Fans of fruit liqueur can now enjoy something a little different. If you love the fruit flavour of traditional liqueurs, but don’t want the sickly sweet taste, try our infused vodka spirits. We’ve used fruit and botanicals to produce the perfect blend of flavours without tainting the crisp, clean taste of the vodka.
With so many technical terms used when it comes to alcoholic beverages, it can be hard to understand the intricacies between them, especially when it comes to similarly named products such as liquors and liqueurs. Here’s our short guide to the key differences between them.
The terms ‘liquor’ and ‘liqueur’ are so similar that it would be easy to confuse the two when looking for the right brand. While both refer to a variety of distilled spirits, they’re not the same, so it’s important to distinguish your orange rum liqueur from your neat gin liquor recipes. One forms the base of the other, but how they’re made and the ingredients added ensures they are actually quite different.
Liquors are alcoholic spirits made from grains or other plants which go through a fermentation and distillation process. The latter stage separates the alcohol vapour from the water, increasing the abv of the end product. Liquors aren’t usually sweet, but they can have additional flavours infused, such as botanicals and fruits. A distillery would usually add these ingredients once the distillation stage has already been completed.
There are six spirits available on the market, including vodka, gin, whiskey, tequila, rum and brandy. You can drink liquor neat or on the rocks over ice, but they also form the base of mixed drinks and cocktail beverages. This includes rum and coke, gin and tonic, a mojito cocktail or a glass of brandy. When you look at a cocktail recipe, you’ll usually notice only one spirit listed on the ingredients.
Liqueurs differ from liquors in that they are sweetened distilled spirits. The liquor will still form the base of the liqueur, but the abv will sometimes be lower thanks to the additives used. They’re distinguished as a sweetened, distilled alcohol with a higher concentration of sugar, thus the sweet taste. It also means liqueurs (such as blue cointreau or pink raspberry liqueur) can have a deeper colour when compared to fruit or botanical-infused spirits.
Liqueurs are commonly used in a variety of both traditional and new cocktail recipes, coming in many popular flavours often defined by the fruit used in the recipe. This includes amaretto liqueurs, orange fruit liqueurs (e.g. orange fruit triple sec), vanilla liqueurs, coffee liqueurs, cherry fruit liqueurs, honey liqueurs, raspberry liqueur (e.g. Chambord), elderflower liqueur, ginger liqueur, citrus fruit liqueurs, rhubarb liqueurs, white chocolate cream liqueurs, melon fruit liqueurs and more. You can also buy a variety of creme liqueurs (e.g. Irish cream liqueur), which are even sweeter with a thicker, syrup-like consistency.
A fruit liqueur is a sweet alcohol that has liquor as a base. The spirits will have additions such as sugar and fruit to produce a sweetened taste, whether its a citrus fruit (e.g. orange fruit liqueurs), stone fruit (e.g. cherry fruit liqueurs) or berries (e.g. raspberry fruit liqueurs). They can be used in popular cocktails for a sweet recipe, often creating the taste of summer in a glass thanks to the depth of flavour achieved.
Liqueurs will often come under the same category as liquor as their base will have been produced from distilled spirits, such as rum, gin, vodka, tequila, brandy or whiskey. However, sugar and other flavourings have been added to the alcohol, which results in a lower abv content and a sweeter taste, especially with fruit liqueurs which may also have artificial flavourings added.
Fruit liqueur is used just like any other liqueur would be, popular for cocktails to add a deeper, fruity flavour when mixed with the other ingredients in the recipe.
If you like fruit liqueurs and neat spirits, have you ever tried a product that includes the best parts of both? Fruit liqueurs often have a very sweet taste as a manufacturer or brand will add a lot of sugar to many of the drink recipes. Many of the fruity flavours may also come from artificial ingredients rather than natural sources. As well as producing a much more sickly taste, it can make the liquor base hard to distinguish, whether it’s rum, gin or vodka used in the drink.
At Gattertop Drinks Co, we’re proud of the delicious, naturally flavoursome products we’ve created. By using premium grain vodka, it still allows for the deep and fruity notes to come through, but without sacrificing the untainted flavour of the spirit. Such a delicate flavour profile has put our drink range in front of many other gin and fruit liqueur brands you may have used before. Our spirits can still be used in cocktails, and you can also drink them on the rocks or as they are.
If you’re looking for delicious vodka produced by a sustainable brand, try one of our signature spirits as your perfect alternative to fruit liqueurs. Both our popular Damson No12 and Botanic No7 have an exceptional flavour, made with a variety of fruit and botanicals home-grown at Gattertop in the Herefordshire hills. Our products are 100% British made, and you can get hold of our spirits now in our online shop. They appeal to fans of vodka, sloe gin liqueur, cocktails and fruit liqueurs, who will enjoy the subtly sweet notes coming through with every sip.
By choosing vodka as our base, the clean taste allows the flavour of fruits and botanicals to come through. Damsons are a particularly delicate fruit, so if they’re combined with other botanical ingredients or juniper, it can result in an overly complex flavour profile that confuses the palate. We’ve produced an exquisite damson-infused vodka, using a premium-grain spirit produced from sugar beet, meaning its free from gluten, barley, oats and wheat.
Many fruit liqueurs won’t steep their spirits for very long – sometimes for just a matter of weeks. However, at Gattertop Drinks, we pick small amounts of our home-grown Damsons and add them to the quality vodka to steep for a minimum of 12 months. The results give each bottle of our popular drink a great depth of flavour, full of the damson fruit notes with a hint of almond accents, thanks to the damson stones present during the steeping process. To avoid the pitfalls of other fruit liqueurs, the discreetly added sugar only serves to trigger the ideal balance between the tart and sweet notes. By avoiding artificial flavourings and sweeteners, it results in a much smoother vodka texture.
Enjoy Damson No12 poured over ice as an aperitif or digestif, mixed with fizz or buy as a special gift for a loved one. It has an abv of 23%.
The perfectly balanced flavour of our Botanic No7 is achieved using seven botanicals, which give our British-made grain spirit many subtle herbal and fruity notes. Our botanicals are harvested when they’re seasonal to make sure they’re used at the perfect time of year, handpicked at Gattertop from our hedgerows, orchards and gardens. The botanicals we use include lemon, basil, rosemary, nettle, elderflower and blossom from our damson and apple trees.
Botanic No7 is produced through the use of a copper pot still method, distilling it in small batches for exceptional taste. This gives a smooth, natural taste you won’t find with artificially infused liqueur products. The lack of artificial flavours results in an abv of 38%, which is much higher than many liqueur alternatives.
If you’ve been spending time looking for an alternative to your usual liqueur brand, Gattertop Drinks Co produces popular infused vodka that appeals to those who want something a little higher quality than other fruit liqueurs on the market. Here are some of the reasons which make it hard for many customers to walk away without purchasing our cream of the crop spirits.
One of the factors making Gattertop Drinks Co spirits such a popular addition to the industry is our award-winning success. The Great Taste Awards give prizes each year to the very best products in the fine food and drink sector, including innovative spirit and liqueur brands. We’re proud to say our Damson No12 became a Great Taste champion in their 2019 awards, making it one of our most popular products.
When you choose a liqueur or spirit brand, you want to know you’re using a company that knows what lays at its heart. With a history dating back to 1086, our orchards and hedgerows produce the high-quality fruit and botanicals we use in our vodka. With our products rooted in nature and the English countryside, we’ve made sure that we make this part of the experience when drinking our spirits, from our beautiful bottles and label designs (a damson tree) to our monogram seal, which emulates the appearance of a barrel end.
We’re also a champion of sustainable spirits with a ‘branch to bottle’ approach, which you can learn more about if you read on.
Whether you want to add our naturally infused vodka to your cocktails or buy the perfect gift for someone special, you can find an array of options available (and in stock) in our online range. Products include 5cl miniature bottles, as well as 35cl and 70cl bottles. You can also get your hands on mixed bottles if you’d like to try both Damson No12 and Botanic No7. We offer fast delivery options.
As well as finding great new ideas for cocktail recipes, our range is also perfect if you’re looking for a gift for someone else. This could be for fans of fruit liqueurs who what to try something a little different or for your cocktail-making friend who can make something tasty with our infused spirits. We even stock hampers and many bundles throughout the seasons. Give some time to look through the various options we have in stock, whether you want something small to cheer up a friend or fast delivery to your door.
Yes! If you want to use sustainable spirits and liqueur brands, you may want to know more about what we’ve done to make our processes as environmentally friendly as possible, as well as establishing long-term targets to reduce our carbon footprint. We’re paving the way in the liqueur and spirits industry, safeguarding the landscape around us in which we rely on to produce our vodka. Here are just some of the ways we’re making sustainability an important part of everything we do at Gattertop.
To have a minimal negative impact on the environment, businesses must ensure they look at their entire product lifecycle. At Gattertop, we’ve carefully considered how every part of the process can be made as eco-friendly as possible, whether its the way we distil our spirits or how we package our products at delivery.
Therefore, we keep things traditional and complete all our production processes by hand, even considering how we use leftover products (such as our damsons and water) to ensure minimal waste. We also aim to partner with other innovative brands in the industry who can make use of any waste we produce.
We reduce our food miles by performing many of our processes on-site at Gattertop.
We’re passionate about responsible sourcing, using sustainable, recyclable materials at each stage of our production cycle. This includes our glass bottles and the cardboard we use for any packages and boxes required. We’ve even made sure our labels are created from recycled paper, helping reduce the amount of single-use plastics in the environment.
We use fruit and botanicals available to us at Gattertop, working closely with the seasonal changes that come with countryside living. We take good care of our environment, maintaining healthy habitats to support the local wildlife. Our precious orchards have a Soil Association certification, thanks to our eco-friendly methods, which minimise the use of pesticides and artificial fertilisers.
We’re also working hard to maintain and preserve our orchards since almost two-thirds of have completely disappeared in Britain in the last sixty years. We’re reinvesting by planting new trees and want to support relatable charities through each bottle of our product sold.
If you’d like to partner with us, get in touch.
Our sustainable ethos is to become as carbon-neutral as possible so that the production and lifecycle of our spirits result in zero net realise of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We also aim to become an active part of the UK’s Woodland Carbon guarantee scheme, which was part of the 2018 environmental pledge announced by the Government.
Sustainability isn’t just about making a few changes. At Gattertop, we want to keep sustainability as a key focus of our business, creating long-term targets to reduce our carbon footprint and emissions every single year. This includes the use of 100% recyclable materials and partnering with like-minded others who want to create a better environment.
If you’re looking for the perfect alternative to fruit liqueurs, try our vodkas infused with natural flavours.
Our sustainable spirits are available in our vodka shop, and you can also get in touch via our contact page. For all new trade enquiries, please send a message to sales@gattertopdrinks.com.
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