One of the foundations of today’s distilled spirits industry can be traced back to the notion of delivering health benefits from botanicals to the patient. In particular the “essential oils”, a term that implies hydrophobicity and therefore poor solubility in water, are solubilized to a greater extent in a less polar solvent.

Adding ethanol to water reduces the polarity of the mixture, so it is safe to assume that oily, hydrophobic compounds, dissolve to a greater extent if ethanol is present. The higher the concentration of ethanol the greater the interactions between solvent and oil components, which translates into the greater the favorable solubility of essential oil components. Here we discuss the three main approaches to introducing botanicals into spirits: maceration pre-distillation, the “gin basket” and maceration into final spirits.
Here we will explore the extent to which the efficiency of essential oil is influenced by their mechanism of introduction and ultimately the flavor performance of botanicals. These considerations can be explicitly considered to inform new product design.