How POLAR is made

Most peppermint liqueurs are an afterthought — one entry in a long list of flavours a distillery churns out alongside their chocolate liqueur, their triple sec, their coffee liqueur. POLAR isn't that. It's the only thing we make, and we spent a long time getting it right before we let anyone near it. Here's what actually goes into the bottle, and why it tastes different from anything else on the shelf.

Small batch, Northamptonshire made

POLAR is distilled at Wharf Distillery in Northamptonshire, using a small copper batch method rather than the large-scale industrial production most commercial liqueurs rely on. Copper pot distilling is slower and produces far less per run, but it gives us much tighter control over the final spirit — which matters when the whole point of a liqueur this simple is getting the balance exactly right.

Less sugar, more control

The biggest difference between POLAR and most peppermint liqueurs on the market is sweetness. Most are thick and syrupy, built to mask a rough base spirit with sugar. We do the opposite: POLAR is made with much lower sugar levels, so what you get is a cleaner, lighter, more refreshing shot rather than a cloying one.

It matters just as much behind the bar as it does neat. With a sickly-sweet liqueur, you're constantly fighting it — diluting it down, adding more citrus or soda to cut through the sugar. With POLAR, you're starting from a clean base and adding sweetness to taste, not clawing it back. That's a much easier, more reliable way to build a cocktail.

A better base spirit

Liqueurs live or die on the quality of the spirit underneath the flavour, and it's usually the first thing producers cut corners on. We use a higher quality, more expensive grain base spirit than most peppermint liqueurs bother with. It's what gives POLAR its smoothness — soft enough to sip neat, straight from the freezer, with none of the burn you'd expect from a cheaper base.

Natural flavourings, nothing else to hide

POLAR uses natural flavourings — as clean as a liqueur can be, while still very much being a liqueur. No shortcuts, nothing synthetic doing the work that real peppermint should be doing.

One liqueur, done properly

Most brands treat peppermint as one flavour in a wider range. We only make peppermint liqueur. It's the one thing we do, which means every decision — the distillery, the sugar level, the base spirit, the flavouring — was made in service of this single product, not a formula stretched across a dozen different SKUs. That focus is the whole point of POLAR.