A farm in the Volcanic Eifel, then a gin.

Windspiel is a gin from the Vulkaneifel, the volcanic upland of the Eifel in western Germany. It is made by Windspiel Manufaktur GmbH, which gives its seat as the village of Berlingen, and the trade press consistently dates the company to 2014 and names its founders as Sandra Wimmeler and Denis Lönnendonker. Lebensmittel Praxis wrote in May 2022 that the business was founded in 2014 by the two of them in the Vulkaneifel, and the company’s legal notice still names both as managing directors.

The farm came first. The spirits site Drinks Enthusiast, profiling the brand in May 2017, reported that in 2008 three friends, Wimmeler, Lönnendonker and Tobias Schwoll, bought the Weilerhof, a farm in Berlingen. Schwoll had an agricultural background and wanted to farm. The team grew elephant grass at first and then moved on to potatoes, and, as the founders told the site, the idea for a spirit came out of that harvest.

The potato is the brand’s defining choice. Lebensmittel Praxis noted in 2022 that Windspiel’s gins are made from potato alcohol rather than the grain more commonly used, from potatoes grown on the stony soils of the Vulkaneifel. The company says today that its potatoes come from contracted farmers in the Eifel, all from the same harvest. In 2017 Drinks Enthusiast described how the potatoes were mashed, fermented and distilled twice in a continuous still into a raw spirit by a master distiller in northern Germany, before a final run in a 150-litre still. The company now says it works with its own raw alcohol from beginning to end. In 2020 about-drinks.com described the products as made by hand and sold in small batches, and named Lönnendonker as the company’s managing partner.

A king, his potatoes and his dogs.

The name is a piece of Prussian history. Windspiel is the German name for a small greyhound-type dog, and the company says the brand is dedicated to Frederick the Great, whom it credits with bringing the potato to Germany through his potato decrees, and to his second passion, these dogs. Trade reports such as about-drinks.com in 2020 repeat the dedication in the company’s words. According to Drinks Enthusiast, the idea began with a story the founders heard from a woman in a neighbouring village about Frederick and the potato, which they first laughed at and then looked into, and with Wimmeler’s own love of dogs.

The dog became the brand’s emblem. about-drinks.com described the Windspiel dogs in July 2020 as the brand’s key visual, and when Windspiel worked with the Berlin tie maker Auerbach on a collection of silk bow ties, ties and face masks in November 2020, the same site reported that the subtle pattern was inspired by the Windspiel dog trademark. Lönnendonker said the idea was to create a collection for the fashion-minded connoisseur, and remarked that Auerbach also carried a dog in its logo, a charming coincidence. The German model Günther Krabbenhöft fronted the collection.

The founders’ own framing leans toward Britain as much as Prussia. The company says the two are rooted in the Vulkaneifel but inspired by British style and humour.

The botanical recipe was described in 2017 by Drinks Enthusiast as juniper, lemon zest, coriander, lavender blossom, ginger and cinnamon, each distilled separately, rested for some weeks and then blended. The range has since widened. The company’s shop lists the Premium Dry Gin alongside a Kampot Pepper Gin, a Caxambu Coffee Gin, a barrel-aged potato vodka and an alcohol-free spirit.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all German gins: Siegfried, Ferdinand’s, The Duke, Elephant, Gin Sul, Windspiel and Skin Gin. Gin brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from small companies that still distil and bottle their own spirit to labels made under contract at another distillery or now owned, in whole or in part, by much larger drinks groups, and a single gin can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a cocktail bar.

A gin’s identity is usually carried less by the liquid than by a bottle, a label and the place it names, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its gin is actually distilled and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its gin is made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

An alcohol-free line and a founder-run company.

The range moved into alcohol-free drinks in 2020. about-drinks.com reported in July 2020 that the company was launching Windspiel Alkoholfrei, a vegan, sugar-free spirit with notes of clove, allspice, juniper, citrus and cinnamon, intended as a base for long drinks; the same report mentioned a Windspiel herbal hemp tonic water. The company’s shop also lists a seasonal Christmas gin.

Distribution widened in 2022. Lebensmittel Praxis reported in May 2022 that the Schlumberger Vertriebsgesellschaft of Meckenheim was adding the Windspiel gins to its spirits portfolio in time for the ProWein trade fair, with the Premium Dry Gin at the centre of the launch.

Windspiel has stayed with its founders. The company describes itself as independent, and its legal notice names Wimmeler and Lönnendonker as managing directors. It also sets out its environmental commitments: it says its distilleries run mostly on solar power, that it uses mainly regional ingredients and natural corks, and that its labels and boxes are made from recycled paper.

For a design guide, Windspiel shows how a historical dedication, a king and his greyhounds, can give a farm-grown product a ready-made emblem that travels from bottle to bow tie. Compare Monkey 47, the Black Forest gin, and Ferdinand’s, the gin from the Saar. For this guide we use a Prussian navy, a muted gold and an earth brown with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Windspiel’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.