What Even Is Base Spirit? (And Why It Matters So Much)
You’ve heard of gin. You’ve heard of vodka. You’ve definitely heard of a good old G&T.
But have you ever stopped and asked… what even is the alcohol in my bottle? What’s actually making up that 40%?
Let’s break it down.
In every bottle of gin, vodka, whisky or brandy — that 40% alcohol you’re sipping on? That’s called the base spirit. It’s the backbone. The structure. The soul. And yet, most distilleries don’t even make it.
Wait, what?
Yep. Most brands (even the fancy ones) make a purely financial decision to skip the hard bit. Instead of crafting their base from scratch, they buy bulk commercial alcohol — the cheapest they can find — and then simply redistill or flavour it.
It’s kind of like claiming you baked a cake… but all you did was put icing on a store-bought sponge.
So what do we do at Beyond?
We do it the slow, stubborn, handcrafted way.
We start with locally grown grapes and grain, and ferment it ourselves. That means selecting the right yeast, coaxing it through a proper fermentation (which can take up to a month), and only then moving onto distillation.
That first step alone? Most people skip it. We don’t.
We distil our base several times to get it just right — clean, pure, and packed with character. Then, and only then, do we infuse or age it to create our gins, vodkas, whiskies, and brandies.
It’s more work. A lot more. But it makes all the difference.
So what's the rest of the bottle?
Well, about 59% of your spirit is water.
Which means most distilleries are only truly responsible for 1% of what you’re drinking. (Yep. One. Percent.)
At Beyond, we take responsibility for the whole bottle — not just the label, not just the branding, but the actual spirit of the spirit.
Why does it matter?
There’s a saying in the world of gin:
“If 50% of your G&T is tonic, make sure it’s a good tonic.”
True.
But we’d argue — what about the other 50%?
At Beyond, we want our gin to be the hero of your G&T.
We want the vodka to hold its own in a Martini.
We want the whisky to make you close your eyes after a sip.
We’re not here to take shortcuts. We’re here to make spirits — the Beyond way.