Deux Frères Dry Gin

A sapphire-hued Swiss Gin with a flavor profile that rings like a silver bell.

Deux Frères Dry Gin was launched by Gian and Florian Grundbøck. Florian is a food and beverage technologist, Gian is the business guy. Together the brothers decided to create a Gin to their own specifications, without compromise. It took a year and a half of experimentation in their small home lab using a small vacuum still to get it just right. Now that they have refined their product, it is made to their specifications at an historic distillery in nearby Tyrol, Austria.

Deux Frères Dry Gin begins with a traditional neutral Spirit distilled from fruit — basically alpine Schnapps distilled a few more times. It is then infused with a secret recipe of twenty-five botanicals. Yes, the list is mostly a secret. But they are willing to share a few of them, including organic juniper berries, fresh organic lemon peels, rose petals, lavender blossoms, angelica root, curcuma root, hyssop, and orange blossom leaves. Importantly, there is an unnamed botanical infused at the end that turns the Gin a light sapphire blue (they aren’t saying, but we suspect either Asian pea-blossom or gentian flowers). When mixed with tonic, the color changes naturally to a light fuchsia-lavender.

Smartass Corner:
Color-changing Gins are becoming popular. The effect is caused by various classes of phenol pigments in certain botanicals. These have one color in a Ph-neutral liquid and another when the mildly acidic tonic water is added.