Madrona Navy Strength Gin showcases the Pacific Northwest
In a world of over-engineered spirits, Madrona Distillery has gone back to the shoreline instead.
Stand on the shores of Orcas Island at low tide, and the scent is unmistakable – iodine, brine, and the faint sweetness of kelp drying in the wind. It’s here, on this rugged edge of Washington State’s San Juan archipelago, that Madrona Distillery found the inspiration for one of the most distinctive gins, its Navy Strength, and began to set a tone of bottling the landscape it inhabits.
At the heart of Madrona’s Navy Strength Gin lies a defining ingredient: Pacific bull kelp, hand-harvested by founder Tom Allan on the beaches near his home.
“It’s as local as it gets,” Allan says. “We cut the kelp right on the beach and air dry it ourselves. Once the salt’s shaken off, we use both the body and the foliage in the infusion.” The two components bring distinct characters to the spirit: the body of the kelp lends a maritime, iodine-rich salinity, while the foliage introduces a gentle smokiness. “The salt itself can’t make it through distillation,” he explains, “but the seaweed gives that briny, oceanic note that makes it unmistakably coastal.”
Those notes mingle with more traditional botanicals like juniper, ginger root and citrus peel, but are elevated by rose petals and jasmine, both sourced from Allan’s garden. The result is an award-winning gin.
Madrona takes its name from the red-barked madrona tree (known in Canada as the Arbutus), which grows all along the Puget Sound and north into British Columbia. “We’ve been sailing as a family in these waters for decades,” Allan says. “We came to associate the trees with freedom and adventure – they cling to the cliffs above the sea, red against the green and blue. That image became the soul of the brand.”
The brand’s story is quite literally grounded in the geography of the San Juan Islands (the distillery sources its botanicals from the shoreline), a place where the forest meets the sea, a theme Allan translates into flavour.
Although he was born in Hawaii, Allan has spent most of his life in the Pacific Northwest. “I started exploring the islands as a university student,” he recalls. “My wife, Anne, had family on Orcas Island, and it became our shared dream to live there one day, and in 2020 that happened.”
Before founding Madrona, Allan spent years in tech and media startups, a world far removed from kelp beds and copper stills. “But it taught me to be comfortable with change,” he says.“No two days are the same here, and that’s exactly what I love about distilling – one day I’m foraging, the next I’m bottling, then I’m talking flavour chemistry.
“The most exciting part of my job is seeing how a concept becomes a flavour. I’m obsessed with balance. You should never get hit over the head by a single botanical. You should have to tease them out – and amplify them with your choice of garnish or serve.”
For the Navy Strength release, Allan had no reference point. “I didn’t know how many grams of kelp per litre would be too much or too little,” he admits. “It took a few rounds of test runs. Eventually, I found that bumping up the ginger root and citrus provided the perfect counterbalance to the savoury contribution of the kelp.”
At 57% ABV, the gin recently won a Gold medal in The Gin Masters arm of The Global Spirits Masters Competitions blind-tasting series, where judges praised its “fresh, herbaceous and spicy nose that carries along the palate with creamy juniper and a chewy savouriness”.
It’s this structure that holds up beautifully in classic serves: a bold Martini with Dolin vermouth and an anchovy-stuffed olive, or a refreshing tonic with cucumber and cracked black pepper.
Allan laughs when asked about the Martini. “You have to respect the proof,” he says. “It’s navy strength – not for the faint-hearted. But when it’s balanced right, it’s glorious.”
Why navy strength and why now?
In the US, ‘navy strength’ still carries an air of mystery. “People know ‘barrel strength’ or ‘cask strength,’ but ‘navy strength’ takes some explaining,” Allan says. “Once they try it, though, they get it. The flavour just sings in cocktails.”
And he’s right: bartenders are beginning to take notice. The Bottleneck Lounge in Seattle’s Capitol Hill poured the first on-trade serve just hours after Allan finished bottling his inaugural batch. “It’s a great bar to start with – serious about spirits, but friendly and unpretentious,” he says.
Madrona’s other expressions, the Garden Club Gin and Dry Gin, already feature in standout Pacific Northwest serves. At Vendemmia in Seattle, the Garden Club Gin appears in a clarified tomato water Martini with an olive oil float. Salty’s at Sea-Tac Airport serves a cucumber tonic Highball dubbed the ‘Gin-Cident’. But for his Navy Strength, Allan imagines a different audience: “It’s a gin that thrives in flavourful drinks, from tiki serves and spicy tonics, anything that benefits from boldness and texture.”
The Madrona portfolio now includes five spirits – Dry Gin, Garden Club Gin, Navy Strength, Barrel Reserve Gin, and Prayer Bottle Rum – all distilled in Redmond, Washington, just east of Seattle. But the soul of the brand, Allan insists, will always belong to the San Juan Islands.
That sense of place also shapes how Allan approaches expansion. Madrona recently entered Oregon with immediate success and is now eyeing California, Idaho and Montana. “We’re growing, but we’re not chasing scale for the sake of it,” he says. “Quality, balance and connection to place come first.”
A Gold-standard moment
Winning Gold at The Global Spirits Masters Competitions marked a major milestone for the young distillery. “We’d literally just finished bottling when we sent those first samples off,” Allan recalls. “The feedback from the judges was incredible – they picked up exactly what I was hoping they would: freshness, spice, balance, and that creamy juniper texture.”
For an emerging brand, such recognition carries weight. “The Global Spirits Masters Competitions is an international benchmark,” Allan says. “To stand among those names and win Gold with our first Navy Strength release was wild.”
“Every batch begins with a walk on the beach,” Allan continues. “The smell of the tide, the sight of the kelp beds, the sound of the gulls – it all feeds into how I think about flavour.”
That connection to nature isn’t just aesthetic. The kelp forests of Puget Sound are vital ecosystems, and Allan harvests carefully, taking only what’s needed. “We hand-cut, we air dry, we shake the salt off – it’s low impact,” he explains. “It’s part of living in tune with the place you love.”
That ethos extends to the distillery’s sustainability practices, from energy use to packaging. “It’s about being responsible neighbours,” Allan says. “When your ingredients come from your backyard, you have a stake in keeping that patch healthy.”
Madrona Navy Strength arrives at a time when ‘coastal gins’ are rising globally. From Cornwall to Cape Town, distillers are turning to seaweed, samphire, and marine botanicals to celebrate locality. Creating a point of difference has arguably never been so important, as it’s estimated t he global gin landscape today includes more than 7,000 active brands.
Looking ahead
Allan isn’t standing still. “We’re evaluating a potential new site on Orcas Island,” he says. “It’s still early days, but very exciting.” The long-term goal is an island distillery that integrates production, tasting, and a visitor experience in one cohesive coastal retreat. “Imagine a place where you can see the kelp beds that go into your gin while you sip it overlooking the strait,” he says. “That’s the dream.”
It’s evident Allan is clear in his vision for Madrona and its spirits, and bottling locality as best as he can.
“Everything we do comes back to where we are,” Allan reflects. “Puget Sound, the San Juans, Orcas Island – it’s all in the glass. You don’t need to tell people; they can taste it.”
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