The Story
Bertha’s Revenge Gin is named after the legendary cow — Big Bertha, the world’s oldest cow. By the time she reached the near-mythical age of 48, she had given birth to 39 calves before she died in 1993. This unique gin is an ode to the fruitful cow, distilled by Ballyvolane House Spirits, a grass to glass distillery founded in May 2015. The facility is an Irish country inn along the Blackwater River. Ballyvolane House which translates from Gaelic as "the place of the leaping heifers" is the first artisan distillery to produce small batch milk gin from whey alcohol.
Whey alcohol serves as the base spirit for this unique premium gin, which makes it very distinct from other spirits. Whey is a byproduct of milk, Irish dairy farmers separate it from curds which are used to make cheese. A proprietary yeast is added to the whey, converting the milk sugars into alcohol, yielding a very high-quality whey spirit. Hand-distilled with 18 different botanicals which are locally foraged and grown, along with pure natural Irish spring water. The milk used for production is sourced from just 30 minutes away.
The lengthy list of botanicals: juniper, coriander, orris, licorice, cardamom, angelica, lemon, lime, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, almond, elderflower, alexander seeds, grapefruit, sweet woodruff and sweet and bitter orange, all coalesce into a truly distinct gin. When the whey spirit is ready, it is distilled, along with all of the botanicals in Ballyvolane’s 125-liter copper pot still. After a short maceration, the spirit is slowly distilled, the result is blended with spring water sourced from the estate’s spring and cut to a bottle strength 42% ABV. The Irish gin is handcrafted from start to finish in small batches, producing only 100 bottles per production run.
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