THE GIN PASSPORT ATLAS - DISTILLERY STORY- PINNED ON THE MAP - NORTH AMERICA
ARTINGSTALL'S BRILLIANT GIN, Wisconsin, U.S.A
I first came across Paul Feig not through one of his films, but through gin. During the lockdown years, when so much of the gin world moved onto Zoom, I found myself judging alongside him at the World Gin Awards. So I can vouch for the fact that the man behind Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy, A Simple Favor and Last Christmas isn't simply a Hollywood director who decided to put his name on a bottle. He genuinely knows his gin.
Feig's personal style rather gives the game away. Usually seen in beautifully tailored suits, often with a pocket square and a fondness for old-school Hollywood glamour, he has much the same slightly eccentric, impeccably dressed persona around his drinks obsession. He collects 1950s and 60s martini glasses and cocktail sets, so when he finally got around to making his own gin after 20–25 years of thinking about it, a shiny modern bottle was never likely to do.
Artingstall’s takes its name from his mother's maiden name and was developed with Ravinder and Manjit Minhas. Feig went through eight variations of the recipe, testing them neat, over ice, in a Martini and in a Negroni before settling on eleven botanicals including juniper, orris root, cassia, elderberries and citrus. The juniper is deliberately restrained rather than dominating the recipe. Even “Brilliant” has a story: when the final recipe was tasted, the reaction was apparently, “Oh, that's brilliant.”
It is an American-made gin, produced at Minhas Distillery in Monroe, Wisconsin. Feig wanted something that would appeal to American drinkers, including people who found traditional, juniper-heavy gin a little challenging, and the recipe was designed to work particularly well in cocktails.
Then there is the bottle. Feig found a vintage cut-glass decanter in a second-hand shop and sent it to Minhas as the inspiration. The resulting bottle is a heavy, square, embossed decanter with a large glass stopper, more 1950s drinks cabinet than contemporary gin shelf. It looks like something that could have been sitting behind a bar for decades, which fits the whole Feig aesthetic rather nicely.
The liquid has done rather well too, winning Best of Show and Double Gold at the WSWA Spirits Tasting Competition and picking up Gold at the SIP Awards, Silver at the London Spirits Competition and Bronze at San Francisco. Falstaff subsequently gave it 99 points.
Then Feig did something most gin brands can only dream about: he put it in his own films.
Artingstall’s appeared in Last Christmas, and then came the rather delicious crossover with Aviation. In A Simple Favor, Feig directed Blake Lively drinking Ryan Reynolds' Aviation Gin. By the time the sequel, Another Simple Favor, arrived in 2025, Reynolds' bottle had been replaced by Feig's own.
And Feig hasn't stopped there. His latest film, The Housemaid, also features Artingstall’s, giving the gin another prominent piece of screen time. Feig has said there is never a shortage of martinis in his films, so perhaps it was only a matter of time before his own bottle became a recurring member of the cast.
It is an unusually neat piece of product placement. Most gin companies have to persuade a filmmaker to put their bottle on screen; Feig can choose his own.
There is also something satisfying about the fact that the gin began with an interest in the category long before the bottle appeared on a cinema screen.
The celebrity name undoubtedly helps, but here there is a recipe Feig worked through himself, a bottle inspired by something he actually owned, a clear personal aesthetic and a gin that has picked up recognition on its own merits.
One final little snippet: his mother, whose maiden name gave the gin its name, never drank alcohol herself. Feig nevertheless thought Artingstall’s sounded like an old English gin that had been around for 150 years, and considerably better than putting “Feig” on the label!
"An Unusual Hollywood Star"
Show me a bottle and
I'll tell you a story.
