UK distillery uses artificial intelligence to make gin

Circumstance Distillery in Bristol has launched what it claims is the world’s first gin developed using artificial intelligence.

AI technology was used to create two lists of botanical ingredients, the name of the gin and the product labels.

Tiny Giant and Rewrite Digital scientists in Bristol built the AI – a neural network called ‘Ginette’ which analysed thousands of botanicals to understand gin recipes.

Ginette went through a process of creating a huge catalogue of brand names, designs and botanical recipes before deciding on the name ‘Monker’s Garkel’.

An automated algorithm created the bottle labels using a curated set of styles, colours, textures and fonts, which were then formulated by local Bristol artist, Tim Sutcliffe.

Danny Walker co-owner of Circumstance Distillery told db that Monker’s Garkel was a collaborative experiment with scientists to see how modern technology could help draw inspiration to create an original product.

“Ginette came up with ingredients including raspberry leaf, gooseberry, prune and marigold which we have not used before in gin production. Marigold was hard to source,” Walker said.

“The naming and labelling was a combination of machine and human input.”

“We shortlisted names and recipes created by Ginette,” he said.

Walker said the gin was made in 30 litre pot stills by hand.

“None our production is automated,” he said.

A 1,000 bottles of Monker’s Garkel are available at Masters of Malt.

The gin was launched on Tuesday at Bristol Tech Week, and will be presented at Mad Fest Tech Fair in London next Wednesday 13 November.