Finnish company Arctic Blue Beverages Oy is best known for its award-winning Arctic Blue Gin. Now, the company has launched a vegan product — Arctic Blue Oat, an oat-based gin liqueur.
The development of the product was partially inspired by an Arctic Blue board member, Tuomas Kukkonen, who is the former CEO of oat company Kaslink Oy.
Arctic Blue Oat is made with organic oat milk, containing just water and gluten-free oats. To make the liqueur, the oat milk is combined with artisan gin made in eastern Finland.
The liqueur will initially be available on the Finnish market before summer, expanding to other countries later in 2021.
The market for plant-based options in Finland is beginning to take off, with Business Finland recently investing €2.1M to create globally competitive plant-based foods. Finnish company Verso Foods was granted a patent for its fava bean-based meat alternatives late last year, while Gold & Green is experiencing increasing success. Most recently, Finnish food tech startup Solar Foods got the commercial go-ahead for its “protein from thin air”.
“So far, oat has been mainly used in dairy alternatives. [But] we have noted that oat also works as an excellent base for an alcohol product,” says Valtteri Eroma, CEO of Arctic Blue Beverages.
