There’s a whole movement of bartenders around the world who really care about what’s in the bottle,” says Maison Ferrand owner and creator of the French company’s Citadelle Gin, Alexandre Gabriel. As such, Citadelle has been a home away from home for bartenders visiting south west France for many years, offering education and connection with the industry at the home of its gin operations. However, this year, for the first time in its history, Citadelle has opened up its distillery to the public. But why now?
Gabriel explains that the idea to open Citadelle to the public came from his wife, Debbie, and a member of Ferrand’s Barbados financial team suggesting it was time the distillery connected with those who aren’t as in the know as members of the drinks trade. “We’ve been open to the trade and friends for 25 years, and people stay with us. But this new corner we’ve turned is to connect with everyday people who love fine spirits,” Gabriel continues.
However, the Citadelle Gin distillery wasn’t always the pristine tourist destination it is now. It is housed in a stone building at Château Bonbonnet, Cognac, that dates from the 18th century. The space had housed a distillery in the 19th century before acting as a stable followed by an ageing cellar. To mark the brand’s 25th anniversary in 2021, master blender Gabriel, along with Debbie and their in-house team, opened the new distillery, which, Gabriel adds is the “first designed by me, it’s like a brain child, I waited 35 years to do it”. He continues: “With Citadelle, I want to take people places and be super creative, making libations that make people say ‘wow this is crazy’.
“It’s like when we distilled pickles for our Cornichon Gin, we want to create those emotions through delicious and interesting liquids, so for us the future is to continue to create.”
When creating new gins, the distillery is perfectly placed to use its natural resources to do so. At the back of the château sit jasmine bushes, which Gabriel, along with the help of a few team members and some stonemasons who were roped in, harvested – 4kg to be precise. Gabriel, at the time of speaking to DI, distilled this harvest fresh with the intention of using it in a new expression.
Along with jasmine, the grounds of the estate house juniper berries for the gin. The juniper, along with 18 additional spices, forms the base of Citadelle. Gabriel uses what the team calls ‘progressive infusion’, preserving the organoleptic qualities of each ingredient and adapting the maceration time and alcohol level for each of the 19 botanicals in the recipe.
Further to the new distillery, the site is set to feature a mini distillery in its L’orangerie greenhouse. The space is currently used to grow the lemons and limes used to flavour the gin, but will soon be home to the addition of a bar and small-scale distillery where guests can distil their own sequence of citrus to understand the principle of Citadelle’s process.
