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Remember my Blog about Aer Rianta International’s (ARI) resident distiller Andy Coley?
Andy works with The Future Factory team at Dublin Airport, evaluating ways to improve and innovate across the company’s worldwide network. Inspired perhaps by that mission, he decided to create a future factory all of his own – a home-based micro gin distillery, using botanicals from selected brands sold across ARI’s global network.
This month he plans to reveal the names not only of each gin selected but also that ultimately chosen for his new creation. A gin worthy of being exclusive to airports and airlines, he pledged.
We decided to lend Andy a hand by hosting a readers’ competition to choose a name to aid his final consideration. First prize was a bottle of the winner’s favourite gin.
Andy primed our appetites by nominating an interim name for the gin-in-waiting – Pervenire ad aetheres.
That is Latin for ‘Reach for the skies’, highly appropriate for a duty free exclusive, as Andy pointed out. Not that easy to pronounce, though, we warned. Try saying “Bartender, a large Pervenire ad aetheres and tonic, ice and lemon please”, especially after consuming a couple of them.
So what could our industry’s top creative minds come up with? Patrick Dorais, Sales Director at Al Nassma Chocolate in Dubai, producer of one of our industry’s most distinctive products, camel milk chocolate, was quick off the mark with a couple of suggestions. Taking inspiration from Andy’s use of Latin, Patrick opted for a subtle word play on the highly pertinent phrase ‘caelum est finis’ (‘the sky’s the limit), tweaked to Caelumest Ginis.
Now, if you think that Pervenire ad aetheres is a mouthful (I’m talking semantically not drinks volume), then just imagine that same bartender’s expression when you order up a Caelumest Ginis.
So at the risk of giving the camel milk chocolate man the hump, I say this: ‘Patricius, Proxima, sed non cigar’ (‘Patrick, close but no cigar’).
However, like an inveterate gin drinker, Patricius decided to make his a double, coming up with the rather more prosaic Worldly Botanist. Actually, the judging panel (me, while drinking several large Four Pillars gins at my Interim Hung Hom Bureau, after which I could see Eight Pillars), quite liked it. But Patricius, you would land Andy in a spot of copyright trouble with Rémy Cointreau-owned Bruichladdich Distillery, which produces a very fine gin called Botanist.
Given the international nature of Andy’s gin, another reader drew on the appropriate inspiration of universal language Esperanto to suggest Espiritanto (pretty good) and Ginsperanto (not so good, sounds like a brand of petrol). I rather liked Botanical Garden but as that is my own suggestion, the rather mean judge disqualified it.
Of the other entries, Vertiginous (meaning extremely high) seemed suitable for an airline but not airport exclusive; Ginger Vitis would surely have been a hit among dental practitioners but not their patients and no doubt would need to be flavoured with sorghum; and Gingerroots, while hinting neatly at botanicals, might only have been popular among redheads.
Instead we found our winner among the multiple suggestions contributed by Heidi van Roon, Founder and CEO of Spark Business Services Group in Vancouver, Canada, a best-in-class staffing and recruitment firm for luxury retail, specialised in the airport environment. Heidi is a perennial champion of the (in this case literally) entrepreneurial spirit so it should come as no surprise that she is our winner.
Her successful entry? Well, we liked Sea To Sky for obvious reasons; and admired Alacrity (meaning brisk and cheerful readiness, as in: Having closed up his booth for the day at the duty free exhibition, Norbert Pinkley ordered his fourth gin with alacrity. “Certainly Sir, on the rocks?” “No, just down on my luck.”
We considered Spectrum for its wide range of possible interpretations; and while drawn to Kaleidoscope, were fatally deterred by the real thing’s disturbing resemblance to a certain coronavirus of recent ill-repute. Labelling would be a real issue in the current climate.
Topping all these was our winner, the nicely alliterative Blitz & Bloom, so apposite for the carnage caused to our industry by COVID-19 and the recovery that surely awaits.
Andy, Heidi and I look forward to popping around to your distillery as soon as the pandemic eases, and toasting your success with a generously poured Blitz & Bloom or whatever name you so choose.
