Explorer: when a story becomes gin
Some journeys begin with a place. Others begin with a person.
Since 100&NOMORE was created, we have always seen gin as a way of exploring. Ingredients, landscapes, memories and cultures that eventually come together inside a bottle. That idea sits at the heart of our creations and of the story of Andreas van Loy, the explorer around whom we built the 100&NOMORE universe.
Now, we wanted to take things one step further.
What if, instead of deciding where the next destination should be, we invited other people to explore it with us?
That is how Explorer Series was born.
A new way of creating within 100&NOMORE
Explorer is a series of collaborations with bartenders, chefs, perfumers, artists and other creative profiles we admire, people with stories worth telling.
The idea is simple: start from scratch.
We do not begin with a finished recipe or a predetermined list of botanicals. We begin by talking to each Explorer about memories, places, flavours, aromas, experiences and influences.
And from there, we try to answer one question together:
What would your story taste like if we could turn it into a gin?
As with 100&NOMORE’s most special editions, every Explorer creation is produced in a run of just 100 individually numbered bottles.
One hundred bottles to tell a story that will never be repeated in exactly the same way.
Explorer #1: Marie-Amélie Fabre
The first person we invited to join us on this journey was Marie-Amélie Fabre, bartender at Punch Room, The Barcelona EDITION.
And the story began almost by chance one year earlier.
In September 2025, Marie-Amélie took part in the first edition of Barcelona Gin Masters, the competition created by 100&NOMORE around cocktail culture, creativity and gin.
She won that first edition.
But the most interesting part came afterwards.
Instead of allowing the prize to end with the competition, we decided to use it as the starting point for something new: creating a gin together.
Over the following months, we built the recipe around her story, her memories and her way of understanding flavour.
Freshness, fire and smoke
The result brings together five main ingredients:
Lapsang Souchong, charred corn, piper lolot, smoked grapefruit and black cardamom.
A combination with a distinctive smoky and umami character, built around three ideas that remained present throughout the creative process: freshness, fire and smoke.
But behind each ingredient there is more than just an aromatic purpose.
There are personal memories, references to Asia, aromas connected to her childhood and small details that emerged during our conversations with Marie-Amélie.
Even the corn has a personal connection: maïs, the French word for corn, links back to “Mai”, one of her nicknames.
The intention was never simply to bring together five unusual botanicals in order to create a different recipe.
We wanted every ingredient to have a reason for being there.
In Marie-Amélie’s own words:
“It’s my story in a bottle.”
And that sentence probably explains Explorer better than any definition could.
Coming full circle at Punch Room
On 22 September 2026, we officially presented the first Explorer at Punch Room, The Barcelona EDITION, during Barcelona Hotel Bar Week.
There could not have been a more fitting place.
One year after winning Barcelona Gin Masters, Marie-Amélie was presenting, at her own bar, the gin that had grown directly out of that competition.
During the presentation, we shared the creative process, the ingredients, the trials and the stories that gradually shaped the final recipe.
And for the first time, the 100 bottles of Explorer #1 were presented to the public.
Much more than a collaboration
Explorer was not created as a collection of one-off collaborations.
We want it to become a creative space within 100&NOMORE where we can work together with people from different disciplines.
A bartender can turn a memory into flavour.
A chef can translate their cuisine into a spirit.
A perfumer can begin with an aroma.
An artist can take us somewhere completely unexpected.
We do not know exactly what the next Explorers will look like.
And that is precisely the point.
Because exploring means not fully knowing the destination before you begin.
Marie-Amélie was the first.
But the journey has only just begun.
100 bottles. One story. One Explorer.
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