Head up the concrete steps at Brooklyn’s Union Street Station, turn right on President, and go west towards the smell (provided by the notoriously sludgy Gowanus Canal) beyond the timid bustle of 3rd Avenue. On the right, you’ll see an asphalt gray building with a baby pink garage door. You’ve arrived at Halftone Spirits—the distillery alchemizing Brooklyn’s most intriguing set of gin based on global travel.
At one point or another, everything good goes through Brooklyn. Hip-hop, movies, indie rock, craft breweries—Kings County influenced them all. Now, with the craft spirits movement in full flight, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise to see a Brooklyn-based distillery pushing the boundaries of gin. Andrew Thomas, distiller and owner of Halftone Spirits, however, innovates by taking his customers outside of Brooklyn via the brand’s Modular series.
The culinary world often discusses traveling through food, a concept different from terroir—the characteristic taste imparted to a wine or spirit by the environment in which it is produced. Gin, a spirit that offers the best opportunity to try a variety of flavor profiles, remains somewhat one note, and unwilling to travel outside of the distillery making it.
Thomas came up with the idea for the Modular series after looking at the surprisingly uninspired gin space. “Most brands have their one gin, and maybe an occasional seasonal gin, and they all used the same 15 botanicals in varying amounts,” he notes. “When I started looking at the possibilities of what could be used, I was nearly overwhelmed! I asked myself, why is everyone pulling from the same pool of spices when there are thousands of possibilities?” He turned towards the culinary world and investigated “where herbs and spices were being used in various cuisines and how [he] could employ them in a spirit.” And thus, Halftone’s Modular series was born.
Gin Inspired by Global Travel
So far, the distillery has released three bottlings, each named after the airport codes from the region the flavor profiles come from: HND, named after Tokyo International Airport in Japan; SVQ for Seville, Spain; and CPT for Cape Town, South Africa. Thomas traces his experience with each place as the reason for choosing each release so far. “I have varying attachments to each city,” he explains. After visiting Tokyo 15 years ago, he wanted to try his hand using yuzu, green tea, and black sesame seeds to make a gin. After some challenges getting hard-to-find dried yuzu peel, he ended up sourcing it from a spice company in Canada.
“SVQ was crafted from a sense of longing,” says Thomas. He and his wife had planned to head to Spain before the start of the pandemic, but like so many travel itineraries during that time, the trip was deferred indefinitely. The difficulty for SVQ came from the inability to get enough savory flavor from just rosemary and thyme. Luckily, he came across Icelandic Sea Kelp, which delivered the “huge umami aroma” that he was looking for.
The most recent release, CPT, is a carryover from Andrew’s days in television where he spent years traveling to Cape Town, South Africa—aptly dubbed the Tavern of the Seas. That intimacy and knowledge led to their strongest release yet. “Cape Town has a burgeoning gin scene, and incredibly diverse botanicals to pull from,” he explains. “I’m envious of the rich biome they have in their backyard, and they’re using botanicals in fascinating ways.” He was able to source many of the spices for the gin directly from South Africa, making for a truly unique offering.
The Next Gin Destination
Currently, Thomas has been working with citrus leaf from Jamaica. “I live in the ‘Little Caribbean’ neighborhood of Brooklyn,” he says. “I’d like to create something in the tradition of spiced rum, while sourcing directly from the West Indies, and yet stretching the definition of gin. I’m always trying to stretch the definition of gin.”
In the end, it all comes back to the neighborhood around Halftone. “Brooklyn has a vibrant makers community that is incredibly supportive of one another,” he shares. “Halftone has collaborated with wineries, Michelin-starred restaurants, and chocolatiers, to name a few. And all are within a half mile of our distillery. There is an enormous support system for locally made products, and the density of the borough means we have access to many accounts with a geographically small footprint.”
That’s what makes this series and distillery special. It epitomizes Brooklyn by managing to be both at the center and everywhere outside of it all at once. In one of the planet’s great global melting pots, Halftone Spirits celebrates flavors unique to individual destinations, and you can enjoy them all without ever leaving Kings County.
from Men's Journal https://ift.tt/qsMv7zP
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