Our packaging is the first chapter of the story!

Opening up a world before the first sip

At Maison Ferrand, the experience starts before anything hits the glass. A bottle, a label, a color, a texture: each one helps tell the story of the product and the place it comes from.

Our packaging shows what inspires our creations: a landscape, the light, a plant, a gesture, or a story. It makes for a first encounter with the spirit; one you see and touch before the aromas ever open up in the glass.

Citadelle helped shape this approach from the start.

Citadelle: clear, recognizable foundations

Our Citadelle Original gin laid the groundwork for an identity you recognize at a glance. Its bottle takes its cue from the old lemonade siphons and seltzer bottles that filled the cafés and bistros of 19th-century France. These everyday objects came to embody a French way of life, and Citadelle borrows their look and gives it a modern twist.

The fluting, those vertical ridges running up the bottle, adds to its character. It catches the light, gives the glass rhythm and calls to mind moving water and the Atlantic horizons around us.

Blue was the natural choice. The color is inseparable from Citadelle, and above all it echoes the juniper berry, the aromatic heart of gin. Its deep blue shades also recall the Atlantic Ocean, just a short drive from Cognac, and the sense of freshness at the core of our gin.

The bottle brings together several sides of Citadelle: its French roots, its bond with juniper, its closeness to the Atlantic and its fondness for objects with a history.

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Citadelle's signature diamond

In the middle of the bottle, the diamond-shaped label has become one of Citadelle's most distinctive features. Its four sides can be read as the four pillars we built Citadelle on: agriculture, creativity, community and craftsmanship.

Agriculture, because everything starts with plants and how they're grown.

Creativity, because Citadelle grew out of a wish to shake things up and push the boundaries of gin.

Community, because every creation is a team effort, from our own people to the growers and partners who work alongside us.

And finally, craftsmanship, because behind every bottle are years of research, distillation, observation and precision.

So the diamond is much more than a graphic shape: in just a few lines, it captures what defines Citadelle Gin.

Jardin d'Été: branching out without breaking away

Building on that identity, Citadelle Jardin d'Été takes it somewhere new. It draws its inspiration from Debbie's orchard and kitchen garden in France's Atlantic southwest, a place alive with ripe fruit, aromatic herbs, pollinating insects and summer light.

On the label, that garden comes to life. Melon, lemon and orange hint at the gin's fresh, luscious notes. Around them, bees, ladybugs and butterflies point to the essential role that biodiversity and pollination play in this ecosystem.

The Atlantic shows up in the illustrations too: lighthouses, boats, fishing shacks and the landscapes of Charente-Maritime tie the garden to its home region. The label becomes a landscape to explore, almost like strolling through the garden before you've even tasted the gin.

And sometimes, a cat hides in the scenery

Some details are meant to be found only by those who take the time to look. On several of our labels, Tom, our resident cat, slips quietly in among the illustrations.

He might turn up in a garden, a landscape or a backdrop, like a little hidden signature left by our team.

Now it's your turn to go looking for him…

An identity that evolves and stays true to itself

From Citadelle Original to Jardin d'Été, the same visual language carries through. The bottle, colours, illustrations and materials show different sides of the same world: France, juniper, the Atlantic, gardens, and the people who bring them to life.

Each new creation adds to this vocabulary while keeping the cues that make Citadelle instantly recognizable. From the glass to the ridges, from the paper to the illustrations, every detail opens a door into the world of our gin.

Before you've even had a taste, you're already there.