FIRST JOURNEYS - 80 GINS AROUND THE WORLD - PIN 29 OF 80

AROUND THE WORLD, ONE BOTTLE AT A TIME,

PHILEAS FOGG WOULD SURELY APPROVE



When I originally wrote this post, it happened to fall on Earth Day, celebrated every year on 22nd April since 1970, so it felt particularly appropriate to pause and reflect on our impact on the planet and the importance of protecting the places and environments that make our world so extraordinary.


The previous year had been difficult for everyone, and as we started to look towards some sort of normality again, Earth Day seemed like a good reminder to appreciate what we had been missing - the freedom to travel, explore and experience the world around us - while also thinking about our responsibility to protect it.


The Amazon is often described as the "lungs of the Earth" because of its enormous forests and importance to the global climate, and over the past few posts I've featured gins which use many Amazonian botanicals. Today though, I'm heading south to Buenos Aires and to somewhere that feels like a fitting stop for this particular gin.


Hidden beneath a flower and wine shop on Arroyo Street is Florería Atlántico, one of the world's most celebrated cocktail bars. There is no obvious bar entrance - instead, you find a rather unassuming flower shop, and somewhere inside is a refrigerator door which opens to reveal a staircase leading underground. Downstairs is a completely different world: a subterranean bar inspired by the old sailor taverns of the early 20th century, with nautical details, mythical sea creatures painted on the walls and a cocktail menu that tells the story of the immigrants who arrived in Argentina from Europe during the early 1900s.

And the man behind it all is Renato "Tato" Giovannoni.


Tato is one of Argentina's most celebrated bartenders and mixologists and his route into the drinks world wasn't exactly straightforward. He originally studied graphic design and art direction and even filmmaking at the New York Film Academy, before returning to Argentina and working behind the bar at places including Gran Bar Danzón, Sucre and the Faena Hotel. His creativity eventually took him around the world, designing drinks programmes and working with some of the biggest names in the industry. In 2013 he finally opened Florería Atlántico, a place where he could bring together his love of drinks, design, storytelling and Argentina.



The bar itself is almost like a journey through Argentina's history. Tato describes it as a bar for immigrants and its cocktail menu is divided into the countries which provided some of the largest waves of immigration to Argentina between 1900 and 1920 - Italy, Spain, France, Poland and England - with drinks inspired by each culture. It is clever, theatrical and completely tied to its location.

Florería Atlántico has also become a regular fixture in The World's 50 Best Bars, reaching No. 3 in the world in 2019 and remaining on the list in subsequent years. It was No. 46 in 2024 and No. 90 in 2025, which is quite some achievement for a bar hidden behind a refrigerator beneath a florist!


But Tato didn't stop at cocktails.

He wanted to create spirits which could tell Argentine stories too, and Príncipe de los Apóstoles was the result. The gin was developed as a way of taking something as classic as gin and giving it an unmistakably Argentine character through the use of yerba mate.


The botanicals include fresh yerba mate leaves, eucalyptus, peppermint, pink grapefruit peel, juniper and coriander. There's a definite freshness when tasting this gin, with a soft, pleasant menthol character and a wonderfully smooth mouthfeel. The mate gives it an earthy green quality which makes it quite unlike the more familiar European styles of gin.


And if you aren't familiar with yerba mate, it is one of the defining drinks of Argentina and much of South America. The dried leaves are traditionally steeped in hot water to make mate, but there is also a cold version known as tereré, which is particularly associated with Paraguay and is made by infusing mate with iced water and often herbs or other flavourings.


I love the fact that Tato didn't simply make an Argentine gin and put an Argentine flag on the bottle. He looked at something deeply rooted in the culture and asked how it could be used to completely rethink a familiar spirit.

That is what I love about this virtual tour - finding the connections between a bottle and the place it comes from. Sometimes it's a fruit, sometimes a flower or spice, sometimes it's a story and sometimes it's a person. With Apostoles, it's all of these things, but perhaps most importantly, it's the idea of taking something familiar and making it belong somewhere else.


And perhaps that's why it feels right to feature it on Earth Day. We spend so much time talking about protecting places, but we also need to understand them, celebrate them and appreciate the things which make them unique.

So, for this stop, I'm virtually descending through the flower shop, opening that refrigerator door and heading underground for a G&T at Florería Atlántico.




 "Is a gin Brazilian because it is made in Brazil, or does it need to taste of Brazil too?"




The serve:


The gin is beautiful with tonic, but I've added a dash of Blue Curaçao for a little colour and the garnish is made by cutting continents out of orange peel!


Cheers to Argentina, to Tato, to the Amazon and to our wonderfully complicated planet. 🌎💚




"Show me a bottle

and I'll tell you a story."