A Gin Made of Stone: Oolitic

Premium American Gin is having a moment, illustrated most vividly by Aviation’s acquisition by Diageo earlier this year. It seems that craft gins in the ultra-premium and luxury segment are newly relevant, driven by experimental craft distillers and a nudge in the design and premiumization department by our English cousins who have been riding a craft gin craze for several years, similar in many respects to the American bourbon boom. It is within this context that we decided to create an ultra-premium ($22.99) American gin with a uniquely American story. Not only did we want to tell the story on the label, but we wanted the bottle itself, and the liquid inside to reflect that history and tradition. Enter Oolitic gin.

In an approximately 60 mile seam running north/south through Lawrence and Monroe counties in the rolling hills of southern Indiana lies the world’s cleanest, most uniform, and coveted freestone expanse of Salem limestone. A freestone is any stone which does not show any unidirectional preference for splitting, meaning you can basically, cut, lathe, scratch, chip or do anything you want to it and start from any point. That makes it the perfect building material, either for cladding, decorating, or for the supports itself. Limestone put simply is the calcified and compressed flora and fauna of ancient sea beds. If you look closely at any piece of stone, packed tightly and uniformly into the grain, you can just make out the speckled outline of these long transmogrified creatures.

And so it is the trade of a proud but dwindling group of masons, cutters, and foremen to pull and shape these ancient slabs of frozen ocean from the earth, and to build some of the world’s most recognizable buildings. Reaching the peak of popularity in the 1920s, Salem limestone was used to forge some of America’s most vaunted landmarks, including the Empire State Building, The Pentagon, National Cathedral, and Grand Central Terminal, not to mention thousands of municipal buildings, state capital buildings, and countless institutions looking to lend an air of gravity and eternity to their public facade. In fact, right after 911, more than 15,000 cubic feet of Indiana limestone was quarried again to make the repairs to the Pentagon.

It is within this particular universe that we decided a premium gin could be born. Besides being the name of a town in the middle of limestone country “Oolitic” also refers to a type of stone made of tiny spheres called ooliths. These small spheres form when calcium carbonate deposits on the surface of grains of sand, then are rolled gently on the floor of a shallow ocean. We chose Gary Alphonso, a Toronto based digital scratchboard artist to create an original illustration reminiscent of the Thomas Hart Benton Murals which line the walls of another Indiana limestone clad building in the middle of Indiana University’s campus. The threads of the scratchboard style, Benton murals and the brand’s name came together well. Now we needed a bottle and liquid to help tell the rest of the story.

We chose the “Luz” bottle by Bruni Glass, a square, squat bottle reminiscent of the room sized blocks of limestone regularly cleft from the quarry walls. Our designer and art director, Laws Lawson, brought together the strong name mark, the illustration, and a side bottle text giving the consumer an inside view of the limestone world which inspired the brand.

For the liquid, Cardinal distilled a blend of floral, earthy, and fruity elements along with a rather subdued juniper lead note, then filtered each drop of finished liquid through a combination of precision-cut limestone blocks. The basic recipe follows:

Juniper
Sumac
Apple
Mandarin Oranges fruit (steeped)
Orris Root
Angelica
Elderflower
Grapefruit fruit (steeped)

The results were an extremely soft and subtle distillate, perfectly shining in dry Martinis and G&Ts alike, but uniquely delicious served neat with a slight chill. Finally, inspired by both the functional and figurative elements imbedded with the limestone story, we found the Oolitic project both challenging and terrifically satisfying, like the liquid itself.