team have partnered with G&J Distillers in Warrington, England, (Est. 1761), and worked on their recipe together with them.