Latest posts by Martin Moodie (see all)
Now here is a story that serves as the perfect tonic to all those COVID blues.
It comes from Andy Coley (pictured above), Sales Executive with Aer Rianta International (ARI) in Dublin, Ireland. Andy is working with The Future Factory team at Dublin Airport looking at ways to improve and innovate across the company’s worldwide network. He has clearly taken that mission seriously as he’s building a distinctive factory all of his own.
In his spare time, Andy has conceived – and taken on – a unique challenge. He’s building a micro distillery on the side of his home bar, aiming to produce a gin using botanicals from each one of ARI’s global destinations.
With ARI operating in so many countries and with gin – established favourites and craft newcomers alike – enjoying such burgeoning popularity globally, he will have no shortage of raw material.
After we connected on LinkedIn, Andy wrote to me and said: “I’m posting a stage by stage journey on my idea. I hope you like it. Not sure if a global gin has been tried before.”
You’re right Andy, it hasn’t. But there’s one on its way anytime soon as Andy plans to release the name of each gin selected for the blend and his choice of name just after Christmas (perhaps released to the tune of gin-gle bells) in early January.
He’s already selected botanicals from Ireland, New Zealand, Canada, Barbados, India, Oman, Cyprus, Indonesia, and Montenegro [Note the punctuation please, which evokes an old joke*: An Oxford comma walks into a bar – and orders a gin, and tonic].
What’s more he has completed a pretty impressive looking micro distillery, complete with pot still. Now that’s what I call impressive DIY skills (no surprise, I suppose, given that there’s an Andy man involved).
“Gins are selected. The challenge now is to obtain botanicals from each individual gin. No-one said it was going to be easy,” says Andy.
“In January I will release the names of each gin selected and my new name. A gin worthy of airports and airlines. A hard nut to crack – but why not?”
Why not indeed? Want to lend Andy a hand? What would you call his international gin? Send your contributions to me at Martin@MoodieDavittReport.com headed ‘Andy’s Gin’ by 22 December and the best suggestions wins a bottle of their favourite gin in the New Year.
Footnote 1: Andy has joined in the spirit, as it were, nominating a name for the gin-in-waiting – Pervenire ad aetheres.
That is Latin for ‘Reach for the skies’ (in my old rugby days that’s what I used to dub a certain scrumhalf I played outside, such was his proclivity for throwing impossibly high passes to me, playing at stand-off).
“There has been no Latin name for a gin I can find and it’s relevant to my exclusivity for airlines and airports,” says Andy.
Make mine a Pervenire ad aetheres and tonic then.
*Footnote 2: And, as this darkest of years is coming at last to an end, I shall lighten its closure with some appropriately gin-laced jokes.
Woman: I love you.
Man: Is that you or the gin talking?
Woman: It’s me talking to the gin.
Two German visitors go into a London pub.
“Two gins please!”
“(Bartender) Dry?”
“Nein, zwei!”
A gorilla goes up to a bar and asks for a gin and tonic. The bartender makes the G&T and says: “That’ll be £20 – and I must say we don’t get many gorillas in here.”
The gorilla replies: “With prices like that, I’m not surprised.”