A former Michelin-starred chef was looking for a new hobby after his divorce. He started a gin business in his daughter's old bedroom.

03.09.2024 - 04:52 / insider.com

Everything was on track when it came to Jón Óskar Árnason's culinary career — until it wasn't.

Born and raised in Iceland, Árnason partnered with his then-wife Sarah to open a bistronamed Bryggargartan in her Swedish hometown in 2004. Five years later, they relocated to Skellefteå, a town 480 miles north of Stockholm with a population of under 80,000 people.

Skellefteå, part of Swedish Lapland, has become known as the "kitchen pantry" of Scandinavia following the New Nordic culinary movement. It's where many Michelin-star chefs forage, hunt, and catch their own ingredients — including grouse, arctic char, and cloudberries — for their restaurants. Árnason is one of those chefs.

"Our focus was on bringing top-level gastronomy to a region that had been in a gastronomical standstill for decades," Árnason told Business Insider.

Árnason said he had always felt in control of his career, but when the pandemic hit, he found himself at a crossroads. After almost twenty years of marriage, he and his wife were going through a divorce, and his daughter Judith had moved out — she was starting a career as a sommelier. Árnason found himself wanting more.

Árnason, now 46, had considered selling the restaurant, but when the pandemic hit, he said no buyers were interested in buying it, so he has continued running it with his ex-wife.

But he still wanted to find another channel for his creativity.

He found inspiration four years ago while sitting in his seaside house overlooking the Baltic Sea. He wanted to know what the nature around him would taste like when distilled with alcohol.

"The hours of sunshine and the northern climate must affect the taste, I thought to myself," said Árnason. "Surely, our Swedish water can make an exceptional gin that can be served neat and not always as a cocktail."

Rather than using dried juniper, cloves, and peppercorns sourced from Asia to make a typical London Dry, Árnason started handpicking his own berries, herbs, and roots like fallow deer and cloudberries — ingredients that flower and are in full bloom in Swedish Lapland, depending on the season.

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Árnason said he doesn't dry his ingredients out — he puts them in fresh, making the spirit drinkable both straight and with a mixer. In contrast, popular gin brands like Hendricks and Tanqueray use dry botanicals or essences to achieve their flavors.

"I want to work with what nature gives me and create something so clean it can be enjoyed neat," Árnason says.

After converting Judith's bedroom into a makeshift distillery, production slowly became more than a hobby. It became a business.

This is what eventually led to the start of Ógin, which means "not a gin," in Icelandic.

Árnason teamed up with creative director and