Craft gin is as much about technique as it is about botanicals. At Diviner's Gin, every bottle is shaped by a distilling process designed to protect flavour at its most delicate level — using cold distillation with a Rotary Evaporator to create high-fidelity, small-batch gins with exceptional clarity and depth.
This approach preserves delicate botanical flavours often lost in traditional gin distillation.
What makes the distillation process unique for Diviner's Gin?
Diviner's Gin uses a Rotary Evaporator (Rotovap) rather than traditional high-heat stills. This cold distillation method allows botanicals to boil at significantly lower temperatures, preserving flavour compounds that would otherwise be damaged by heat.
Where traditional distilling can cause faster and more aggressive flavour breakdown, cold distillation maintains flavour integrity without compromising spirit strength. The result is a range of rich, clean-tasting gins that express botanicals with remarkable precision.
Why is cold distillation better for botanical flavour?
The science comes down to pressure.
Founder Frank Tomlinson explains it through a familiar example: water boils at 71°C on Mount Everest, not 100°C. Lower atmospheric pressure lowers boiling points. The same principle is applied during gin distillation.
By reducing pressure inside the Rotovap, Diviner's Gin extracts flavour at low temperature, avoiding the harsh thermal degradation associated with traditional distillation. This allows delicate aromatics, fresh fruit notes and complex botanicals to remain intact.
How are botanicals prepared for Diviner's Gin?
Ethanol is both the carrier and extractor of flavour. The process begins with ethanol in an aqueous solution, to which botanicals are added and gently warmed to form an initial maceration.
Each gin is produced through multiple small-batch distillation runs, each with different ethanol solutions and botanical treatments. Some runs use dry botanicals, others fresh fruit. In certain expressions, juniper is sous vide to avoid overheating the maceration. Every decision is guided by the flavour profile being pursued.
What happens during rotary evaporation?
Once maceration is complete, the liquid is brought to 40°C in the Rotovap’s round-bottom flask. Pressure is gradually reduced from standard atmospheric pressure (around 760 millibars) to below 100 millibars — comparable to the pressure at the edge of Earth’s atmosphere.
At this point, ethanol vaporises at low temperature, carrying volatile flavour compounds upward, where they condense and are collected without heat damage.
What is a Rotary Evaporator (Rotovap)?
A Rotary Evaporator is a closed-system distillation device that uses a heated bath, vacuum pressure and a rotating flask to accelerate evaporation and separate liquids by boiling point.
The principle mirrors a traditional gin still, but with one key difference: a Rotovap allows for precise control over temperature and pressure, making it ideal for extracting heat-sensitive botanical flavours. All of Diviner’s Rotovaps are powered by solar energy, using Queensland sunshine to fuel the process.
Why does the flask rotate during distillation?
Distillation relies on surface evaporation, so increasing surface area is essential. Rotation spreads the liquid thinly across the flask walls, improving efficiency.
As ethanol is removed, the solution becomes more aqueous, requiring further pressure reduction. Finding the correct balance between pressure, rotation and temperature is critical — without it, nothing will vaporise.
Why is Diviner's Gin made in such small batches?
As ethanol is removed, volume decreases and conditions constantly change. The flask must be lowered deeper into the water bath to maintain a consistent 40°C, while alcohol percentage is adjusted by increasing the Rotovap’s RPM.
Diviner's Gin operates multiple Rotovaps with flask sizes between 5 and 20 litres, allowing for exceptional control. Producing gin this way is labour-intensive, but it is the only way to achieve the high-fidelity flavours that define the range.
How are the gins blended and finished?
Once distillation is complete, the outputs from different runs are blended and brought to the desired proof.
Inspired by the chemistry of water used by world-class baristas, Diviner's sometimes creates hydrosols — water distilled at 40 millibars with botanicals such as coriander — to cut the gin and further enhance flavour integration.
How does this affect the way Diviner's Gin is enjoyed?
Each gin is designed with the final drink in mind — whether sipped or mixed. High-fidelity flavours form stronger chemical bonds with other ingredients, creating better balance and clarity in cocktails such as martinis and G&Ts.
Even with all the science involved, the process still feels like alchemy. Distilling becomes a metamorphosis — revealing flavours that were always there, waiting to be uncovered.
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