I used to have a room in my house called “The Office”. It was full of books and papers which got filed once a year, during tax filing season. One day a package arrived at the door. It was a still. “What’s a still?” I hear you ask. Yeah, I didn’t know either. All I knew was that a bug had bitten one day when I made a bottle of gin for myself. Bear in mind, I don’t really drink, or at least to say I didn’t really drink. And if I were going to drink, then I would choose a smooth sipping vodka over gin.

The bug that had bitten was not, as one might imagine, alcoholism. The bug was a creative spark that a small gift had ignited in me. A creative desire to soak every edible substance in the world in a tiny bottle of vodka to find out what would come out at the other end.

Soaking the world in bottles of vodka can be quite expensive if you head down to the liquor store and buy vodka and it’s sort of a waste of good vodka. So I decided to make my own vodka. To make vodka you need seven things: sugar (or some other carbohydrate), water, yeast, a lot of time, a lot of patience, a good stirring arm and a still.

I watched a YouTube video on how to make vodka. The place I bought the still from had sent a starter pack and all the ingredients in the YouTube video were in the pack. So the guy in the video says you have to dissolve 6kgs of sugar in 20 litres of warm (26° warm) water. He made it look like it took about 20 minutes. My first batch of vodka, I stirred that fucking sugar water for three and a half hours. I had to remind myself several times that I had run the Comrades Marathon so I could finish this stupid task.

And so began our love affair with all things distilling. And because it’s real love, we decided to start a distilling company. And so, in November 2018, CocoJade Distilleries breathed itself into being and The Office became The Distillery.

Let the fun beGin!

CocoJade