Porcelain Distillery

The Cabinet keeps certain houses closely. This is another of the letters that introduce them.

Porcelain, 百思琳 in Chinese, is a family-owned gin distillery in Tieling, in Liaoning province, in the north-east of China. The region the Chinese call Dongbei, once the heart of imperial Manchuria, lives between very hot summers and very cold winters, and has a long tradition of distilling spirits. The first bottles were released in Hong Kong in 2019, and in mainland China soon after.

A family of spice traders

The family behind Porcelain is the fifth generation of a line of spice traders on the Silk Road. They knew that gin makers across the world were buying Chinese spices, and that nobody was making gin in China. Porcelain was their answer: a craft distillery built as a tribute to Chinese culture. To develop the recipes they worked with Kai Seidenhefter, a veteran gin distiller from Hessen, in Germany, who runs Fieldfare Gin and St. Alberts Distillery, and who brought European distilling technique to Chinese botanicals.

Shanghai Dry Gin

Porcelain is the first gin to carry the name Shanghai Dry Gin, a category it defined on the model of London Dry. Only natural ingredients go in, every flavour comes from distillation, and nothing is macerated, sweetened or coloured afterwards. One rule goes further than London Dry: every ingredient is sourced in China.

Eighteen botanicals

The botanicals are bought directly from growers or from trusted foragers along the Silk Road: goji berries, Sichuan peppercorn, cardamom, coriander seed, ginger and lemongrass among the spices; almond and hazelnut; orange, lemon and grapefruit; rose and hawthorn flowers; and seaweed. Juniper has no place in Chinese cooking, drinks or medicine: it was planted in imperial gardens and used by shamans in offerings to the gods. Porcelain's juniper grows wild on the steppes of Inner Mongolia and is foraged there by hand.

The still

The distillery works with a custom-built 500-litre copper-plated still, crowned by a dome that refines the vapours. The most delicate botanicals sit in a vapour infusion chamber, where the vapour passes through them rather than boiling them, and a six-plate vertical reflux column refines the spirit.

The bottle

The ceramic bottles were designed by Lala Curio, the Hong Kong designer known for the chinoiserie interiors she has created for luxury hotels. Each one is made by hand by artisan potters using the traditional method, and finished with copper floral decoration.

The range

Shanghai Dry Gin, 43% vol., the signature: cardamom and coriander on the nose; lemon, grapefruit zest and mandarin blossom lifted by lemongrass on the palate; a rounded texture from seaweed, goji berries and rose; and Sichuan peppercorn on the finish.

Mandarin Gin, 43% vol., given over to the whole of the mandarin: hand-peeled mandarin skin in the still, mandarin wedges in the vapour infusion chamber, seasoned with the house botanicals.

High Tea Cocktail, 12% vol., a ready-to-serve blend of Mandarin Gin with oolong tea, lemon, peach and ginger, in a frosted glass bottle with copper floral foiling.

Porcelain gins have received 90 points from Falstaff and a silver medal at the World Gin Awards.

In the glass

The Mandarin Gin takes the gin's place in a Negroni with ginger, the Gingeroni: 30 ml each of Mandarin Gin, red vermouth and Campari, with fresh ginger muddled in the mixing glass, poured over a large ice cube and garnished with sliced ginger. The Shanghai Dry Gin makes the Marco Polo: 60 ml of gin, 20 ml of Amaro Averna and 10 ml of maraschino cherry juice, with three cherries on a pick.

The bottles

See the Porcelain bottles currently in the Cabinet: the Porcelain collection.

Producer before appellation, always. The Cabinet