Our Chapter One London Dry Gin, Woodcut Barrel Rested Gin, Bookmark Limoncello and Stjärna Aquavit all received Double Gold in the Sip Magazine 11th Annual Best of the Northwest Spirit Awards in December 2022.

Read more about the awards here

View the pages for our entries here:

Chapter One London Dry Gin

Woodcut Barrel Rested Gin

Bookmark Limoncello

Stjärna Aquavit

Our Chapter One London Dry Gin takes home a 90 point score from BTI in February 2022.

Results here

View the page for our Chapter One London Dry here

At Temple Distilling’s G&T Garden Party on May 21, you can choose your gin, tonic and garnishes.

• By Aaron Swaney
• Tuesday, May 17, 2022 1:30am

It’s been a long couple of years for everybody, and Temple Distilling in Lynnwood has the perfect remedy: a make-your-own gin and tonic.

After more than two years of ups and downs, the distillery, 19231 36th Ave. W., Lynnwood, is hosting a Spring G&T Garden Party from noon to 5 p.m. May 21. It will be only its second event since the pandemic began in early 2020.

“It’s been such a blessing that we’ve been able to grow during the pandemic, but we’re excited to be back to the good stuff,” said A.J. Temple, who owns Temple Distilling with his wife, Jamie. “It’s great to see customers back in the tasting room."

The G&T Garden Party will include make-your-own gin and tonics with a garnish bar. Customers can choose one of the Temple’s gins, between three different styles of tonic and then garnish it themselves with a mix of herbs, fruits and vegetables.

The G&Ts will be served in 18-ounce Spanish-style globe glasses and the Temples will be on hand to help guide customers, helping them choose between sage, rosemary, cardamom, cucumber, edible flowers and more in search of the world’s greatest G&T.

Like what you’re tasting? There will be free take-home herbs and plants on hand so customers can take home with them, grow their own garnishes and then recreate the G&T they’ve just enjoyed.

Saturday’s event is a celebration of a long road for Temple. Early in the pandemic, Temple had to quickly shift from making spirits to hand sanitizer. The timing wasn’t ideal, especially in light of the release of Constant Reader, Temple’s more affordable gin that is more restaurant-friendly.

“We released Constant Reader and then all the restaurants closed,” Temple said.

Online sales and hand sanitizer kept Temple afloat until it could re-open its tasting room in May 2021. Since then Temple has seen its distribution increase, especially in Idaho, as restaurants have re-opened and dining out has taken off again.

“We’re feeling very optimistic going into the summer,” Temple said.

As sales slowed and the tasting room remained closed, the Temples invested in the distillery. They expanded into the large space next to their tasting room and built a new production and storage space for distilling equipment, fermenters and barrels, and also expanded the bar area in the tasting room.

“It was a big step up but we pulled the trigger because it was right next door and really fit our needs,” A.J. Temple said.

Part of the expansion plan is to eventually make whiskey and bourbon. Temple purchased a mash tun and boiler from Woodinville’s JP Trodden and is seeking out oak barrels just to house whiskey and bourbon. The plan is to begin distilling the whiskey soon and then let them rest three years in barrels.

“It’s a game of patience and we want to take our time,” Temple said.

While those barrels rest, Temple plans a couple of big releases before the end of the year. The distillery will re-release its aquavit in June, and its next version of its Woodcut Barrel Rested Gin, which has been aged in amaretto barrels with curry leaves, lemongrass and galangal, is planned for later in the year.

West Indies Tonic

2½ ounces Chapter One Navy Strength Gin

Fever Tree Mediterranean Tonic

Green cardamom pod

Half slice of fresh grapefruit

4-inch piece of lemongrass, sliced lengthwise

The Navy Strength Gin gets its name and history from the British Royal Navy. Combine this citrus-laden gin with a botanical tonic and garnishes from the West Indies for a perfect match. Mix the gin and tonic in a large Copa (balloon) glass filled with ice. Push grapefruit slice down the side of the glass, slide lemongrass in next to it, and top with the cardamom pod.

Our Chapter One Navy Strength Gin, in all of its citrus-forward boldness, takes home a gold medal in Sunset Magazines first International Spirits Competition in late 2019.

The London Dry also took home a silver medal. Have you had a chance to try either, or better yet, side by side? Whether stirred into a martini, splashed with tonic, or shaken with sour and sweet, you really can't go wrong!

Results here: https://www.winecompetitions.com/copy-of-sunset-int-l-spirits-compet

Some distilleries around Seattle now offer Old Fashioneds, Bloody Marys and gin-and-tonics on your visit. Even better, most cocktails are cheaper than those served at bars.

The accolades list is long for the 2017 Seattle International Spirits Competition, luckily you don’t have to look far to find both of our dry gins (Chapter One London Dry and Chapter One Navy Strength) taking the two spots for Best In Class for gins, the highest honor (above Gold and Double Gold medals). Needless to say we are quite pleased, especially taking this win on our home turf and beating out brands like Sipsmith, Beefeater, Gordon’s, and Opihr to name a few. This adds to the growing list of big brands we’ve beaten in national blind taste tests like Hendrick’s, Bluecoat American, Fords, Hayman’s, and Martin Miller’s.

Here is the complete list of winners and we are excited to see some of our local Washington neighbors making the list as well. Check it out at the Seattle International Spirits Awards.

Our Woodcut Barrel Rested Gin also took home a Bronze medal for barrel aged gins.

Link: http://www.ginfoundry.com/gin/chapter-one/

15/03/2017

Written by Gin Foundry

Chapter One Gin may be the name of Temple Distilling’s first gin but we’re going to jump in a little earlier, beginning right at the beginning, the B of the Bang so to speak, when young AJ Temple took a trip to England from his home of Washington, USA.

Prologue

“The interest in gin came to me when I was twelve years old and visited the Plymouth Distillery” AJ recalls. “My father knew Sean, the Head Distiller, and he gave us a private tour of the distillery and showed us where the botanicals were kept. I had received my first cookbook around the age of five and have been obsessed with flavour creation ever since, so being introduced to the smell of juniper berries and the heat coming off the still really planted a seed in my head.”

Chapter One

Ten-years-on from that fateful trip, AJ and his high school sweetheart wife, Jamie, were looking to build their own business. They wanted to create a legacy; something that would tell their story for years to come. That love of spirits and of flavour creation started to coalesce, and in 2013 they began laying the foundations for Temple Distilling, drawing up a business plan, doing research and taking classes.

Gin was always going to be the first step. AJ wanted to make a spirit that was truly unique to him. “I’ve yet to taste two gins that are exactly alike and I loved the challenge of building our flavour profile while deciding when to be bold and when to be subtle,” he says. “The complexity is what draws me in to a gin, unlike a vodka which tends to have one flavour dimension. Life’s too short for bland spirits!”

It wasn’t until 2015 that Temple Distilling turned its stills on for the first time, around five weeks after Jamie gave birth to the couple’s first child (their son currently spends a vast portion of his time in a playpen in the corner of the distillery). Working as a team has so far been fantastic for the Temple family; both AJ and Jamie understand their own and each others strengths, so they work to them accordingly, with the former overseeing the creative arm of the business, while the latter takes over the business aspects.

As much as AJ wanted to make his own mark on the gin, he also wanted it to be, first and foremost, a gin. One measly juniper berry in the still may make a gin a gin for some, but he wanted his to be as true to the spirit as possible, whilst still telling the Temple story. As a result, Chapter One Gin has a fairly classic line up: juniper, coriander, lemon peel, orange peel, grains of paradise, cubeb, angelica, cardamom and orris.

To create their recipe, he and Jamie got hold of around 30 botanicals and built up a library of distillates to work from on a one-litre table-top still. They then tasted and blended the distillates, creating small batches and working out how temperature and maceration time affected each one. From there, they started creating full test batches in their big still, settling on their final line up after six attempts.

CHAPTER ONE GIN TO TASTE…

A deep, resinous juniper rises up out of the glass, flanked on one side by a bright, tart citrus. Beneath that sits the dusty spices, which seem to hold almost eucalyptol-like properties (presumably brought on by cardamom). There’s a touch of spirity’ness but at 45% ABV that’s to be expected. The overall aroma is crisp and medicinal, leading the mouth to expect something that is pretty classic overall.

An initial sweetness laps at the tongue, a mix of angelica and orange that is all at once fresh and rooty. The spices soon step in, hitting the palate like a bolt of electricity and filling the tongue with flavour. Juniper comes in to round this off; it’s sappy and fresh, as clear as if you’d popped one of the berries into your mouth. Tasted neat the spice is well integrated into the ensemble and doesn’t dominate, rather it provides a dark outline that helps the more vivid citrus and juniper stand out.

Chapter One Gin is wonderfully concentrated; it stands up to tonic exceptionally well, with the spices taking on a more herbal, savoury role and the juniper’s resinous qualities painting a film across the tongue. The orange and lemon take something of a back seat while the cubeb’s violet-like floral dimensions emerge, so we’d garnish with a wedge of fleshy pink grapefruit to bring the citrus back up while not overshadowing the subtlety of cubeb’s performance.

For those of you who like to know more about the technical process – to make Chapter One Gin, AJ charges his still with neutral grain spirit at an ABV of 50%, then loads in most of the botanicals and leaves them to macerate overnight. Temple Distilling use a bain marie pot, which is heated by recycled vegetable oil.

Each distillation run takes 12 – 13 hours, yielding 400 bottles of London Dry. Temple Distilling also makes a Navy Strength edition of their gin. This follows a similar method, though the recipe is tweaked a little, with grains of paradise and cubeb out, and lime peel, grapefruit peel and cassia in. Only around round 275 bottles of Chapter One Navy Strength Gin are produced in each run due to the higher ABV.

CHAPTER ONE NAVY STRENGTH GIN TO TASTE…

The Navy Strength edition has a more dusty, earthy profile to nose. The juniper is just as present, but it has a quality that could only be described as dry and helps disguise the potent 57% ABV. To taste, the cassia approaches the tongue with an attitude that is nothing short of violent. It floods the mouth and lights a fire, one that can only be put out by cutting it down with water. Once the alcohol has been subdued – the lighter notes of lime peel, grapefruit and a bold juniper can be noted.

With tonic, the spice is somewhat mollified and the overall profile is a herbal one. It’s slightly dusty and a hint mentholic, with the quinine conspiring with the herbal juniper to create a tart, sappy flavour that feels freshly plucked.

It’s a dominant beast in a G&T and less accessible than their original. Try it if you like the sound of a gin having a brooding sense of imminent palate domination; one for which the central protagonists are an emboldened juniper flanked by a foreboding cassia. It split the team here at Gin Foundry HQ and caused much intrigue to say the least… It would work well in a cocktail that called for such booming flavours, though, and we reckon it’d give a Gimlet a good run for its money.

CHAPTER ONE BARREL RESTED GIN TO TASTE…

Like many craft gin makers, Temple Distilling have also released a Barrel Aged variant. Resting the Navy Strength in barrels and then cutting it to 45% ABV before bottling, the resulting spirit is a light golden colour. There’s subtle nougat notes on the nose and an underlying soft citrus and cassia.

To taste, the vanillin heavy sweet tones of the oak have added a dimension to the citrus upfront, but haven’t diminished the overall botanical brightness. There’s palpable oak ageing for sure, but not too much and this allows the gin to emerge enriched rather than battle worn. The caramelised citrus finish lingers long after the sip and it’s an expression that many fans of the genre would enjoy.

The Chapter One Gin series come in big, clear glass bottles with the name emblazoned across the front, as bold as brass. The typeface is distinctive and old school; it talks of the tradition the gin upholds, but also excites. In many ways the iconography nods to an aesthetic that many associate with American Craft Spirits, non corporate or conformist yet with structure and a touch of Western nostalgia. A simple glance at the package lets you know you’re dealing with something that comes from the land of stars and stripes. Chapter One Gin, it says, is almost certainly a story you want to delve into.

AJ and Jamie had focused so much on flavour and production that they put design on the backburner, realising somewhat late in the day that they just weren’t very good at it. Luckily, at about the same time as this little nugget dawned, Scott Wetzel of Fresh Bread Designs got in touch. “We had a vision of what we wanted our package to feel and look like; something that is bold but traditional. We met and discussed all of our products and vision at length, then let him work his design magic,” AJ told us, adding that they “couldn’t be more pleased. They are bottles you want to hold and feel on first look. You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but it sure helps to have a good one!”

AJ refers to himself as an “author of spirits,” and it’s clear to see that storytelling is of great importance to him. He explains: “Spirits and literature are a perfect pair. Not one story is the same and all have the unique touch of that particular author. I treat my bar like a library and I want my spirits to reflect my passion for flavour and my signature touch, while not losing their own original character and story. I hope we can weave spirits that you won’t want to put down and will look forward to coming back to time and time again.”

Their distilling story is just getting started, but with a wealth of products to their name, including a limoncello made using the gin as a base, Temple Distilling are off to a great start. Their first foray into distilling has deliberately introduced several characters and in many ways (to borrow their analogy), just like a book, lays out the direction and intent behind the distillery as a whole. They are dedicated to their craft, enjoying each day at work as much as they enjoy each evening at home. Such is AJ’s determination to twist with tradition that he’s planted his own sloe tree; the berries don’t grow natively in the US, but he’s keen to make the first American-sloe American Sloe Gin.

The distillery has already taken home some gongs too, but perhaps the sweetest moment for the Temple family was when AJ and his wife went for a pint a month of so after signing with a distributor. AJ stole a glance at the bar, only to see his Chapter One Gin staring back at him. “It was so unexpected that I had to double take,” he told us. “It’s times like these that we are able to forget about the stress of production and finances and appreciate the fruits of our labour.”

It’s a reminder that Gins, much like the timber of someone’s voice when they tell a story, can say something quite independent of the words actually spoken. The Chapter One Gin series speak of a self assured and confident journey that lies ahead, but they do so with considered poise and a surprising subtlety in tone. Delve in if you come across them!