Foundation Gin - Detroit City Distillery

Gin description

This gin began with a single dinner. In 2018, Chef Tom approach us to collaborate on a dinner at Seedling Farm in South Haven, Michigan as part of the “Outstanding in the Field” global dinner series. Outstanding in the Field hosts some of the world’s leading chefs to prepare a monumental meal in the middle of a farm field, sourcing everything directly from the host farm. We drove to the farm in late July to forage for botanicals. Farmer Pete took us to every corner of his bio-diverse farm, with an incredible assortment of fruits and vegetables planted alongside a series of wild growing herbs and botanicals. We picked a handful of botanicals, drove back across the state, and distilled the botanicals to make just 80 bottles of gin for the dinner. We called it “Farmer Pete’s Gin,” and everyone absolutely loved it, so we decided to make more. The only problem was some of the natural botanicals we used went to seed. We hosted a series of tests with Chef and the team to figure out a new formula that we could make year around while still maintaining the integrity of gin. This long journey produced Foundation Gin. Native Michigan botanicals, such as elderberry, spicebush, lemon balm, Michigan hibiscus and rose hip, compliment the classic combination of juniper, cardamom and coriander offering a balance of floral and spice.