DISTILLED
Craft & Single Batch Spirits

The Thor Crafted small-batch spirits portfolio is a collaboration between family & friends-owned distilleries, grain-to-glass operations or distiller friends and master blenders who only use the best local ingredients in their products & distillates.

This portfolio, established in 2021, was inspired by the apothecaries of the 16th century, combined by the identification of local botanicals and creativity of small batch distilling methods long forgotten. Emile, heading up the Thor portfolio has a long family linage of Cognac, brandy and Batavia rum pot-distilling.

The Gentis family are direct descendants from René van Eibergen Santhagens and family, who made the first Cape brandies in the early 1900’s in South Africa. He settled in Stellenbosch and stayed for many months on the Gentis Family farm, De Morgenzon where he shared many stories and tales about his travels and pot distilling methods with Emile’s grandfather and father. Till this day, you can still follow the history and stories, not just in the Oude Molen Distillery in Grabouw, but also in the house of Emile and his family, where there are many memorabilia that were bestowed to them as a family.

Emile’s great-grandfather, Franz Josef Gentis, was also one of the key role players in the sugarcane production for distilleries in Java (then Batavia), one of the ex-Netherland colonies.

The Thor team are revitalising the family roots and investing in their own twist of craft distillation from the Cape of Good Hope.