Bristol’s Circumstance Distillery has teamed up with the technology scientists at Tiny Giant and Rewrite Digital for a world-first: a gin that’s been created by artificial intelligence.
The distillery team worked with the scientists to create software (a neural network for those au fait with coding) capable of grasping thousands of botanical combinations and, after much testing, Ginette was born (well, switched on).
We don’t mean to worry you gin distillers, but the results sound pretty special. Ginette has named her new gin Monker’s Garkel, and it’s a fragrant number created with juniper berry, coriander seed, angelica root, raspberry leaf, gooseberry, prune, clementine zest, orange zest and marigold. An initial batch of 1,000 bottles (500ml) will be available to buy from Circumstance Distillery’s online shop, priced at £42.
Even the label was created by tech wizardry, with a set of styles, colours, textures and fonts all loaded into an algorithm by local Bristol artist Tie Sutcliffe.
Liam Hirt, co-founder of Circumstance Distillery commented “AI and machine learning are exciting new tools. We do a lot of contract distilling and wanted to know if these tools could make a meaningful contribution to new product development.
“At present, they are not a substitute for the skill of the distiller, but we have clearly shown that they can make a valuable contribution to all aspects of the development process, from the recipe to the naming and labelling. We trained Ginette well, and with a little human help and guidance, her product is interesting, attractive and, most importantly, delicious.”
Move over ‘internet of things’, we’re much more excited by the internet of gin slings.