Chalong Bay Tropical Note Series Sweet Thai Basil (700 ml)

When Marine Lucchini and Thibault Spithakis founded Chalong Bay in 2012, they made a deliberate philosophical inversion: importing a 40-year-old Armagnac copper alambic to Phuket to distil sugarcane spirits in the crop's ancestral homeland — reversing the colonial direction of rum knowledge. The Sweet Thai Basil expression extends that logic into botanicals, applying a vapour-infusion technique borrowed directly from gin production, passing distillate vapour through a flavour basket loaded with fresh Thai sweet basil mounted on the alambic's rectifier column.

The base spirit begins with 100% first-press juice of a single indigenous Thai sugarcane variety, hand-harvested without burning and pressed within approximately six hours of cutting. Fermentation runs in stainless steel with a selected yeast strain before distillation on the Armagnac-type still. The finished spirit is rested in stainless steel — zero wood contact — preserving the raw tropical-vegetal character of the cane before progressive dilution to 40% ABV. Thai alcohol licensing law prohibits the word 'rum' on the label; bottles are legally designated 'The Spirit of Phuket distilled from 100% pure sugarcane.'

What distinguishes this expression within the Tropical Notes sub-range is the use of a specifically Thai culinary herb — sweet basil rather than the lemongrass or cinnamon variants — anchoring the spirit's Southeast Asian identity in a single, site-specific botanical. Drink now; no aging potential applies to this unaged expression.