Description

We created the recipe for the new Gin di Ginepraio with our essential oils, Mediterranean suggestions for a refined, intense and unusual distillate.

How a Mediterranean Gin is born

Visit to the Lady of the Drops and Doctor Millilitri

by Nicola Dal Falco

Val di Cecina, on a hill, between Pomarance and the river that a little further down winds twice under the Masso delle fanciulle and the Masso degli specchio.
A place for summer bathing, a “poor man’s sea”, not so far from the Tyrrhenian Sea whose scent the wind occasionally carries.

Here, among the scrub, the fields of aromatic herbs and the olive groves, but without the noise of the surf, the bouquet of essential oils was born that tells the story of the third born among the brothers Juniper bush, The Ginepraio Organic Mediterranean Gin.

More than a postcard or a snapshot, a current of fragrances that saturates the room with memories.
And yes, as the Lady of the Drops, aka Benedetta Tecchio, says, we smell things before tasting them, connecting their olfactory imprint directly to the neurons.
One can have many ideas of the Mediterranean, but it is a mistaken procedure that tends towards abstraction.

Starting from an idea is not the same as starting from a memory.

At least this is what Benedetta does: first of all you smell things and then… in order to create a chain of memories that hold your hand.
They will be more honest and lasting than any preconceived or flattering idea.
Even more real, because the choice to use essential oils, organic, marks a huge difference with the synthetic molecules, used in perfumery, in the kitchen, at the bar, in the distillery, «Smelling a synthetic perfume – as Doctor Milliletri, aka Claudio Gaiaschi, grower of medicinal herbs, engineer, photographer, life and work partner of Benedetta, says – gives you a headache, it is so one-way, based on that single laboratory molecule. The complete opposite, for natural things.
Consider that the scent of laurel is formed in nature by three hundred molecules."

Together, the Lady of Drops and Doctor Millilitri created the Podere Santa Bianca brand that cultivates, distills and assembles essential oils.
So much culture, so much nose

Before getting to the point and explaining what the Mediterranean of Ginepraio Organic Mediterranean Gin tastes like, we must also take into account the role of neurons, the culture with which the person was formed and the experiences had.

Having a keen sense of smell is a destiny, enhancing it is an apprenticeship.

In the choices for the new Ginepraio, as for other liqueurs and perfumes, both island trips on a Vespa and readings (in particular the writing of Simonetta Agnello Hornby, Sicilian), studies on 19th-century Italian art, long walks with dogs, and the encounters of a lifetime.

Two above all, those with Angelo Naj Oleari and the barman Augustine Perrone of the Connaught Bar in London, without forgetting the souvenir of his father who bought Floris perfumes, and then
as in a ritual he mixed them according to the whim of the day.
Therefore, it will not be just a floral description, but a more complex map where the fundamental ingredient is silence that goes hand in hand with concentration.

To make a Mediterranean gin, you have to evoke the Mediterranean.

It takes imagination.

Step by step

«When I need to look for a blend of essential oils – says Benedetta – I leave with the dogs and, step by step, I begin to think in drops: two of this, three of that, no, actually, better four, taking away one of the other. It seems a bit approximate and it is instead the opposite. The number of drops and the relationship between the essential oils always gives a complete figure, a precise profile.
The result must literally open the breath, create a sensation of completeness, of a circle.
«If I think of the Mediterranean I see a place in the world that smells of sun, that has just that flavor, of scrub, of beach, of open windows, of breeze, of vegetable gardens. More: I cannot dissociate the image of the Mediterranean from Mediterranean women. Those types, recurring in the paintings of the Abruzzese painter and photographer Francesco Paolo Michetti.
"I translated this inclusive sensation into eight proposals for essential oils, eight olfactory maps that Claudio then transformed into milliliters, taking into account that each oil has a specific density. Calibration in milliliters is one of his tasks together with work in the fields and in the laboratory."
«The tasting with the clients – continues the Lady of the drops –Enzo Brini and Fabio Mascaretti had a sudden turning point, when Enzo, thinking back to the vertical made, asked us if they could join the second proposal with the third. Which is what we did».

And these are two of the possible Mediterranean souls, which have captured the attention. One series includes oregano, juniper, bitter orange, mastic, petitgrain citronnier, obtained from leaves, twigs and unripe fruits of bitter orange. The other series brings together juniper, marjoram, green mandarin, wild carrot.
Thinking back to these essences, Benedetta focused above all on the mastic tree "which is a sort of fingerprint of the Mediterranean"; on the marjoram «so green, persistent, light»; on petit grain citronnier "which makes you think of heat on your skin"; on wild carrot «earthy, whose roots give a quiet full of energy».
As we delve deeper, we find that by analogy the oregano «Sophia Loren is omnipresent in my kitchen»; the bitter orange «it takes me back home, to Maremma»; marjoram "it's worth a smile"; the juniper «to substantial dishes such as rabbit and beef» while at the green mandarin, hats off! it's "a teacher who brings order to the classroom and who, being both harsh and sweet, is of ineffable elegance."

If you do the test, spraying a little Ginepraio Organic Mediterranean Gin on some paper, as you do for perfumes,
you will find the selected essential aromas intact and united.