During the Covid lockdown, I bought a small home still - not with any commercial ambition, just with curiosity. I wanted to understand how distillation worked. I wanted to learn by doing. What I didn’t expect was to become obsessed with gin. Not gin as a mixer. Not gin as the backdrop to a tonic water. Gin as a spirit worth drinking on its own - the way you drink a good whisky, or a vodka you actually respect. I wanted something I could pour over ice and finish

slowly, without anything getting in the way of the liquid itself.

I went through a lot of recipes. Some were good. Some were genuinely bad - I remember a version with cumin seeds that I would rather forget. But eventually I found the one. Twelve botanicals, built around a flavour architecture that I kept refining until it worked exactly the way I wanted - a gin that needed nothing added to it.

When I moved production to a professional distillery, the recipe was elevated further. Each botanical is now distilled individually, at controlled temperatures - a process that brings out the clarity and precision the liquid always had the potential for.

I thought about how to make Dergano stand out in a market crowded with beautiful bottles and elaborate stories. I remembered a sake I had encountered in Japan, years before - suspended gold flakes that turned every pour into a small ceremony. I thought: that’s the niche nobody has claimed properly in gin. The bottle is simple by design. The label is clean. I have no interest in competing on packaging. The gold flakes inside do the only visual work that matters - and they only appear when you pour.

This is still, at its heart, a gin made for my palate. I hope it becomes one made for yours too.

Noam Shaked

Founder, Dergano Gin