A bottle is, first and foremost, merely a vessel for holding liquid—functional, utilitarian, not something to be given much thought. That’s not the case, however, with Cygnet Gin. As much care and thought went into crafting the decanter as to the gin itself. Of course, the bottle does serve its primary purpose, which is holding 700 mL of Cygnet Gin—itself entirely unlike almost everything else in its category. But the Eirlys decanter is not just a bottle. It’s a work of art; it’s a feat of engineering and design; it’s a gorgeous sculpture; it’s a decanter; it’s a vase. And, like the gin for which it was made, it is a portrait in understated elegance, making its presence known quietly rather than announcing it with bells and whistles. Its dual qualities of functionality and elegance help to redefine luxury in the context of sustainability.
The first thing you’ll notice about the Eirlys decanter is that it doesn’t look like a bottle—at least not the traditional bottles one typically sees on bar carts and liquor store shelves. That’s because it wasn’t created as a single-purpose, or single-use, container. The focus was twofold. First, the aesthetics. The decanter was designed by the same person who created the gin, Cygnet founder Katherine Jenkins, OBE. A renowned classical vocalist, Jenkins had never made a gin nor designed a bottle before, but her creativity isn’t limited to her music. The intention was for both the gin and the vessel in which it’s housed to be, as she puts it, “a reflection of my values: True luxury lies in the details, in taking time to savor life’s special moments, and in caring for the world around us.”
A Team of 3 Brings Life to a Sketch
The bottle’s elegant design originated with a sketch from Jenkins. “I wanted the shape of our Cygnet decanter to feel like a drop of Welsh water,” she recalls, “like that natural, organic form you get when water holds itself for just a moment before it lands. It felt like the most honest way to connect the bottle to its home.”
She named it Eirlys, a Welsh word meaning “snowdrop”—a flower whose emergence at the beginning of spring symbolizes hope and purity. From there, the process to bring Eirlys to life, as it were, was a three-way collaboration. Working with Jenkins was Cygnet co-founder Andrew Levitas, who’s also her husband and a renowned filmmaker and artist whose work has been exhibited at venues including The Louvre. “My role,” he says, “was to help translate the soul of Cygnet into a physical object. I have spent the bulk of my life working across art, film, design, and social impact, so I approached the bottle inherently not as packaging, but as an object with meaning.”
Completing the triad was Eric Villency, the internationally acclaimed luxury designer who was primarily responsible for translating Jenkins’ sketch from concept to reality.
The Challenge: Reduce the Carbon Footprint Without Sacrificing Strength
Jenkins and Levitas’ vision extends beyond beauty, into environmental responsibility. Eirlys had to look beautiful and it had to be made as sustainably as possible. “Honestly, the most amount of time and effort went into the engineering,” Jenkins says. “Creating a bottle that is sustainable and reusable… ensuring it could hold up to real-world use yet still maintaining its beauty was the challenge. That’s where the real work happened. The design had to serve those values, not the other way around.”
It was a challenge envisioned in part by Levitas’ work with the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the European Environmental Bureau (EEP), and a challenge that only a designer with the experience and vision of Villency could meet. And meet it, he did. Eirlys is made using 50 percent less glass than a typical spirits bottle of the same capacity, reducing its carbon footprint accordingly, without sacrificing strength and resilience. “Working with Katherine was very intuitive,” Villency remembers. “She has a well-defined sensibility and that quickly helped refine concepts. Katherine’s artistic sensibility helped shape the design, guiding it from strong, architectural linear forms toward a more organic and fluid expression.”
Most importantly, Eirlys had to do justice to the liquid it holds—a groundbreaking gin with a unique botanical mix including Manuka honey from New Zealand, also created by Jenkins and Levitas. Their vision for the gin has been borne out by the gold medals it’s been awarded at some of the world’s most prestigious spirits competitions, including the World Gin Awards, the International Wine & Spirit Competition, and the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. A gin this distinctive deserves a decanter like no other—and the team behind Eirlys made sure that’s what it got.
A Bottle’s Afterlife as a Piece of Art
The stunning design of the Eirlys decanter stands out on any bar cart but what’s truly astonishing is what happens to it after the gin is gone. “I often found myself asking whether the bottle could transcend its category entirely,” says Levitas. “Could it sit beside a centuries-old sculpture or within a modern gallery and feel equally at home? The objects we continue to treasure across generations tend to share a certain quality of inevitability, as though they were discovered rather than designed. That was the aspiration.”
Unlike virtually every other spirits bottle, Eirlys is designed for an afterlife as well as a shelf life. Its labels are created to be easily removable, and the design of the bottle itself lends it to myriad uses, from a vase to a candle holder to freestanding art. Villency says, “Throughout the process, we envisioned the piece as something that could extend beyond its original purpose and be reused.” The result is, however, more than reusable; it’s desirable. More than versatile, it becomes an almost indispensable addition to any
collection of beautiful objects.
Levitas adds, “We needed the decanter to live beyond the last pour and be an object of purpose. Cygnet is built around the idea of ‘fewer but finer’ moments and if you are asking people to consume with more intention, then the ingredients, the distillation, the packaging, and the overall experience of the brand has to also be built with intention. Luxury should elevate everyday life, but never at the expense of the world around it.” Like Jenkins’ music, the decanter’s design is timeless, transcending trends and resonating
with both modern and traditional sensibilities.
The height of luxury is not disposability; on the contrary, it’s permanence, sustainability, and timelessness. To elevate an object traditionally regarded as ephemeral to the level of a collectible work of art speaks to the aesthetic sensibilities of Katherine Jenkins, OBE; the collective vision of the Cygnet team; and to a larger cultural movement that’s reconsidering the very purpose of luxury itself. The surprise shouldn’t be that a bottle can be as treasured and as valued, as Eirlys, but that nobody has thought to break the barriers of utility and art in this way before. The bottle does justice to the extraordinary gin it contains by continuing to delight long after the last drop has been poured.