The Distillery
Shaman Spirits was founded in 1998 and began distilling soon at the turn of the century. From the beginning the main vision was to be a boutique-like distillery which is known for its product quality.
Shaman Spirits’ story begins as early as the late 1800’s, when Finland was still a part of the Russian Empire ruled by Alexander II.
On February 18th 1860, a local potato farmer called Juhan Matinolli was granted an official distillation permit for the premises known today as Shaman Spirits. According to the original signed permit – which can still be found at the factory’s offices – the farmers were allowed to use distillation pans in the size of up to 46 cans, and a can at the time was 0,5 l.
After a long period of going back and forth with its alcohol policy, the government set a prohibition law, which took effect in Finland June 1st 1917, about 5 months before the independence declaration. The law prohibited everyone from producing alcohol except the State’s own Alcohol Institute, which was permitted to distill alcohol only for medical purposes.
Free the spirit – The end of Prohibition and restrictions.
Prohibition ended April 5th 1932, after which alcohol production and retail was a strict State Monopoly up until the beginning of 1995, when Finland joined to be a part of the European Union. Finally, after being accepted to the EU, the State allowed private distillation companies, which allowed Jari Matinolli, a local potato farmer and a direct descendant of the original permit holder, to initiate the creation of Shaman Spirits Ltd, as it is known until this very day.
Shaman Spirits was founded in 1998, and began distilling soon at the turn of the century.
Water is the Base
The thing that most people often seem to forget is the fact that the main ingredient (60%) in vodka is water. Even the name “vodka” is derived from the Russian word “voda”, which means water. In other words, the thing that makes the biggest difference to the quality of vodka is the quality of the water. Having said that, we believe we are in possession of probably the purest and cleanest groundwater in the world.
The Soul of the Spirit is the water from beneath.
This pure and clear groundwater from Lake Hirsijärvi that we use was formed in a unique environment. The water has gone through the best possible purification process, starting from rainwater filtrating into an esker. The esker was formed about 11,000 years ago in a glacial meltwater tunnel that was part of the continental ice sheet during the Ice Age. It climbs from the coast of the Bothnian Bay, meanders through the Rokua Geopark landscape and runs hundreds of kilometres to the Southeast.
Rainwater gets filtered and purified through thick sand layers that are thousands of years old, and is then stored in the esker’s core. This groundwater is the soul of our vodkas.
The sand in the region is an excellent natural water cleaner, because it was once washed by ice-cold glacial meltwater. The stored, very cold and clean water flows slowly towards the north-west of Rokua and then discharges naturally into low-lying places. The slowly-moving water stays fresh and is flavoured with elements and compounds from the bedrock below. The bedrock represents an almost two billion-year-old mountain range that has eroded away over time. These natural purification processes cannot be reproduced by synthetic treatments, and this water does not require any post-processing or additives.