FIRST JOURNEYS - EASTERN EUROPEAN EXPEDITION- PIN 04 OF 17
JUNIMPERIUM GIN - Tallinn, Estonia
A ROAD TRIP WHERE EVERY STOP HAS A STORY
Junimperium is an Estonian gin with a distinctly modern personality. Its home is Telliskivi, a former industrial district in Tallinn dating back to the late nineteenth century that has been transformed into one of the city's creative quarters. Start-ups, restaurants, bars, galleries, cultural venues and the Fotografiska photography museum now occupy the old industrial surroundings, making it an apt setting for an artisan distillery built around creativity and design.
Junimperium opened its doors here in 2019 as Estonia's first open artisan gin distillery. The approximately 300-square-metre space combines the production area with a distillery bar, where visitors can try cocktails made with the gins, and the distillery also offers tours exploring gin history, botanicals and the production process.
The story behind the gin begins with Tarvo Jaansoo, who spent almost 22 years working in fashion before moving into hospitality. His interest in gin grew through collecting bottles and exploring their botanicals, flavours and production methods. (Sounds familiar!) Eventually, after failing to find quite the gin he was looking for, a suggestion from his wife gave him the final push: perhaps making his own would be easier than continuing to search for it. (Nope, I'm not doing that!)
The idea became a joint venture. Raigo, Roland, Priit, Tarvo and Harri came together around their shared enthusiasm for quality handmade gin and spent more than a year developing the recipes through testing and trial distillations before Junimperium became a reality. Production is overseen by gin chemist and distiller Aare Ormus.
Tarvo's fashion background still feels relevant to the brand. He has described creating gin as being rather like painting, with the spirit providing the canvas and botanicals and berries providing the colours. The result is a distillery where the liquid, bottle and surroundings all feel deliberately designed rather than purely functional.
The name Junimperium — the Empire of Junipers — makes the brand's priorities clear. Juniper isn't simply the essential botanical required to make a gin; it is the central character around which the brand has been built. The Blended Dry Gin uses multiple junipers from different parts of the world alongside local Estonian botanicals and berries, creating what the company describes as its distinctive juniper backbone.
Even the bottle carries the idea. The juniper-wood stopper is part of Junimperium's brand identity as well as an important design feature. The name, the botanical recipe and the cap all reinforce the same idea: this is an empire built around juniper. Their unapologetic love of juniper makes my juniper-filled heart sing!
Junimperium has two copper stills, but the interesting part isn't their size; it is how they are used. The botanicals for the Blended Dry Gin are distilled separately, requiring seven individual distillations before the resulting distillates are combined.
It takes considerably longer than distilling the botanicals together, but the advantage is greater control over each flavour before the final blend is created. The method allows Junimperium to build the gin almost like a recipe assembled from individual components, rather than relying on a single distillation to capture everything at once.
The botanical blend brings together several types of juniper with Estonian berries, coriander, angelica, cubeb pepper, thyme and two secret local botanicals. I couldn't say for certain what they might be, but spruce or pine, birch or perhaps one of Estonia's many wild herbs could all be possibilities. The countryside offers a rich selection of botanicals that could bring an unmistakable sense of terroir to the gin. Coriander contributes citrus and spice, angelica helps bring everything into balance, while cubeb and thyme add peppery and herbal notes. Juniper, naturally, remains firmly at the centre.
The name Blended Dry Gin is worth a brief mention. Junimperium's gin is made from separately distilled botanical distillates that are blended to create the finished spirit. The company has also described it as a London Dry-style gin, but chooses to use Blended Dry — a sensible way of describing what makes the production distinctive without getting lost in the sometimes murky terminology around gin categories.
The artisan approach continues right through to the bottle. Bottling and labelling are done by hand, and Tarvo still personally writes some batch and bottle numbers on individual bottles. It is a small detail, but one that suits a distillery where design, production and personality remain closely connected.
The bar and tours make the distillery part of Tallinn's creative scene rather than simply a place where gin happens to be produced. Visitors can see the stills and production area, learn about the botanicals and history of gin, taste the range and finish with a Gin & Tonic.
For a brand called Junimperium, there is something pleasingly consistent about it all. The “empire” may be a playful name, but every detail — from the different junipers in the stills to the wooden bottle cap — keeps bringing the story back to the same place: juniper at the heart of everything.
An Empire Built Around Juniper
"Show me a bottle
and I'll tell you a story."