Capreolus is a high-quality eaux de vie and gin producer from Gloucestershire, England.
Capreolus started life in the greenhouse of founder Barney Wilczak’s childhood home. Wilczak taught himself the art of distillation and began making spirits from locally sourced produce after leaving behind a career as a professional photographer which brought him close to nature. The name Capreolus comes from the Latin for “roe deer”, which are often found in the bucolic Cotswolds.
Today, Wilczak works with local farmers to source the highest-quality fruits and believes in minimal intervention distillation to capture the natural flavours from each fruit he uses and the landscapes in which they grow.
Once the local fruit has been harvested, Wilczak carefully cleans the fruit before it is gently crushed and fermented. The Master Distiller favours slow fermentation with wild yeasts. He decides on a case-by-case basis whether to include the stems, stones and pips (which he refers to as “noble”). The fruit is then transferred to a small, custom, copper pot still and heated by 100% renewably sourced power. After the first distillation, Wilczak – quite unusually – elects to discard, rather than recycle, the heads and tails. He believes this produces a final liquid of the highest standard, despite significantly reducing the yield.
Each bottle is non chill-filtered and filled, labelled and corked by hand. Wilczak personally signs the labels that have been embossed on traditional printing presses.
