Stupid.
That was Alexander Stein’s father’s reaction when he heard his son’s idea to quit his job and move from the U.S. back to his native Germany’s Black Forest region to apply the techniques distillers use when crafting eau de vie to gin.
Stein’s father’s reasoning was simple. Stein wasn’t a distiller; he was a German working for Nokia in Detroit. And while both his parents and grandparents were distillers, Stein was an economics major whose knowledge of gin stemmed nearly entirely from the cocktails he had imbibed over the years.
Moreover, of the all the things that the Black Forest is known for — smoked ham, cherry-topped cakes, fruit brandies, cuckoo clocks, spas and hiking, mountain biking and cross-country skiing trails — gin is not one of them.
That didn’t deter Stein.
“I knew the idea sounded eccentric,” Stein says. “But in the strictest sense, gin is a hybrid between an eau de vie made from fruit and herbs. And in Germany we have unique expertise at distilling fruit and herbs, and it was just a matter of finding a distiller who didn’t just know how to operate a machine but someone with the knowledge of ingredients so that he would understand how to fit together the composition.”
He hired distiller Christoph Keller, a former art publisher and curator whose pear brandy won the International Wine & Spirit Competition’s brandy of the year in 2011. And together they set about crafting a gin that met Stein’s vision.
The process was slow. But after 128 test batches, Stein and Keller settled on a recipe combining 47 different plant ingredients, including six types of pepper and the peels of bitter oranges, lemons and pomelos. About one-third of the ingredients are native to the Black Forest, including the main ingredient in the mix, Black Forest lingonberries.
Using 47 ingredients was both an aesthetic decision and a strategic one; Stein says there are so many ingredients that it is nearly impossible to replicate.
Either way, the number of ingredients isn’t as important as the gin’s taste, which is remarkably smooth and interesting. The lingonberries, for instance, add a fruity, slightly bitter note that toes the line between interesting and distracting.
That explains why wine authority Robert Parker called Monkey 47 the greatest gin he’s ever tasted. And it is delicious. While Monkey 47’s website suggests using it in complex cocktails like a juniper sling — a spin on a Singapore sling — we like to use it in cocktails where its unique flavors aren’t lost, say a gimlet, bee’s knees or martini.
Just beware: The mix of exotic ingredients doesn’t come cheap; Monkey 47 retails for $45.99 for a 375-milliliter bottle.
