House of Bols

A drink with a long memory

Most people come to this corner of Amsterdam for paintings. House of Bols asks you to use a different sense. It is the Bols brand's own cocktail and genever experience, and it stands right beside the Van Gogh Museum on the edge of Museumplein.

Bols describes itself as the oldest distillery brand in the world. You do not need to take that on trust. The story starts in 1575, and the exhibits are built to let you smell and handle it, not just read it off a wall.

From a little shed to Museumplein

In 1575 the Bols family opened a distillery called 't Lootsje, the little shed. It stood outside the city walls, on the post road to Haarlem, beside a stream. By 1612 the walls had grown to take it in, and the stream became the Rozengracht canal. The first written mention of the family business is from 1640, when Pieter Jacobszoon Bols appears in the town papers as its operator.

The best-known name is Lucas Bols, born in 1652. He lived in the Dutch Golden Age and was a major shareholder in the Dutch East India Company. The company's ships brought herbs, spices and fruit back to Amsterdam, and distillers turned them into new liqueurs and genevers. That is why a spirit brand belongs to the story of this trading city.

The family line ended with Herman Bols in 1813. After Napoleon's defeat, the financier Gabriël Theodorus van 't Wout bought the firm on one condition: the Bols name had to stay. A price list from 1820 offers more than 300 liqueurs, bitters, elixirs and gins. Some of them may never have been made at all, and were there to confuse competitors. In 1889 the Rozengracht was filled in to make a main road, and the old distillery site was given up. So the building you visit is a museum about the brand, not the original shed.

What to look for

The museum presents the history of Bols, the way its drinks are made and the ingredients behind them. Take your time with the ingredients. Genever and liqueurs are built from peel, seeds, herbs and spices, and the fun is in naming what you smell before you look at the label.

Then think about genever. It is the juniper spirit of the Netherlands and the forerunner of gin, but it tends to be maltier and rounder. Tasted next to a gin you know, the difference is easy to pick out.

Look at the liqueurs as well. Bols makes a long line of them, today 38 flavours in teardrop-shaped bottles, and the colours run from soft yellows to deep blues. They look more like a paint box than a bar.

The interactive side is the lively part. Visitors can try flair bartending, the showy art of tossing bottles and shakers. Bols has long worked with bartenders and runs its own bartending academy, so the cocktail side is part of the brand's story, not an add-on.

Why it fits this corner

After a morning in the quiet rooms of the Rijksmuseum or the Moco Museum, this is a change of pace. The story is still Amsterdam's, but told through a glass instead of a canvas. Outside, Museumplein opens up wide and green, and the Van Gogh Museum is just beside you. It is a small, sociable stop, and a good one for tired eyes.