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Discover the remarkable story behind Perfume Trees Gin, our April 2020 Gin of the Month!
Apr 7, 2020
Our April 2020 Gin of the Month, which our members received in their April 2020 Gin of the Month box, is taking them on an exhilarating journey through one of the world’s most sensory cities: Hong Kong!
Meet Perfume Trees Gin, inspired by the scents of the ‘fragrant harbour’ and imported exclusively for Craft Gin Club members.
Our April 2020 Gin of the Month:
Perfume Trees Gin
*Hong Kong’s First Gin - Imported Exclusively for Craft Gin Club Members!*
45% ABV
Botanicals:
Longjing Green Tea, White Champaca Blossom, Chinese Angelica, Aged Tangerine Peel, Sandalwood, Juniper, Liquorice, Orris Root, Coriander Seed, Lemon Peel, Green Cardamom Pod, Cinnamon, Grapefruit Peel.
Tasting Notes:
A spirit that evokes the streets of Hong Kong through aroma and flavour. Floral and warmly herbal on the nose, with hints of sandalwood and white champaca blossom. On the palate, its traditional gin base shines alongside the native Chinese botanicals. Tangerine peel comes through first, evolving in the mid-palate to juniper, sandalwood and herbal notes. Chinese angelica and Longjing green tea linger on the finish.
Meet the guys behind this wonderful gin!
To visit Hong Kong is an experience to stimulate the senses; here is a place where east meets west and past meets future. Today, the city is defined by those contrasts, but this wasn’t always the case.
Hong Kong began its life as a humble fishing village, where Chinese customs ruled daily life. But the city’s fortunes and future lay with its harbour, which attracted traders from every corner of the world – and the collision of cultures that came with them.
In fact, Hong Kong got its name, which translates quite literally from Cantonese as ‘fragrant harbour’, because of its rich history of trading fragrant goods like champaca blossom, Indian sandalwood, incense, perfume and tea.
It was these evocative scents of the city that inspired two friends, Kit Cheung and Joseph Cheung, to create April’s Gin of the Month. The story of Perfume Trees Gin began with a fateful meeting between the two mixologists, who came together to tell the story of their hometown.
Hong Kong. Image: IG @spoonek9
The Meeting of Mixologists
Kit Cheung was born and raised in Hong Kong. He spent a happy childhood there playing with friends in the shade of perfume trees and the shadows of skyscrapers, drinking longjing tea with his family and immersing himself completely in the cultural heritage of this singular city.
Once he reached adulthood, Kit’s natural flair for flavours and his love of spirits made him a big name on the Hong Kong cocktail scene, and it wasn’t long before he took his talents abroad. In the course of his 18-year career behind the bar, he moved from continent to continent, voraciously learning from master mixologists all over the world.
Yet nowhere held a candle to Hong Kong.
When I lived in Europe, there were things I couldn’t help but miss about Hong Kong – the pace of life, the smells and flavours, the people, places and memories.
— Kit Cheung
The siren song of home eventually summoned him back to Hong Kong, where Kit discovered his true calling – to share the wealth of knowledge he had gathered with his fellow Hongkongers.
He opened a bartending school, and from the moment he opened his doors he was greeted with a flood of would-be mixologists. From the moment Joseph Cheung walked in, his skill and passion set him apart from the crowd.
Joseph was a student who would actually study and come back with critical questions, which meant I had to be prepared for every lesson! He is a true jack of all trades and a quick learner with a strong critical mind.
— Kit Cheung
Perfume Trees Gin co-founders, Kit Cheung and Joseph Cheung. Image: IG @dennychankl
Before long they were more than just student and teacher; they had become friends, equals with the creative chemistry to challenge each other as artists.
To be honest, although I’d enjoyed gin for a long time, I only started thinking about it seriously when I started working with Joseph. We began to infuse our own spirits and distil our own moonshine.
— Kit Cheung
Late one evening at the lab, after a night of drinking and talking, Kit and Joseph found themselves staring out into the glittering lights of the city. An intoxicating sense of potential hung heavy in the air, mingling with the fragrant scents of Hong Kong.
We felt this longing for a spirit that would represent our city. We decided we should be the ones to create a spirit that showed people what it’s like to walk the streets of old Hong Kong, beneath a canopy of perfume trees. We wanted to create a gin that would transport drinkers to the temples, teashops and old Chinese medicine shops of our city.
— Kit Cheung
Kit and Joseph realised that, between the two of them, they had the knowledge, creativity and talent to tell the story of Hong Kong through a gin, and they vowed to begin the very next morning.
Hong Kong. Image: IG @spoonek9
The Spirit That Speaks
When Joseph and Kit set out to make Hong Kong’s first ever gin, they were on a mission to capture the fission and fusion of the city’s colliding cultures.
By bringing different botanicals together, from Hong Kong and beyond, Joseph and Kit could distil a gin that captured the cultural melting pot that makes their city so special.
Gin is a quintessentially British liquor, but the gin we wanted to create would use botanicals with Hong Kong origins to capture the unique chemistry between cultures in our city.
— Joseph Cheung
When the moment arrived for Kit and Joseph to select the botanicals they would use in their gin, the two men thought about what it’s like to walk the old streets of Hong Kong.
The first thing they thought of were the perfume trees that line the avenues of their city, crowned by clusters of white champaca blossoms. These beautiful flowers are best known for their heady fragrance, which fills the air of Hong Kong in the spring and summer.
The white champaca blossoms in April’s gin. Image: IG @dennychankl
As fate would have it, the fragrance of these flowers is the ultimate complement to the classic flavours of juniper.
Once they had chosen the star botanicals of their gin, Kit and Joseph considered which supporting characters would help them tell the story of Hong Kong. It was not a challenge they took lightly, especially since they were the first distillers in history to make a Hong Kong gin.
To evoke the incense-filled temples and fragrant teahouses of Hong Kong, Kit introduced Indian sandalwood and longjing green tea into the blend. He wanted to accompany these aromatic ingredients with a touch of sweetness, so he added grapefruit and lemon peel. He topped off the bouquet of citrus flavours with 15-year-old aged tangerine peel, which can be seen in bright bunches on the streets of the city, drying in the sun.
Botanicals at the Cocktail Lab. Image: Perfume Trees Gin
To complete his botanical blend, Kit swapped out angelica, which is a common flavour fixative in gins, for Chinese angelica, which gives Perfume Trees Gin its unique finish.
A Life of Its Own
Perfume Trees Gin co-founder Kit Cheung at work, Image: IG @dennychankl
Once they’d perfected their recipe, Kit and Joseph returned to the country where gin originated to distil their spirit: Holland.
They then waited with bated breath for their first shipment of bottles to arrive in Hong Kong’s harbour. They could hardly wait for their friends at home to try the spirit they had spent so many hours toiling over.
Within months Perfume Trees Gin was, quite literally, the toast of the town. Bottles of the spirit appeared behind the best bars in the city, and the gin was winning award after award. Hong Kong’s mixologists were thrilled to be able to use a gin that truly captured the heart and soul of their hometown.
Hong Kong is a hybrid mix between British history, international culture and Chinese traditions, and today a debate is raging about what our identity as Hongkongers should look like. We are a generation that bears witness to a city sitting on a fine line between two polarised political regimes.
— Joseph Cheung
For Kit and Joseph, crafting a gin allows them to act as chroniclers of their time. In every single drop of Perfume Trees Gin, there is a record of the cultural history of Hong Kong.
However, perhaps even more importantly, their gin empowers drinkers to tell their own stories. Every sip of this evocative spirit is also an invitation to relive memories and speak out about personal experiences.
Every time we lead a masterclass, we hear someone talk about how their grandmother used to sell white champaca blossoms or how they used to sun-dry tangerine peels in their childhood garden. We hope that whenever someone tries our gin it will evoke a personal, nostalgic memory.
— Joseph Cheung
Kit Cheung and Joseph Cheung. Image: Perfume Trees Gin
Behind the Bottle
The bottle our members received in their April 2020 Gin of the Month box is truly a thing of beauty, worthy of the gorgeous liquid inside.
But the label’s beauty is more than just skin deep – it has a meaning as poignant as the spirit itself. The shape of the tree spells out ‘beneath the perfume tree’ in Chinese calligraphy, with the Cantonese names for each of the botanicals forming the leaves.
Image: Perfume Trees Gin
This bottle design celebrates the ancient art of Chinese calligraphy, but Kit and Joseph were determined to give their bottle a contemporary spin. Instead of turning to one of the old masters, they chose to collaborate with a young, talented Hongkonger named Sellwords, who is making a name for herself with her modern calligraphy.
She’s like us in the sense that we use traditional ingredients but we interpret them for the 21st century.
— Joseph Cheung
Poetry in Liquid Form
On the back of the bottle of Perfume Trees Gin you’ll see a Cantonese poem. Entitled Pure, the poem is written by Yan Shu. It translates as:
As the golden breeze blows gentle and fine,
Autumn leaves fall, piece after piece.
I get tipsy, on that spring wine,
By the window I fall asleep at ease.
If you think the bottle that our members received is beautiful then you will also want to check out the special editions that Kit and Joseph have produced to celebrate significant moments in Hong Kong’s history. For example, they collaborated with Hong Kong Tramways to celebrate their 115th anniversary.
Image: Perfume Trees Gin
On a poetic level, the tramway has borne witness as the city has grown from a fishermen’s village to what it is today. We chose three local artists to express the image of the skyline, and interpret the stories Hong Kong has to offer.
— Kit Cheung
The team behind Perfume Trees Gin in central Hong Kong. Image: IG @dennychankl
