A distilling family that came to Dordrecht.

Rutte is a small distillery in the old town of Dordrecht, the river city south-east of Rotterdam, and it still works from the building where it began. The company tells its story as a family history. It says the Rutte family came from Brabant and moved to Rotterdam in the eighteenth century, and that around 1830 Antonius Rutte, whom it counts as the third generation, moved to Dordrecht to work for a local distillery while experimenting on his own account.

The business itself dates from 1872. That year, the company says, Simon Rutte, the fourth generation, bought a café on the Vriesestraat and set up his own distillery behind the drinking room, serving his own creations to the café’s customers. The Australian trade site TheShout reported in November 2016 that the distillery was founded in 1872 by Simon Rutte in Dordrecht, near Rotterdam. A Dutch drinks site, The Art of Drinks, writing for the 150th anniversary, added that Simon started the business with his wife in the spring of 1872, after about ten years of distilling for others, and that his first products were liqueurs, bitters, korenwijn and genevers made with spices, local herbs, wine and berries from the Biesbosch, the river wetland near the city.

Dutch Wikipedia describes Rutte & Zn as a craft distillery whose shop has stayed at the same address on the Vriesestraat, and notes that the firm’s archive for the years 1921 to 1991 is held by the Regionaal Archief Dordrecht. The company says its distilling still happens in Dordrecht, in a copper pot still, in the same traditional way as Simon’s first small distillery.

Generations of recipes, then a master distiller from outside the family.

The family handed the business down through the twentieth century, according to the company’s own history. In 1905 Anton Rutte, the fifth generation, became a partner in S.A. Rutte & Zn, and the company says an Art Nouveau façade was fitted to the building that year. Anton’s wife, Margaretha, later ran the firm until their son Jan could take over; Jan joined in 1921 and, the company says, led it through the Second World War. The Art of Drinks credits Anton with adding gin to the range in 1918, and Jan with the first wood-aged genevers, matured in empty wine barrels. The company says it still ages genever in casks that once held Bordeaux, sherry and port, from the wine trade the firm used to run.

The seventh generation, John Rutte, joined in 1959 and, the company says, developed many new recipes while avoiding colourings and cheaper alcohol. In 1992 he sold the distillery to a group of shareholders, and he kept working there until 2003.

That year Myriam Hendrickx joined, and the company has named her master distiller since 2003. The Gin Guild’s profile of her describes her as the eighth-generation master distiller and the first non-family member and the first woman to hold the title. The company says she has reorganised the distillery, researched its history and kept the old handwritten recipe books, which it still uses to develop new products.

The best-known product carries the founder’s name. Rutte says the recipe for Old Simon genever “was created by the man himself,” and lists its botanicals as roasted walnuts and hazelnuts, coriander, angelica, mace, liquorice and carob, with 40 per cent malt wine. Its gins include Dutch Dry Gin, which the Gin Guild describes as the modern successor to Rutte’s Celery Gin, and which the company says contains celery leaf alongside juniper, Sri Lankan cinnamon, orange peel, vanilla and galangal.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all genever names from the Netherlands and Belgium: Rutte, Nolet, Wenneker, Hooghoudt, Filliers, Zuidam and A. van Wees. Genever — also spelled jenever — is the juniper-flavoured spirit of the Low Countries, traditionally distilled from malt wine (moutwijn), and English Wikipedia says modern gin derives from the historical genevers introduced to Great Britain.

The name is protected. English Wikipedia says the European Union protects genever as a geographical indication, with eleven specific types, which may be made only in the Netherlands and Belgium and in small neighbouring areas of France and Germany. The best-known distinction is between jonge (young) and oude (old) genever, which refers to the recipe rather than to age: under the rules Wikipedia summarises, jonge genever may contain no more than 15 per cent malt wine, oude genever at least 15 per cent, and korenwijn between 51 and 70 per cent.

The craft itself has heritage status in the Netherlands. In September 2016 the Dutch Centre for Intangible Heritage, KIEN, added fijndistillatie — fine distillation, in which, KIEN says, genever is distilled from purchased malt wine with juniper berries and herbs — to the national inventory of intangible cultural heritage.

Genever has its own geography. English Wikipedia names Schiedam, Groningen, Amsterdam and Delft in the Netherlands, and Hasselt, Deinze, Aalst and Liège in Belgium, among the towns known for it, and the brands here are spread across both countries rather than gathered in one place. Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its genever is distilled and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A family name under a Schiedam roof.

De Kuyper has owned Rutte since 2011. TheShout reported in 2016 that De Kuyper Royal Distillers, the family-owned liqueur house of Schiedam, added Rutte to its portfolio in 2011, and in the Gin Guild’s profile Hendrickx refers to “our acquisition in 2011.” The same report said Bacardi Martini would distribute Old Simon and the Celery Gin in Australia. Our De Kuyper guide records that Rutte gin was among the first products in the ecoSPIRITS refill format that De Kuyper began running in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2023.

The building remains at the centre of the brand. The company says nothing has changed in its shop on the Vriesestraat “since the start of last century,” and that the former family rooms now host tastings, still tours and gin-making workshops; The Art of Drinks reported that the building had been fully renovated over the previous two decades while the methods and botanicals stayed largely the same. Rutte also says it uses fresh fruit, peel, herbs, spices, roots and flowers rather than oils or extracts, and that “no flavoring or coloring agents are used”; we give those as the company’s statements.

Its packaging has drawn on the same building. For the 150th anniversary in 2022 Rutte released a limited Old Simon Jubilee, filled into barrels five years earlier, and The Art of Drinks reported that its label showed Simon Rutte himself together with the Jugendstil pattern from the façade he had put on the building in the early twentieth century.

For a design guide, Rutte shows how a small distillery can build its identity from one address — a shopfront, a founder’s portrait and a book of family recipes — even after it has joined a larger group. Compare De Kuyper, the Schiedam house that has owned it since 2011, and NOLET’S, the Schiedam family distillery behind KETEL 1 jenever. For this guide we use a celery green, a cask oak and old paper with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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