FIRST JOURNEYS - A RACE AROUND THE WORLD 2020 - PIN 17 OF 23
McQUEEN and the VIOLET FOG GIN, São Paulo, Brazil
AROUND THE WORLD, ONE BOTTLE AT A TIME.
PHILEAS FOGG WOULD SURELY APPROVE
Day 10 ...
I’ve moved on today to Brazil’s largest city, as I head north on the final leg of my round-the-world gin tour!
My cocktail today is a Gimlet, which is the gin cousin of a popular Brazilian cocktail, the Caipirinha — quite simply gin, lime juice and sugar syrup.
McQueen and the Violet Fog is distilled in the hills of Jundiaí, near São Paulo, although it is owned by independent US spirits company Sovereign Brands, whose driving force is CEO Brett Berish.
Brett’s beliefs echo the Latin words embossed on the bottle, Pauca Sed Bona — “Quality over Quantity” — and his focus is on creating high-quality brands. In doing so, they are taking on some of the world’s leading spirits companies, such as Diageo, LVMH and Bacardi.
He doesn’t play by the rules and it certainly seems to be working for this maverick business. They don’t hire consulting firms, marketing agencies or even use focus groups, but instead make “gut” decisions based on what they think the market will like. Mistakes have happened, but they’ve learned from them and, in the 20 years they’ve been around, this family-owned business has successfully launched spirits in several categories, notably Luc Belaire champagne and Bumbu Rum, and has collaborated with music legends including Jay-Z and DJ Khaled.
What makes this gin unique isn’t the distillation process, which combines both maceration and vapour infusion, but the fact that they wanted it to stand out from the rest and feature all six flavour profiles on the gin flavour wheel.
The base spirit is sugarcane and they use botanicals sourced from around the world, including lemongrass, pomelo, jasmine, basil, rosemary, fennel seed, calamansi, star anise and locally grown açaí.
And then there’s the name.
McQueen and the Violet Fog comes from a poem which recounts a meeting with a mysterious rock band. The back of the bottle features the final two stanzas of the poem, whilst the copper branding is a nod to the copper still used to make the gin.
And if you look closely at the label, beneath the crown you’ll see two hands pointing towards it and the Roman numerals XXI — 21 botanicals!
There’s always something else to discover on these bottles — and I’m loving the detective work as I race around the world!
"From Poetry to Gin"
"Show me a bottle
and I'll tell you a story."
