Empress 1908 achieves its distinctive flavour and colour from a unique combination of eight natural botanicals, ranging from the traditional to the slightly audacious.
FROM AN ICONIC HOTEL TO A SINGULAR SPIRIT
The inspiration behind Empress 1908 is as unique as our gin. Since 1908, travellers 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. It’s the pea blossom, which we discovered in one of the Empress tea blends, that imbues the gin with a distinctive earthy note, as well as its vivid hue with a stunning secret to reveal – by adding citrus or tonic, Empress 1908 is transformed from breathtaking indigo to a beautiful soft pink.
