Gin Squares

FIRST JOURNEYS - 80 GINS AROUND THE WORLD - PIN 59 OF 80

PIENAAR & SON, Cape Town, South Africa

AROUND THE WORLD, ONE BOTTLE AT A TIME,

PHILEAS FOGG WOULD SURELY APPROVE

From historic harbour to modern distillery — and a virtual journey that finally became real.

The V&A Waterfront is one of those places in Cape Town that you can visit again and again and still find something new.

Sitting beneath Table Mountain and right beside the working harbour, it has restaurants, shops, hotels and all the usual tourist attractions, but there is still plenty of evidence of the port that was here long before it became one of Cape Town's biggest visitor destinations.

The harbour's story goes right back to the 17th century, when Cape Town was established as a stopping point for ships travelling between Europe and the East. The port grew as shipping increased and the discovery of diamonds and gold brought even more traffic through Cape Town. The old Alfred and Victoria Basins are still part of the Waterfront today, alongside the much larger Duncan Dock.

What I love about the Waterfront is that it hasn't simply tried to hide its industrial past. Old buildings and harbour structures have been incorporated into the development, so you're wandering around a very modern destination while still surrounded by reminders of what this place was built for.

That makes it a rather fitting home for Pienaar & Son, a small distillery with a very hands-on approach to making spirits.

I first came across the father-and-son team during my virtual journey around the world's gin distilleries.

They started out in a tiny distillery just off Roeland Street, with Schalk Pienaar's engineering background proving rather useful when it came to building and adapting their own equipment.

Their approach is refreshingly unpretentious. They describe what they do as combining traditional distilling with “cutting-edge nerdy engineering principles” and their philosophy is about creating new traditions rather than simply following the old ones.

The business has grown considerably since those early days and eventually moved to the V&A Waterfront, bringing the distillery right into the middle of one of Cape Town's busiest areas.

The move also makes sense when you look at what Pienaar & Son are trying to do with their spirits. Their Empire and Orient Gins take inspiration from Cape Town's history, culture and the ingredients that have travelled through its harbour over the centuries.

Then there is Ugly Gin, which takes a very different approach.

The name says pretty much everything you need to know. There is no fancy bottle or elaborate marketing campaign trying to make it something it isn't. The idea was to put the money into making good gin rather than making the packaging look expensive.

Grapefruit and goji feature in the botanical lineup and the gin has become particularly associated with the Negroni. When I originally discovered Pienaar & Son, they were running Ugly Fridays, with Negronis at a wonderfully cheap R50, making it an easy place to spend a Friday afternoon.

The range has grown since then, with the distillery now producing whisky, brandy, aperitifs and other spirits alongside the gins.

The company has also moved again within the Waterfront and is now based at Makers Landing in the Cape Town Cruise Terminal, continuing that rather nice connection between distilling and the working harbour.

The best part of this story for me, though, is that my virtual journey eventually became a real one.

I visited Pienaar & Son in early 2025, so after spending years travelling around the world from behind my computer screen, I finally got to walk into the distillery for real.

There is something rather satisfying about that, especially when the place you've been researching turns out to be every bit as interesting in person.

Cape Town has always been a city where different cultures, ingredients and ideas have arrived by sea and then made themselves at home. Pienaar & Son seem to have picked up that tradition and given it a modern twist.

A working harbour, a father-and-son distilling team, a bit of engineering and some rather good gin. Not a bad combination.