Three hundred distilleries
Worked in Schiedam at the same time in the nineteenth century.
Michiel1972 — CC BY-SA 3.0 · GraphyArchy — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Gerard Dukker — CC BY-SA 4.0 · GraphyArchy — CC BY-SA 4.0
The national jenever museum in the town of Schiedam west of Rotterdam, housed in an old distillery building on a canal. Jenever is the Dutch spirit distilled from barley and rye grain with juniper, and it is the direct ancestor of English gin: the English took both the idea and the name from the Dutch in the seventeenth century and shortened them. Schiedam was the capital of this industry. In the nineteenth century more than three hundred distilleries worked there at once, and the world's tallest windmills were built for it — tall because the distillery buildings around them blocked the wind, forcing the builders to rise above them. Five of these mills still stand and are visible from the museum. The museum explains distillation step by step and holds a small working still, and the ticket usually includes a tasting for over-eighteens. Schiedam is minutes from Rotterdam by metro.
Worked in Schiedam at the same time in the nineteenth century.
Built high because the distillery buildings around them blocked the wind.
The museum explains the process step by step on a real small apparatus.
Lange Haven, Schiedam
English gin is distilled from neutral alcohol and then flavoured with juniper, so the taste is clean and sharp. Jenever is based on malt wine — a grain distillate that keeps the flavour of the grain itself, so the result is heavier and closer to a light whisky than to gin. There are two kinds, young and old, and the labels refer to the recipe rather than to ageing. It is drunk cold from a small glass filled to the brim.
Yes, for half a day. The town is small and its centre sits on a canal lined with eighteenth-century merchants' houses, and the five giant windmills are visible from nearly everywhere, with one open to enter. The distance from central Rotterdam is about a quarter of an hour by metro, making it one of the shortest and least crowded day trips in the Netherlands.
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