Jon Hillgren

The Path

Service at The Coach & Horses in London, where Jon Hillgren started behind the bar in 1999, set the pace for the work that followed. The room demanded timing, repetition and control: pouring, stirring and reading a drink in motion. Those are bar skills, but they also form the basis of distilling, where balance depends on the same attention to detail and the same refusal to let small errors pass. Since 2011, Hillgren has been the founder and Master Distiller of Hernö Gin. In that role, the work has been about tightening flavour, holding a line on consistency and building a house style that can carry across growth. The shift from bar to distillery did not replace one craft with another; it extended the same discipline into production.

The Work Today

Distilling at scale asks for repetition without drift, and that is where Hillgren’s practice sits now. Each choice has to keep faith with the original intent while serving a larger operation. The craft is in the calibration: knowing when to soften an edge, when to sharpen it, and when to leave a spirit alone. Hernö Gin has grown through that kind of adjustment, with the focus on detail doing the work of identity.

Signature

Taken together, these names trace a range that moves from classic to assertive, from familiar structure to bolder expression, each one suggesting a different facet of the same guiding sensibility. They reflect a distiller attentive to tradition yet unafraid of breadth, working across styles while keeping the core idea intact.

In Their Words “I had my vision of the flavour clear and, quite early in the process, I was close. But it needed some fine tuning before it was ready to launch.” “My goal was to create a gin that was among the best in the world but that the company would grow so quickly was beyond my wildest dreams.”

Acclaim

Hillgren’s honors include International Gin Producer of the Year and Gin Brand of the Year. The awards point to the same throughline as the rest of the work: measured development, exacting standards and a path that ran from a London bar in 1999 to recognition at the top of the field.