The brown café is the most characteristically Dutch of all drinking establishments — a small, wood-panelled room, permanently stained by decades of tobacco smoke (now extinguished by law but indelibly present in the walls), where the light is amber, the bar is zinc, and the drink of choice, for a very long time, has been genever. Served ice-cold in a small tulip glass, filled to the brim so that you must bend down to take the first sip without spilling, genever in a brown café is both a drink and a ritual.
For years, this ritual was maintained almost exclusively by an ageing clientele. Genever was your grandfather's drink — respected, perhaps, but not desired. The young drank beer, wine, and increasingly gin. Gin, that English simplification of the Dutch original, had become the fashionable spirit, while genever languished in the same demographic category as sherry and brandy.
But something is changing. Over the course of a week in Amsterdam, visiting distilleries, bars, and bottle shops, I found a genever scene that is quietly, stubbornly, coming back to life.
The New Distillers
The most visible sign of the revival is the emergence of new distilleries producing genever with the creativity and ambition that characterised the craft gin movement a decade ago. In Amsterdam's Jordaan district, the small but beautifully appointed Wynand Fockink distillery — itself a historic institution, founded in 1679 — has expanded its range with new expressions aimed at younger drinkers. Their Oude Genever, aged for three years in French oak, is a spirit of genuine complexity that bridges the gap between genever and whisky.
Outside Amsterdam, new producers are emerging with fresh perspectives. In Schiedam — historically the centre of Dutch genever production — Bobby's Gin has demonstrated that the genever tradition can accommodate innovation through its fusion of Dutch and Indonesian botanicals. And in the university city of Groningen, Onder de Linden distillery is producing what it calls "new Dutch spirit" — genever that experiments with local grains, wild yeast, and barrel ageing in a way that owes as much to the natural wine movement as to traditional Dutch distilling.
The Cocktail Connection
Amsterdam's cocktail bars are driving genever's reintroduction to younger drinkers. At Bar Oldenhof, a beautifully restored canal-house bar near the Rijksmuseum, head bartender Joris Beek has built a drinks menu that features genever in multiple cocktails. His Improved Holland Gin Cocktail — genever, maraschino, orange curaçao, Angostura bitters — is the drink that opened many eyes, including mine, to what genever can do in a cocktail context.
"Genever is the original cocktail spirit," Beek told me, stirring a Holland House (genever, dry vermouth, orange juice, maraschino) with the unhurried precision of a man who knows exactly what he is doing. "The first cocktail books — Jerry Thomas, Harry Johnson — used genever, not gin. We are not inventing something new. We are remembering something old."
This historical argument is compelling and increasingly well-documented. The original Tom Collins, the original Martinez, the original John Collins — all were made with genever, not gin. The substitution of London Dry gin for genever in these recipes during the twentieth century changed their character fundamentally, and the genever revival is allowing bartenders to rediscover what these drinks were originally meant to taste like.
The Challenge of Perception
Despite the momentum, genever faces challenges that gin never did. It is a more expensive spirit to produce — the malt wine base requires pot distillation, which is slower and more costly than column distillation. It is less versatile as a mixing spirit, its richness and weight making it unsuitable for some of the lighter, more refreshing serves that drive gin's popularity. And it carries a cultural baggage — the association with elderly Dutch men in brown cafés — that takes time to shift.
"We do not need genever to become the new gin," said Piet van Leijenhorst, master distiller at Bols, when I put the question to him. "We need it to become the best version of itself. If young people discover it through cocktails, through food pairing, through curiosity — that is enough. We do not need to sell millions of bottles. We need to sell the right bottles to the right people."
An Evening in the Jordaan
On my last evening in Amsterdam, I walked through the Jordaan as the canal lights came on, the reflection of the gabled houses trembling in the dark water. I stopped at Wynand Fockink, took my place at the zinc bar, and ordered an oude genever. The bartender filled the tulip glass to the brim, as tradition demands, and I bent to take the first sip.
The genever was magnificent — malty, warm, complex, with a depth that no London Dry can match and a history that no craft gin can claim. It tasted of grain and juniper and time, and it tasted, unmistakably, of this city and this culture. Whatever the future holds for genever, this much is certain: some things are too good to forget.
