How much alcohol is in jenever?

Jenever must contain at least 30 per cent alcohol. Regulation (EU) 2019/787 sets that limit in Annex I, under category 19: juniper-flavoured spirit drinks.

Above that minimum, stricter requirements apply per designation. Five Dutch jenevers have their own European product specification: jenever and grain jenever from 30 per cent, young jenever and old jenever from 35 per cent, and fruit jenever from 18 per cent. Old jenever must also get at least 15 per cent of its alcohol from malt wine, young jenever at least 1.5 per cent. A bottle that reaches 30 per cent but meets none of those requirements may only be called jenever, not young or old jenever.

Under Dutch rules, korenwijn had a minimum of 38 per cent alcohol, eight percentage points above the minimum for ordinary jenever.

The Verordening Benaming Gedistilleerde en Zwak gedistilleerde Dranken of the Productschap Dranken also required at least 51 per cent malt wine for korenwijn. That regulation lapsed on 1 January 2015, and korenwijn is not one of the five Dutch jenever designations with a European product specification. Legally, korenwijn therefore falls back on the 30 per cent of category 19. The name refers to that high malt wine content.

A 35-millilitre shot glass of jenever at 35 per cent contains about 9.8 grams of pure alcohol.

The calculation goes like this: 35 millilitres × 0.35 = 12.25 millilitres of pure alcohol. Alcohol weighs about 0.8 grams per millilitre, so 12.25 × 0.8 is about 9.8 grams. The Trimbos-instituut counts a standard drink as 10 grams of pure alcohol, the same for beer, wine and spirits. A shot glass of young jenever comes in just below that. For a jenever of 38 per cent it becomes 35 × 0.38 × 0,8, or about 10.6 grams. With the percentage on the bottle you can do the sum yourself: millilitres times the percentage, divided by a hundred, times 0.8.

The legal minimum is a lower limit and not an upper limit: category 19 sets 30 percent as the minimum and sets no maximum.

A distiller may dilute the distillate back down to close to that limit, but does not have to. Cask-matured jenevers and bottlings that are not diluted, or less so, therefore come out higher. In the jenever section in Bathmen the known alcohol percentage ranges from 17 per cent, for bottles with fruit, to 65.5 per cent. Of the 198 bottles of jenever, 192 have a known percentage in the index. Of the 191 bottles at 30 per cent or more, 178 come from the Netherlands, 7 from Belgium, 3 from Spain, 2 from France and 1 from Greece.

From 15 per cent alcohol a drink counts as a spirit under the Alcohol Act, and jenever, at a minimum of 30 per cent, is always above that.

Sterke drank mag voor gebruik elders dan ter plaatse alleen worden verstrekt in een slijtlokaliteit die in de vergunning staat. Zwak-alcoholhoudende drank onder 15 procent mag ook in een levensmiddelenwinkel over de toonbank. Artikel 20 van de Alcoholwet verbiedt het verstrekken van alcoholhoudende drank aan iemand van wie niet is vastgesteld dat hij achttien jaar is. Het percentage op het etiket bepaalt dus ook waar een fles verkocht mag worden. Onder achttien geen alcohol: NIX18.