New Chapter(s) for Free Spirit Distilling – Part 1

Free Spirit Distilling is the creation of Cape Town-based Bart Smithers. I came upon his gin purely by chance. As a Christmas gift to myself, from myself, I ordered New Chapter Gin no.1 from Takealot.

Of course, being me, I couldn’t actually wait for Christmas to open it and immediately decided to try it immediately. As we were spending Christmas at my in-laws in Jeffrey’s Bay, I obviously had to share; something that I secretly regretted later because goodness, what an amazing bottle of gin! This isn’t difficult to believe since Free Spirit walked away as an International Double Gold Award winner for this gin at the 2020 Michelangelo Awards – Africa’s most respective wine and spirits competition.

Gin no.1, offers some wonderful citrus notes, in particular Naartjie, and as a result, we poured 50ml into an ice cold glass, loaded said glass with a lot of ice, and slowly poured a can of Fitch & Leedes Sugar Free Indian Tonic into the mix. All of this was topped of with a simple orange slice and a few drops of freshly squeezed orange juice. Tastes like more, by the way! According to the website, apart from the obvious citrus notes, the gin’s base is a grape spirit, infused with various other botanicals including South African favourite, Buchu.

Bottle no.1 currently retails for R350 on Free Spirit’s website (deliveries are subject to the South African government lifting the alcohol ban), and comes highly recommended. Additionally, Free Spirit also offers a 140 Proof Special Edition version (retails for R450), with a higher alcohol content of 70% as opposed to the usual 43%

Some more background: according to Bart, this gin put Free Spirit on the map, since its win during a blind tasting at the Michelangelo Awards was quite unexpected. Read more about it on Free Spirit’s website www.freespirit.co.za