A 1693 licence, a family name from 1812 and a sale in 1903.

Wenneker dates itself to 16 February 1693. On that day, the company says, Hendrick Steeman was granted a licence to set up two brandy-distilling kettles in Schiedam, the distilling town just west of Rotterdam, and the business that grew from those kettles is the one that trades as Wenneker today. The company presents the date on its website simply as “Since 1693,” and The Spirits Business, reporting on a new Wenneker gin in July 2014, described the firm as a Dutch spirits group that had produced genever since 1693.

The name came later. Wenneker says the distillery came into the possession of Joannes Wenneker in 1812, and the family held it for the rest of the nineteenth century. In 1903, according to the company, Joannes’s great-grandson Franciscus Wenneker, known as Fokke, sold the business because he had no successor. The buyer was Johannes Cornelis van der Tuijn, a maltster from Schiedam, and the sale began the Van der Tuijn era that continues today. The Wenneker name stayed on the business, and it is still the name on the bottles more than a century after the family left. Drinks Enthusiast set out the same lineage, from Steeman’s kettles to the Van der Tuijn purchase, in a profile of the distillery published in March 2015.

The move that shaped the modern company came in 1967. Wenneker says that as volumes and exports grew, the Schiedam site had no room to expand, so the firm decided to relocate. It chose Roosendaal, in the west of North Brabant, for its position between the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp, and moved into the former KvW tobacco factory on the Badhuisstraat, which is still the company’s address. Drinks Enthusiast gave the same reason for the 1967 move: the original distillery had no room to grow.

Genever, a string of takeovers and a gin for the revival.

Genever is the spirit at the centre of the range. English Wikipedia explains that the Dutch split between jonge (young) and oude (old) genever is a matter of distilling style rather than age: jonge genever may contain no more than 15 percent malt wine, oude genever at least 15 percent. It adds that the European Union protects the name genever for spirits made to specification in Belgium, the Netherlands and small parts of France and Germany. Drinks Enthusiast reported in 2015 that Wenneker still bases its genever on an original seventeenth-century recipe. Its old genever, Wenneker Oude Proever, is one the company describes as a genever in which malt wine and juniper are clearly recognisable, and which serves as the base for its cask-finished genevers.

For much of its history the company also grew by buying others. Wenneker says it took over the distilleries Piersma, Duys and Smeets, as well as J.J. Melchers Wz. of Schiedam, the house known for its Olifant (elephant) label, and the wine merchant Dirk Struys & Zoon. The portfolio became large and hard to support, the company says, and in 2014 it sold most of the brands that did not carry the Wenneker name, to concentrate on its own label, which it says had grown steadily, especially abroad.

The same year brought a product aimed at the gin revival. The Spirits Business reported on 9 July 2014 that Wenneker had released an Elderflower Dry Gin, made from six distillates — juniper, lime-tree blossom, lemon, orange, coriander and elderflower — bottled in small, individually numbered batches and unveiled in Amsterdam and London that summer. Export director Richard Ridley told the magazine that the Dutch and British on-trade had responded very positively, and compared the gin’s floral note to perfume. The company’s website today groups its range into liqueurs and spirits, lists a vegetable liqueur called Wenneker 24 Carrot among its products, and says Wenneker is sold in more than 50 countries.

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 bought name, a founding date and labels that tell the batch.

The Van der Tuijn family has owned Wenneker since 1903. The company describes itself as 100 percent family owned and says the fourth generation of the family now runs it. Its brand rests on two things the family inherited rather than invented: the surname of the Schiedam family who held the distillery from 1812 to 1903, and the 1693 licence date, which the company’s website uses as a heading for its own history.

Some of the most detailed Wenneker labels belong to its small-batch genevers. The company says Wenneker Genever Islay Cask Finish is Oude Proever finished in hogsheads that had held Islay single malt Scotch whisky, and that each batch label shows the batch, the month of bottling, the numbers of the casks used and that batch’s tasting notes, with every bottle individually numbered. For a Trinidad & Tobago Cask Finish, finished in casks from a rum distillery in Trinidad and Tobago, the company says the country’s flag figures prominently on the label. The website supports the range with a cocktail database and a bartender programme, the Wenneker Swizzle Masters.

For a design guide, Wenneker shows how a family firm can keep a bought surname and a seventeenth-century date at the centre of its brand through a change of owner and a change of town, and how a batch label can carry the story of a single cask. Compare De Kuyper, another genever and liqueur house with Schiedam roots, and Bols, the Amsterdam genever and liqueur house. For this guide we use juniper navy, kettle copper and label cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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