It started with a crazy idea. And then Gin came out – Euelsberger Gin. And really good. Not only the many buyers who have tried the Euelsberger from Dingdorf, a small village with 96 inhabitants in the Verbandsgemeinde Prüm, but also the testers at the China Wine & Spirits Awards, the biggest and most renowned wine and spirits competitions in Hong Kong, say that ,
Behind the farm of Irmhild and Hans-Heinrich Thomé lies the Euelsberg with its 100 orchards today – apples, pears, plums, mirabelles and walnuts. They inherited the mountain from their daughter Claudia “My wife Claudia and I have been looking after the trees for a long time,” says Stephan Thomé. “In one night of drinking, together with my brother-in-law Ulrich, we thought about turning the fruit into schnapps.” He then asked how to get the firing rights. That was almost five years ago.
Stephan Thomé is a full-time sales manager at a telecommunications company. His wife is responsible for investor communications at a media company. They live in Berlin and did not have the slightest idea about schnapps distilling until a few years ago. But Stephan Thome did not let go of the topic: “I only read for two years, watched Youtube videos and exchanged ideas with other writers.”
At the beginning of 2016, he ordered his own distilling plant. The former calf barn on the Thomé farm in Dingdorf was rebuilt into a neat distillery and the handmade distillery was fitted into the room. It could start with the distillery. But then everything changed.
“I’ve been drinking gin for ten years now. And now I had this still and thought, why should not I even try to burn gin? “Thought – done.
In wholesale for homeopathy needs, Stephan Thomé buys 100 different spices and starts experimenting. “My wife and I sat down, composed flavors and built twelve different gins,” says Thomé.
In April 2017 it was time. They have tested the best three creations together with the parents-in-law and the brother-in-law in Dingdorf. “They were all so different, we could not decide for one,” says Claudia Thomé. “But who is so batty and starts producing three gins right now?” She says and laughs.
But all three gins found their fans that night. And then it was decided: we produce them all. The end of August was the great inauguration of the distillery. “We had 600 bottles ready,” says Stephan Thomé. “The response was great – we even had to reproduce afterwards.” The experiment had worked.
What is the secret of Euelsberger Gin? “We work transparently. We have all the ingredients on the label, “he says. “And they are first class, fair trade, at least certified organic or in Demeter quality, picked by hand. The limes, lemons and oranges come from Mallorca – “they have grown without fertilizer and pesticides on the tree and are harvested fully ripe and are thus incredibly aromatic,” says Stephan Thomé.
When designing the label, they receive prominent help. “We wanted a cool name, it should be a hip gin,” says Stephan Thomé. Claudia’s cousin, Eric Remberg, artist name Specter, driving force of Aggro Berlin (record label, which among other things had the rapper Sido and Bushido under contract), creates logo and label – a flying owl. And depending on the filling, the gins are Euelsberger 1, 2 or 3.
As a trial, Stephan Thomé sends two varieties of his gin to Hong Kong for the CWSA wine. Only the dimension is likely to be different when soon Chinese in Hong Kong and elsewhere in the land of smiles Euelsberger Gin slurp.
“I enjoy the fact that people like my product well”, says the native of Lower Saxony (Osterode), who can imagine to move later with his wife from Berlin back to the Eifel. And he already has new plans: “I want to create new gins next year.”
There is already another product. Together with André Macionga, restaurant manager and sommelier at Tim Raue in Berlin, Stephan Thomé has already developed a fourth gin. He is already resting in a steel barrel in Dingdorf waiting to be bottled. The name is not fixed yet. But he will not be Euelsberger 4, says Stephan Thomé.
But much of the Euelsberg will be in the juniper-free schnapps, which are also still distilled in the distillery in Dingdorf. From this year in the best sun ripened fruit, guaranteed organic and picked by hand.
