The Stillery Amsterdam

The Free Bacchus Story

One rainy afternoon in 2009 a student called Pascal started wondering why some spirits feel smoother than others. Before long he was distilling in the bathtub of his student house and putting his biochemistry to work building three pot stills, each bigger than the last. A few years later he handed his old friend Robin an unlabelled bottle of vodka, Robin was convinced, and in September 2015 their spelt vodka went on sale.

Genever is the Dutch spirit that came before gin. It starts from malt wine, a distillate of fermented grain, which gives it a fuller, bready body that London Dry gin does not have, and it is flavoured with juniper and other botanicals. In the Netherlands it is traditionally sipped from a tulip glass filled to the brim, next to a beer, a pairing called a kopstootje.

The Stillery works from a 500-square-metre former warehouse in Amsterdam's harbour district, powered by renewable electricity, making its spirits from grain to glass with organic grain grown near the German border. Skal, the Dutch organic control body, certifies The Stillery B.V. The company also distils private-label spirits for other brands; this page covers its own bottles.

Ouwe is its old-style genever, launched in May 2018. It is 27% malt wine, distilled with juniper and aniseed and two less usual botanicals, Citra and Amarillo hops and poppy seeds, then aged for six months in bourbon barrels. The World Gin Awards named it the best Dutch genever in 2021.