THE GIN PASSPORT ATLAS - DISTILLERY STORY- PINNED ON THE MAP - EUROPE
O/\TH GIN, Finland
A Formula 1 driver and an Olympic cyclist walk into a gin bar…
It sounds like the opening line of a joke, but O/\TH Gin really does begin with two elite athletes, a shared love of gin and a habit of collecting bottles wherever their travels took them.
Finnish F1 driver Valtteri Bottas and Australian Olympic cyclist Tiffany Cromwell were already well acquainted with the world of international travel. Between races, training camps and holidays, they found themselves seeking out local gins and visiting distilleries. Eventually, the obvious question arose: why not make one of their own?
The answer is O/\TH, and it is rather more personal than the average celebrity bottle.
Start with the oats. Bottas's family has a farm in Finland where oats have been grown for generations, so putting Finnish oats into the gin wasn't dreamed up by a marketing department looking for a suitably Scandinavian ingredient. They were already part of his family story. Cromwell brought the Australian side of the equation, with apples connected to her home in South Australia.
The oats caused a bit of a technical headache. You can't treat them in quite the same way as your average botanical, so the team turned to vacuum distillation, allowing them to work at a much lower temperature. That helps retain the softer qualities of the oats and apple peel without losing the familiar juniper character that tells you this is still, thankfully, gin.
It is distilled by Moments Crafter in Ilomantsi, in eastern Finland, a location surrounded by forests, lakes and the sort of landscape that makes a Finnish ingredient list seem considerably less surprising. The gin is 42.7% ABV and contains no added sugar.
Bottas has been fairly hands-on with the project, too. He has talked about the distillation process and the importance of using oats from his family's farm. He has also admitted that he likes porridge, which may be the first time breakfast has provided the inspiration for a Formula 1 driver's gin!
The name is worth a closer look as well. O/\TH uses the slash-and-angle symbol as part of its identity, reflecting the coming together of two people, two countries and two very different sporting worlds. It looks suitably modern and slightly mysterious on the bottle, although thankfully you don't need to understand the typography before pouring yourself a G&T.
There has even been a rather unexpected sequel. O/\TH has crossed paths with the whisky world through WhistlePig, whose rye whiskey has been finished in barrels that previously held O/\TH Gin.
"Finnish oats, Australian apples and a need for speed."
Show me a bottle and
I'll tell you a story.
