I am the only one doing it. If I make a strawberry liqueur, I make it with strawberries, not flavourings. I’m a stickler for quality.” These are the defiant words of Patrick van Zuidam, the 43-year-old managing director of distiller and liqueurs producer Zuidam Distillers.

Van Zuidam’s point is that most of the large traditional Netherlands liquor producers buy in their neutral alcohol and some drinks producers do not even make their products themselves. There is a historical precedent – it was illegal to both ferment and distil until that law was repealed in 1992.

“I wanted to do something different. I wanted to distil from scratch,” says Van Zuidam. “We start with the grain. I believe there are two selling points: Either the cheapest or the best. Anything in between is a hard sell. You can take the Aldi/Lidl route – cheap, mass market, high volume, low value. Or, you can differentiate. Make the best products you possibly can. Then the consumer decides. They decide whether what you do is worthwhile… or not.”

The youthful Van Zuidam only joined his parents’ company to help them out. He had done a degree in information management and was looking to complete his doctorate then hopefully earn a lot of money in the IT sector.

“I’ve been here 18 years now,” Van Zuidam says, slightly wistfully and possibly with the merest hint of resignation. But when you see him in the distillery, checking the sacks of rye, fingering sticks of vanilla from Madagascar, talking about the new stills that come in the autumn, you feel he is in the right place.

His parents live nearby and are pretty much retired. His brother, Gilbert, is the sales director. The more laid back of the two, which most younger brothers are, Gilbert is the ‘people person’ in the business. Not that Patrick is anything other than interesting and pleasant company. But he is the boss, the serious one. With an eye for detail, he makes the business tick. I doubt whether much if anything leaves their unassuming, light industrial unit in Baarle-Nassua (see panel) close to the Belgium border, without big brother’s say so.

His father, Fred, was a senior distiller with De Kuyper.  There were management changes and the company wanted him to live closer to Rotterdam to be nearer the distillery. On balance, he decided he wanted more control of his life and that meant moving out to the country and starting up on his own. That was 1974.

Genever challenge

“I was not planning to join the business,” says Van Zuidam. “Not much money was being made and my parents were slaving away seven days a week. My father was doing a lot of private-label work. He was even making vodka to send to Russia. His best product was a traditional orange Cognac liqueur.

“I was going to help them for a couple of years then get a ‘real job’.” 

At that stage the big challenge for Van Zuidam was jenever or genever, the traditional Netherlands spirit which was the forerunner to gin. Van Zuidam summed up the situation as a “race to the bottom”. Pressure from retailers for cheaper and cheaper products and more profitable price promotions, resulted in distillers having to lower their standards – and the quality of the genever – to make a living out of supplying this demand.

His father had concentrated on liqueurs but, as Van Zuidam succinctly puts it: “People buy a bottle of liqueur and you go back six months or a year later and they still have half a bottle left. Whereas with whisky, gin or genever, someone is more likely to finish a bottle in a week or a month.”

Zuidam sells approximately 250,000 bottles of genever a year and Van Zuidam is trying to cope with 21% annual growth. Because he makes it from scratch he ran out of his five-year-old and was out of stock for seven months. Hence the new warehouse which is already nearly full with 3,500 barrels and the new wash back, mash tun and stills.

Pervading secrecy

Van Zuidam is critical of and cynical about the pervading secrecy that has affected – and arguably held back – the Netherlands drinks industry. “In the old days, my father would not visit a colleague but these days young distillers are talking things over with others. It is totally different and it is like a light shining. “We have no ‘secret recipes’, no hidden ingredients or locked rooms. We are open and honest about our products. People can look at everything and (our customers) find that refreshing.” 

As chairman of judges on the International Spirits Challenge liqueurs panel and a member of the rum panel, it is something Van Zuidam feels strongly about. The quality of some of the products, or more specifically the quality of ingredients used, their suitability and compatibility and the acumen of the blending, leaves a lot to be desired, to put it mildly.

Sometimes during the tasting and subsequent discussion, Van Zuidam rails against what they are tasting. Nevertheless, he is nothing if not realistic and pragmatic. “The average quality of whisky is much higher. Liqueurs aren’t the easiest,” he says. “But just because it is a crappy product does not mean it will not sell,” he states resignedly.

Touching on the increasingly contentious subject of dwindling stock for long-term ageing, particularly in Scotch and Cognac, due to increasing demand, mainly from Asia, he says: “No age statement does not mean: no good. But we have been led to believe that ‘older is better’.” He smiles and cites William Grant’s The Balvenie 1401 Tun Batch whatever as a superb single malt Scotch which has no age statement.

Van Zuidam’s own Millstone whisky has won plaudits from the great and the good among aficionados. There is a nice back story to the name. Apparently, Van Zuidam wanted to call it Lowlands as the Netherlands used to be known in English as the ‘low countries’. 

He was threatened over using the name by a festival organiser so had to go back to his computer. Late on a Friday just before the whisky was launched, he came up with Millstone. Not the most exciting, some would say. He did not want “corny images like tulips”, but the grain for the whisky had been milled in traditional Dutch windmills in exchange for a few bottles of Zuidam genever. A nice bit of modern day bartering.

“The story is as important as the product,” says Van Zuidam. “Bourbon was close to death as genever is today but it has shifted and become hip again. The product has not changed. Genever is good with Coke and makes a good Old Fashioned or Manhattan. The one thing it isn’t good with is tonic.

“Five years ago I thought things would slow down but it hasn’t, hence being out of five-year-old genever for seven months. That is an important product for us. For whisky it is even worse. Sales are doubling every year. We have to produce a lot more in order to age it,” says van Zuidam.

Ageing for people means wrinkles, grey hair and sagging muscles. Ageing alcohol means wood and barrels. Again Van Zuidam doesn’t buy any old bunch of staves, let alone pellets or planks. He specifies virgin US oak, 24 months’ air dried with a level three or four char or toasting. 

He also buys Spanish Olorosso and PX (Pedro Ximinez) barrels. These are not barrels that are just used for finishing and then the sherry is thrown away. No, Van Zuidam’s are ‘proper’ sherry barrels that cost between E600 and E700 each. They are 600-700-litre butts that are dismantled by Zuidam’s Spanish cooper, who then reassembles them as 250-litre casks. 

Walking round the facility, he even has about half a dozen women hand-labelling whisky and genever bottles.

Distillery alchemy

Around the walls are huge demijohns of fruits, herbs and spices. Merlin the magician would be happy here. Cork stoppers smelling of mint, cardamom and strawberries are thrust under one’s nose to prove that Zuidam’s liqueurs are made from recognisably whole fruit, herbs or whatever.

One of Patrick van Zuidam’s pride and joys is his 100% rye whisky, made from 50/50 malted and unmalted rye. A delivery of rye grain arrived during the visit. I smelt the rye in the fermentation tanks.

Van Zuidam reckons he works about 70 hours a week and travels several times a month, mostly around Europe.  In what spare time he has left, he has horses and once did dressage. He also has a large dog which comes to work with him. Joshua is a Weimaraner, described as an ‘all-purpose gun dog’. The name comes from the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Karl August, whose court, based in the city of Weimar (now in modern day Germany), enjoyed hunting.

Asked if he likes hunting, Van Zuidam responds: “Hunting is frowned upon in Holland” – there’s that wistfulness again. After a pause he says emphatically: “The dog hunts.” That wasn’t answering the question and you get a feeling that he might if he could.

Good Will Hunting is a film about an ordinary guy who has a gift for mathematics. Van Zuidam has a gift. He is a perceptive judge both of people and alcoholic drinks, as witnessed as an ISC chairman of judges and managing director of the family business. 

The hunting and horses have to make do with second best in priorites – if ever there was such a thing in the Van Zuidam psyche.