The history of Windspiel, a young distillery from Daun, a small town in the Rhineland, has curious origins.
The three founders of the company, Sandra Wimmeler, Denis Lönnendonker and Tobias Schwoll decided to move between the forests and open spaces of this region, in search of peace and tranquility.
The initial agricultural activity, started on the site to allow the three permanence, did not fully realize the wishes of at least one of the three founders.
The dream of Tobias, bizarre and given the surrounding conditions almost impossible, was in fact that of cultivating his favorite food, the potatoes of the nearby Eifel plateau.
Unlike the neighboring area, however, the land surrounding the town of Daun, volcanic and rocky, was not suitable for the development of this tuber. It therefore took all the application, the wisdom and perseverance of the factor to be able to grow, even among the stones of Vulkaneifel, the vegetable that he so desired.
The Eifel potato produced by the same trio became a central ingredient of their diet, often accompanied, after dinner, by a good glass of gin.
From here the idea was born; make a distillate, a premium gin, with their precious tuber.
Thanks to the work of Holger Borchers, a master distiller called to recreate a product with a refined and subtle taste, Daun's premium dry gin was born. A bottle that, at Sandra Wimmeler, Denis Lönnendonker and Tobias Schwoll Sandra Wimmeler, Denis Lönnendonker and Tobias Schwoll at the time of his birth, lacked a fundamental element: the name.
Even the Windspiel label, in German "levriero", is born from a legend.
The inhabitants of the area tell us that the first to parcel the qualities of Eifel potatoes, in 1757, was Frederick II of Prussia, who, impressed by the story of the leader Leopold Joseph Maria von Daun, decided to make a liqueur with this tuber.
The project actually never started, remaining, in fact, a legend, but the story handed down to this day and the passion of Frederick the Great for the greyhounds brought Sandra to the decision to appear just that mark on their bottles.
Think of a gin created from a potato alcohol could turn up the nose of many purists and fans.
Despite the volcanic terroire and the elaborate research carried out around the Eifel tubers, Windspiel remains, to all intents and purposes, a gin with a taste that is affected by its original matrix.
The processing of this distillate can only start from the harvesting of potatoes, carried out in autumn when their maturation reaches the optimal point. Once the crop is washed, it is ground, mixed with water and heated to start the process that will lead to the production of sugars.
When the pasta is so obtained, when it is cooled, then the cultivated yeasts are added. The Windspiel premium dry gin The Windspiel premium dry gin, which gives rise to fermentation. The must obtained is then distilled three times, to cut both the harmful parts and the ones that would make the taste impure, obtaining finally the potato alcohol for the premium dry gin.
To enrich the bouquet of the gin of Daun, next to the juniper, among others, the ever present coriander, spices such as cinnamon, peels, as the peel of the lemons, roots, including ginger, and flowers, like those of lavender, all immersed individually in alcohol and distilled separately.
The result of this long work, mixed with the potato alcohol previously produced, is nothing but the Windspiel premium dry gin.
The distillate, on the nose, is characterized by a good memory of juniper, delicate floral notes and a definite hint of lavender.
In the mouth it appears closed, with a taste still difficult to decipher, in which there remain clear juniper and lavender, with light hints of flowers and fruit and a finish in which the aromatic parts give way to a more pungent perception of alcohol.
