MADE IN KENYA: Nairobi venture making gin from Kenyan juniper trees

Challenged, the group put their minds together and started the idea of manufacturing gin locally. This led to the birth of Procera Gin, one of a kind made from the towering Juniperus Procera trees fruits, otherwise known as the Kenyan Cedars.

Juniper trees are mostly found in the mountainous areas of Kenya like Kijabe, Narok and Baringo. While most gins in the world are made from dried juniper fruits, Procera makes its gin using fresh juniper fruits.

Alan Murungi is one of the co-founders of Procera.

"We noticed a lot of those botanicals actually come from Africa. So we asked ourselves why can't we make gin here instead of sending our botanicals from Africa to the UK and then sending us gin back to Kenya. The difference between Procera and other gins is that we use juniper that is local to East Africa. The gins that people mostly drink around the world are made from Juniperus Communis which is a European species. The other difference between our gin and others is that, others make gin with Juniperus Communis which is dried. But here we use fresh juniper," Murungi said.

Working with locals, Procera harvests the fresh juniper fruits from Kijabe, Baringo and Narok areas. The fresh fruits are then taken to their factory in Nairobi where they are blended with different botanicals to make three variants of Procera Gin. 

John Kioko, the head of production at Procera, explains how they make the gin.

"We flavour our gin with other botanicals we source around the continent. We take these botanicals through a process known as maceration which is a 15-hour process. We heat the distillery machine to 45 degrees, so what this enables overnight before we begin the process is it takes all the flavours from these botanicals. We then heat these together, they evaporate, your usual distillation, and then we get a concentrate. Then we take it through a process known as stretching, we blend and then proceed to bottling. Currently our Procera gin has 3 variants; Blue dot, Red dot and Green dot."

Procera Gin has employed at least 11 people, all trained here on gin manufacturing. The venture has also embraced sustainability, working with local ventures to make its packaging material such as bottles, leather and paper. 

The bottles are made by glass artisans at Kitengela Hot Glass who use recycled glass material to hand-blow the glass, so no one glass is similar to the other. The stopper on the bottle is wood sourced from Kilifi, and leather from Sandstorm. On the side there is a paper that tells you what the product is, this is made from water hyacinth, which is an invasive species.

As part of its future plans, Procera gin is now encouraging planting of more Juniperus Procera trees in the country, and the venture looks forward to being a leader in the gin story in Kenya, even as it also seeks to expand its markets across the globe.