Empress 1908 Indigo Gin

About Empress 1908 Indigo Gin

Since 1908, travelers from around the world have fallen in love with the Fairmont Empress Hotel for its majestic grandeur, picturesque vistas, and incomparable afternoon tea service. Overlooking the Inner Harbour in Victoria, British Columbia, this iconic destination has hosted royalty, dignitaries, and discerning explorers for over a century. Today, as the Empress moves into a new era, it exemplifies a perfect balance of traditional elegance and modern sophistication.

Micro-distilled in small batch copper-pot stills, Empress 1908 is hand-crafted using eight signature botanicals: tea, juniper, rose, coriander seed, grapefruit peel, ginger root, cinnamon bark, and butterfly pea blossom (All botanicals are organic and the spirit base is non-GMO corn). It’s the pea blossom, which we discovered in one of the Empress tea blends, that imbues the gin with a distinctive earthy note.

Inspired by the beautiful tea service at the iconic Fairmont Empress Hotel and released in the US in 2017, this gin gets its indigo blue color from the infusion of butterfly pea blossom. Due to the pH of this blossom the addition of citrus or tonic changes its color of from indigo blue to a light pink. Empress 1908 Indigo Gin has earned several accolades, including a Gold medal at the 2018 International Craft Competition Awards and Double Gold at the 2018 San Diego International Wine & Spirits Challenge.

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About Gin

According to Winston Churchill, “The gin and tonic has saved more Englishmen’s lives and minds than all the doctors in the Empire,” referring to the British officers using it to treat malaria in India.

Initially made for medicinal purposes, gin gets most of its flavor from the juniper berries added after the distillation process. It sure has come a long way from the Middle Ages, with the introduction of new botanicals, fruits, and spices, bringing it closer to people of all flavor varieties.