Why Grape Based Spirits Taste Different

Most gin and vodka is built on neutral spirit bought in bulk, usually made from sugar cane or grain. We make our own base from wine we produce ourselves, distilling it five times, and a sixth time with the botanicals for the gin. Grape spirit carries a roundness and a silky texture that cane and grain neutral spirit simply don't have, which is why our gin drinks soft at 43% and why our vodka took the Michelangelo Best Vodka Trophy in 2019.

It is slower and it costs more. Here is why we do it anyway.

What neutral spirit actually is

Nearly every gin on a South African shelf starts the same way. The producer buys neutral spirit, distilled to around 96% and stripped of virtually all character, then redistils it with botanicals. That is not a criticism. It is how the industry works, and it is the only way to produce at real scale.

But it has a consequence. If the base is engineered to have no character, then everything you taste has to come from botanicals, and the texture of the spirit is whatever the bulk supplier's column produced that week. You get flavour control without mouthfeel control.

Our route: wine first, spirit second

We start further back than that. We are one of the very few distilleries in the world using grapes as the base for a whole range of spirits.

We grow grapes on our farm Basco in the cool Elgin valley, a cool climate site that gives wines with acidity and aromatic lift. We make actual wine from them, matured on the barrel, not an industrial ferment. Then we distil that wine in our custom 1000 litre Kothe copper potstill. For the vodka and base for the gin, the wine goes through five distillations. We cut it with Elgin mountain spring water, which is soft and low in minerals.

Only then do the botanicals come in, in a 200 litre still we designed ourselves specifically for gin.

What it does in the glass

Three things, fairly consistently.

Texture. Grape spirit has a rounder, slightly more viscous mouthfeel. It is the difference between a spirit that feels like it has some weight to it and one that feels thin. At 43% that matters a great deal, and it is why our gin doesn't burn where you expect it to.

A softer alcohol edge. Careful cuts on a potstill plus the character of the base mean the ethanol reads as warmth rather than heat.

A quiet fruit and floral backbone. Not grapey, because a well made grape base isn't recognisably of grapes. But there is a faint sweetness underneath that gives botanicals something to sit on instead of float above.

Taste a grape based gin blind against a cane based one at the same strength and most people cannot name the difference. They will almost always pick which one is smoother.

The vodka proof

Vodka is the hardest test of a base spirit because there is nowhere to hide. No botanicals, no oak, no sugar. Just spirit and water, and every flaw on display.

In 2019 Blomendahl Vodka, five times distilled from our own wine and cut with Elgin mountain spring water, took the Best Vodka Trophy at the Michelangelo International Wine and Spirits Awards, judged against every vodka in the competition by an international panel.

A grape based vodka from a family distillery in the Elgin valley, beating the world. That makes the argument better than we can.

Is this the same as grappa?

Related, but no. Grappa, and our Premium Husk Spirit, is distilled from the pressed skins left after winemaking, and it deliberately keeps a grapey, floral, assertive character. Our base spirit is distilled from the wine itself and refined towards neutrality, keeping only the texture.

Same fruit, two very different philosophies. We make both, which probably tells you how we feel about grapes.

Why more distilleries don't do this

Honestly, because it is impractical for most of them.

You need a vineyard, or at least reliable access to good wine. You need to be a winemaker as well as a distiller, which is two crafts, two sets of equipment and two seasons. It costs considerably more than buying neutral spirit by the tanker. And it is slow, because you cannot order more base spirit on a Tuesday. You wait for harvest.

FJ Blomendahl qualified as a winemaker at Geisenheim in 1983 and as a Master Distiller in Berlin in 1985. That combination is unusual, and it is the only reason this route was ever open to us. The family has been farming since 1185 and distilling under the Kohlhoff name since 1882.

Where you can taste it

Our Core Blomendahl Range is built on this base.

Blomendahl Gin, with its five times distilled grape base, distilled a sixth time with the botanicals, own farm lemon peel, juniper, coriander, cinnamon, aniseed, cloves, lavender and saffron. Blomendahl Vodka, the trophy winner. Blomendahl Apple Liqueur, made with Elgin apples, grape base and spring water. And Alter Schwede, over 200 herbs and spices on grape base, to the original 1648 recipe.

If you make spirits yourself and want to understand what a different base would do to your product, that is exactly the sort of work we do with clients in the laboratory. Come and talk to us.