Karakter Distillery I Slovenian craft gin
EUROPEAN UNION SHIPPING AVAILABLE
OUR STORY
Early beginnings - Three friends from childhood
Growing up together in the small pristine town next to Lake Bohinj, a place where you can experience all kind of weather in less than an hour, enjoy incredible biodiversity or simply gaze at the surrounding peaks of the Julian Alps, definitely had an impact on how we see the world around us.
If nothing else, it turned us into resilient, nature-loving and thrill-seeking individuals, who love to turn ordinary things into something extraordinary.
The Home Brewing phase / Distilling the ideas
It all started back in 2016, with a simple idea to brew something in our garage. We felt like the obvious choice for the new “garage entrepreneurs” on the block, was to go with a pale ale beer.
So the three of us began our journey by gathering various herbs, testing them out, and trying to come up with a beer that would taste different.
And……
It did taste different but not in a way that we expected.
The birth of KARAKTER - Connecting the dots
Luckily our “special” beer didn’t stop us from experimenting further.
After numerous tries, we refined our techniques; the drinks were getting stronger and the flavours started to amaze us. Realizing that every herb, spice and aroma opened up a new dimension, we were sure that everything had fallen into place.
At that moment we knew we wanted to be the guys who craft exciting and unexpected drinks with just the right amount of KARAKTER.
(Yes, Karakter means character )
Karakter dry gin? Yes, please.
After familiarising ourselves with the art of distilling and investing in our own column still, we rolled up our sleeves, hand-picked certain local ingredients with unique aromas, and launched our first gin experiment.
Crafting a bold, fresh and alluring beverage with a playful note at the end was our main goal, and our first two gins (Imagine dry and The Cherriot) reflect just that.
Yes, we were too impatient to just make one…
This led us to explore the possibilities of vacuum distilling, which we now primarily use in our experiments.
Karakter gin + Karakter guys = Karakter Bar
Our hometown and, of course, Lake Bohinj inspired us in so many ways, which is why we always looked for a way to give something back to our local community.
Offered a chance to take over a bar right by the lake, we simply couldn't resist.
And what better name to choose than Karakter bar,
a place where real characters meet, eat, drink and enjoy live music.
Guys, you know what's missing? Fooood - Zanoodle Ljubljana
Having worked in some of Slovenia's best restaurants, we came to realize that the art of distilling and the culinary world have more in common than we expected.
Of course, this piqued our curiosity and before we knew it we were already renovating a restaurant in the centre of Ljubljana.
Combining our passions and expertise, we decided that making noodles, fermenting sauces, and serving Asian-Slovenian fusion dishes will be our next step.
Year 2020 - Let's try organizing some events...
Since jumping into the unknown became sort of our passion, we wanted to add a few extra ingredients to the Karakter family.
Music event organizing, culinary workshops & tasting events were to be our next pet projects...