Meet Pienaar & Son Orient Gin, our beautiful November 2020 Gin of the Month!

Stunning scenery, a complex history and a thrilling future – perched at the very tip of the continent, Cape Town in South Africa is a world unto itself. Meet a gin that captures this singular city, with all of its contradictions and splendour.

The stunning Pienaar & Son Orient Gin that our members can find in their November 2020 Gin of the Month box is a tasty tipple like no other!

Andre Pienaar remembers spending time with his grandfather in the Kalahari, where the scrub straggles out of sand the colour of rust.

But these days, Andre does more than just drink gin. He also distils it under the banner Pienaar & Son, on equipment designed and built by his father, Schalk Pienaar, using ingredients that cannot help but encapsulate some of the endlessly complex, at times horrifically tragic and yet still hopeful history of the city where he distils: Cape Town, a metropolis wedged between mountain and sea.

While Andre’s spirits cannot hope to capture all that makes South Africa what it is, they are undeniably South African. And none more so than the Orient Gin our members can discover in there November 2020 Gin of the Month box. 

Andre never planned to become a gin distiller.

While his father, a chemical engineer, had founded a company that built the kind of machines that could distil gallons of liquid into alcohol over the course of an afternoon, Andre wasn’t interested in joining the family business.

And while he did pursue a degree in chemistry & biochemistry — partly to please his father and partly because he found it easy (not to mention the fact that he was rejected by the architecture programme) — Andre didn’t enter the field after he graduated. Instead, he took a year out to pursue music. But success came, and that one year turned into seven.

Andre started writing music for film and television – everything from theme songs to cereal advert jingles. But the grind instantly killed his love for music, and he started looking for another way to fulfil the creative half of his brain.

Around this time, a craze for brewing beer at home had taken over South Africa. Andre watched as all of his friends started playing around with malt and kegs and mash – but, ever the chemist, he was more interested in distillation than brewing.

Andre delved deep into the world of distillation, exploring internet forums and researching how big brands set their spirits apart on the supermarket shelves. But in the end, it wasn’t an online resource or another gin brand’s marketing material that would teach Andre how to make a good gin. 

When Andre told his dad about his new hobby, Schalk was thrilled; finally, his son was following in his footsteps in some small way.

Andre himself had a background in marketing and a degree in chemistry and biochemistry, while his dad was one of South Africa’s most respected constructors of distillation equipment. South Africa was poised to be rocked by the same craft gin explosion that had taken the UK by storm, and their family had been drinking gin for generations – regardless of whether it was cool or not.

And so Pienaar & Son was born. 

While Andre takes full responsibility for the day-to-day running of the distillery – working alongside Stanford, his right-hand man – Pienaar the elder made a very important contribution to the distillery early on, and more than earned his name on the sign: he designed and oversaw the construction of all of the distillery’s equipment, including the pot still upon which Andre distils his gin.

For Andre, having a gin still designed and constructed in South Africa is a huge point of pride. For other gin brands, sourcing cheap stills from overseas was a no-brainer. But Andre wanted to create gins that paid tribute to the long tradition of distilling in South Africa, and the local expertise that it has created.

While Andre’s equipment is bespoke, that doesn’t mean it’s ultra-high-tech. Andre distils his gins on a very basic pot still, of the kind that has been used for centuries to make spirits. For him, the success or failure of a gin rests with the recipe, not the tools used to distil the liquid.

Andre considers gin to be a straightforward spirit to make, likening it to painting a canvas. As the painter, he has full control over how the colour is applied: add spices for more spice, citrus fruits for more citrus, certain herbs for a floral taste and aroma. But other spirits, he says, require a little witchcraft.

That magical boost comes from the second still at Pienaar & Son: a column still that was also custom-designed by Schalk. It’s a magnificent piece of kit that helps Andre craft beautiful vodka and the base spirit for whisky, which he’s in the process of barrel ageing now.

Part of that plan is a move to a new distillery premises. Pienaar & Son now calls the waterfront of Cape Town home, sharing space in a development full of exciting food and drink brands. It’s the perfect spot to produce gins that pay tribute to this stunning, singular city — including the Orient Gin our members have discovered this month.

There are mornings when Andre wakes up and runs up Table Mountain, reaching the peak in time to watch the sunrise over the southern Atlantic Ocean. On other days, he walks his dog along one of the most beautiful beaches in the world and he has dinner at Michelin-starred restaurants. It’s a life, he realises, that can only ever be lived in Cape Town.

Founded as a waypoint between the Netherlands and the spice-rich islands of Indonesia, Cape Town has a complex and troubled history. This city – a beautiful outpost at the end of the world – was built by slaves, financed by the brutal Dutch East India Company, and has weathered wars, imperial power struggles, the horrors of apartheid and the poverty and inequality that followed.

But still, Cape Town looks to the future. A troubled past has graced this city with a one-of-a-kind cultural legacy and a cuisine like no other in the world. It’s a tangled web of tragedy and beauty that is at its clearest in the neighbourhood of Bo-Kaap, where Andre lives with his young family.

The oldest residential neighbourhood in Cape Town, Bo-Kaap is famous for its cobbled streets and colourful houses. It was built originally as a district for Cape Malays, an entirely unique cultural group comprised of slaves, political prisoners and exiles brought to Cape Town by the Dutch East India Company.

In its pursuit of profit, the Dutch East India Company laid waste to the spice-rich regions of Indonesia, India, East Africa and Madagascar; anyone who refused to cooperate or accept the company’s terms was liable to be deported to Cape Town. In this vast, forced movement of peoples, anyone who came from the east and practised Islam was lumped into the Cape Malay category.

In Bo-Kaap, cultures collided and a unique cuisine was born. When the Cape Malay slaves were emancipated in the 1800s many moved to Bo-Kaap, where they painted their white houses a multitude of colours to celebrate their new status as citizens and homeowners; a century later, this tight-knit and relatively small community weathered the indignities and abuses of South Africa’s apartheid government. Through everything, their culture persists.

The perseverance and courage of the Cape Malay community is a daily reality for Andre, who is reminded of it every time he takes in the colourful façades of the houses in his neighbourhood, walks past the shops stocked with spices from around the globe, or smells the fragrant Cape Malay curries cooking. How, he wondered, could he put his neighbourhood – with all of its scents and colours and history – into a gin? 

The answer is the Orient Gin in our November 2020 Gin of the Month box.

Orient Gin is an evocative combination of citrus – grapefruit and orange – and rich spices, with the additions of vanilla for sweetness and rosemary for a savoury, herbaceous flavour. It’s glorious in the glass, but its creation presented Andre with some serious challenges.

Pienaar & Son’s first gin recipe took just two months to develop.

The work was worth it. The Orient Gin in our November 2020 Gin of the Month box is complex and ever-shifting like the city that inspired it.

As you sip this gin – be it in a classic sundowner G&T or a cocktail like Craft Gin Club’s Savanna Spritz – you’re tasting a truly authentic South African spirit. Gutsy, bold and beautiful, it captures Cape Town in all of its vivid colour.