FULL MOON RISING

We are crossing the seas again and heading for Australia's Rum Capital!  Bundaberg Rum Distillery was established in 1888 and the region has fast becoming known for it's distilleries and breweries.  This area is also the gateway to the Great Barrier Reef and is a pleasant day trip from Brisbane, so has a thriving tourism industry, with plenty of restaurants and bars offering an abundance of good food and drink and of course distilleries to visit.

Rick and Kylie Prosser are no strangers to the spirits business.  Rick has over 20 years experience in the spirits industry, most of them consulting for or working with Diageo and he was also master distiller at Bundaberg Rum for 13 of those years.  He claims he fell in love with gin around 2014 when he was hired as a consultant for a startup distillery.  Although they were not producing gin, he found himself on a bit of a gin pilgrimage, so when his contract ran out, he decided it was time to start making spirits for himself, rather than someone else!  When he set up Kalki Moon Distillery in 2017, there were no other gin distillers in the area - a brave move in a rum and sugar dominant region, but it's definitely paid off for them.  The name for the family business was inspired by a shimmering sunset and full moon rising over the sugarcane fields of Kalkie, a town near Bundaberg where the family built their home. 

They set up on a shoe-string budget and so were initially distilling using 100 litre beer keg stills, but since early 2020 they have been using a custom made 1000 litre copper pot still made for them in Melbourne and which is inspired by the Tanqueray Ten Still.  This took 18 months to build and produces batches of between 950 and 1350 bottles, depending on ABV and it's named after their grandmother Marie!  This larger still means they only need to run 2-3 one-shot distillations per month - the botanicals macerate for 2-3 days prior to this.

At the moment they produce a range of 3 London Dry Style gins - Classic, Premium and Navy Strength.  Their best seller, which they market at an "entry level price", is the Classic Gin.  This only uses 5 botanicals, including lemon myrtle and has an ABV of 37.5%.  Their Premium Gin is bottled at 42% and uses 10 botanicals which are sourced both locally and internationally.  They include both lemon and cinnamon myrtle, ground ginger and Australian finger limes and suggest a perfect G&T serve using a mediterranean tonic with a slice of orange and stick of cinnamon.  They also produce Liqueurs, Rum Liqueur, Cane Spirits and various Vodkas.  Their barrel-aged gins are however very special and Solstice is possibly one of Australia's most expensive gins, aged as the name suggests from Summer to Winter Solstice and vice versa.  Each year's release has been aged in a different barrel, with their 3rd edition the 2018/2019 release, aged in a Pedro Ximenez Sherry Barrel.  Only 365 bottles are released for each batch and they sell out really quickly!  The next edition is I believe aged in a Rum Barrel and should be released soon.  In terms of future products, they are also looking at an Old Tom, based on a similar recipe to the exclusive Speakers Gin that they made for Parliament House in Brisbane, and of course, rum!

Kalki Moon award-winning gins are available in the UK - exclusively at Aussie owned Nippataty Liquor.  Unfortunately I don't have Bundeberg Ginger Beer, but I have served up their highly recommended Gin Gin Mule!

WATTLE LOT OF GIN

Day 36 #virtualworldgintour

Distiller Reg Paps worked for Shell for 30 years, running industrial distillation units.  In 2013 he decided to follow his dream of owning a boutique distillery and opened Ironbark Distiller in Richmond, NSW, with his wife, Greta.  Two years later, they won Australian Gin Distillery of the year. They are located in the outskirts of Sydney, conveniently en route to the Blue Mountains, a popular holiday spot for locals and produce 3 gin expressions - London Dry, Wattleseed and Cascara Gin - as well as moonshine, vodka and a few other spirits.

Wattleseed Gin uses classic botanicals, a neutral cane base and cut with purified, sterilised, locally sourced, carbon filtered water.  Their star botanical is the local Wattleseed, which are seeds that come from the native Acacia tree and have been used as traditional food for centuries.  Wattleseeds add a unique chocolate or cocoa layer to the gin, which makes me think it's the perfect Espresso Martini gin! Sipping neat you can actually taste the cocoa notes which linger for quite a long time.  Chocolate craving? Just have a little neat sip!

If you have come across Ironbark Wattleseed Gin, you have probably noticed that in comparison to some other imported gins, it's cheap as chips.  That's most likely due to Halewood having purchased a majority stake in the family business in 2019.  Just in case you don't recognise the name Halewood, I'm sure you will recognise names like City of London Distillery, Whitley Neil, JJ Whitley, Wessex, Aber Falls, Crabbies, Mary-le-Bone, Peaky Blinder, Liverpool, Minus33...the list goes on!  All affordable and well-loved gin brands under the Halewood umbrella.   

Australia has become quite a gin powerhouse and despite the fact that we have quite a saturated market here in the UK, lots of Australian gin brands are selling extremely well here in the UK and winning awards all around the world, so having the backing of such a global giant has given Ironbark the opportunity to increase production and grow internationally.

The gin available to purchase in the UK is distilled in Australia and bottled in Liverpool.  I'm assuming it's imported at full strength and cut here using local water.  Does it make a difference to the taste?  I very much doubt it if both water sources are purified, but without trying a bottle purchased in Australia, I have no way of telling!  If you have tried both, let me know!

EDIT:  

In all my research I appear to have missed out a rather important announcement about Ironbark!   Early in 2019 Reg and Greta Papps sold a majority stake to Halewood, but in November the same year, they made an "unexpected change in direction" and decided to sell out completely and Halewood now have full ownership of the distillery.  You can now follow Tim Lane, the Distiller, on his journey with the brand and see what new products he is producing for them.  

As I mentioned in my post, Reg and Greta established and grew their brand out of love for the industry and poured their hearts into everything they did.  Their mission was to produce award-winning spirits and market them internationally and this they certainly did.  When they sold their stake to Halewood, it was intended to triple production capacity and export to new markets and grow the brand to full potential.  I'm going to make an assumption that having involvement of such a big brand didn't quite turn out like they hoped and so therefore decided to sell out and move onto new pastures.  

So where did Reg end up - well, a search has uncovered this morning that he is has been Lead Distiller and Production Manager at Manly Spirits since January 2020!  It somehow doesn't surprise me that Reg is still working in the same industry he loves and for a brand which has kept true to its roots, but is also growing internationally!  This also links really nicely to the next stop on my tour!

HELLO OLD FAVOURITE

This gin has featured so many times on my grid that I'm not sure there is anything new to say about it!

So once again, let's take a ferry trip from Sydney to the famous Manly Beach and Manly Distillery.  This is a family owned distillery with the founders David and his wife Vanessa at the forefront of operations. Their beautiful bottles are tactile and intricate, right down to their trademark Eastern Blue Devil Fish on the base and it's certainly not one of those you will ever want to throw in the recycling. In fact, if you are local, you can take your bottle down and have it refilled at the Steampunk Fish refilling station at the distillery. This was something they commissioned from a local artist and is also made up from recycled metals and parts.

Their spirits take inspiration from the stunning marine environment and coastline around them and they use sustainably foraged native and marine botanicals. Their Australian Dry Gin includes alongside your traditional botanicals, sea lettuce, finger limes, anise myrtle and mountain pepper leaf.

For this serve, I've gone with some sea inspiration again.  I found several recipes for a jellyfish cocktail but they all look so different and frankly my version came nowhere near any of them! It's all about the layering and density of the ingredients - mine were gin, curaçao, midori and double cream.  Most recipes are for shots and include vodka, curacao, sambuca and a dash of cream to create the jellyfish, but there were some that were tall and swirly and that's what I was going for although it turned out more ombre!  It's pretty, it tasted like an alcoholic milkshake and so who cares if it looked like I hoped it would - I certainly enjoyed it!

YARRA YARRA

Yarra is an indiginous word meaning "ever flowing" or "it flows" and although the focus of this post is of course going to be Four Pillars Distillery, who are based in the Yarra Valley, yarra-yarra is also a metaphor for this virtual tour and my nattering, which seems to be going on and on forever!  Day 38, nearly halfway there, but it's also day 1 of #ginadaymay, so I'll say hello to you all and also, thanks for following along! 

Four Pillars Distillery was founded in 2013 and the name represents 4 important elements of their business - their copper stills (Wilma, Jude & Beth), pure Yarra Valley water, the best native, exotic and traditional botanicals and dedication to the process.  Of course you need a really good distiller as well and Cam MacKenzie is in charge of that at Four Pillars, with partners Stu and Matt dealing with sales, marketing and strategy.  Cam and Stu go back over 20 years and met when they were both working in the wine industry.  Cam was working at Beringer Blass on an Olympic Scholarship, having competed in Atlanta in 1996 in the 4x4 relay and was training for the Sydney Olympics 400m.  Wine won, however and scuppered his Olympic career, but he has not yet looked back! 

Four Pillars came about when Cam and Stu got chatting one day about owning their own business and doing something outside of the wine industry.  They considered tonic, but Cam was more interested in getting back to being more hands-on, rather than just management of a product that was contract made and so they decided to look into distilling.  This took some planning and was a huge investment for them both.  Stu had a successful PR business at the time and they brought Matt on board to help with some strategy and somehow he managed to pitch himself into the business as well and the three have worked together since then.  

They didn't set about to make a London Dry, but rather to make something unique and modern, which represented its Australian roots and was true to gin's origins, with juniper leading the way.  In fact, their Rare Dry Gin was never marketed as a London Dry, as they believe they use way more juniper than is required - about 80% of the botanical base, but is still well balanced with other native botanicals strong enough to stand up to it.  It was a slow process getting set up and Cam's focus was, and still is, more about the safety around the whole distillation process, than recipes and ingredients.  There is so much more to distilling than just a recipe and when you start to have discussions with distillers and see the the equipment they use, you start to appreciate just how complex a process it is - and all the factors they need to take into account before you even switch on the still!  In 2019 Australian F&B company Lion acquired a 50% stake in their business, helping them with amongst other things, compliance and safety, thus enabling them to continue to grow the business and become a leading craft gin brand.

When it comes to recipes and botanicals, they have focussed on ensuring that they are able to distill year round using the same botanicals for each recipe, whether fresh or dried.  They've experimented with many recipes and collaborated with other distilleries as well.  Their Olive Leaf Gin is one of the latest expressions to arrive in the UK and their Bloody Shiraz is another favourite and which came about as an experiment and loosely put, is their version of a sloe gin - gin, grapes and more gin, but no sugar is added!  This expression is doing so well, they believe they use more Shiraz grapes than any of the wineries in the valley!  They have also focussed on ensuring the byproducts of making gin are well used - marmalade is made using their whole, distilled oranges and gin pigs are fed spent botanicals.

I've served up here a dry martini with a drop of olive oil, but also consumed a few G&Ts with Fevertree Light and Mediterranean Tonics, which were all delicious!

NEVER SAY NEVER

I've served up a classic juniper-forward G&T today, which fits with the #ginadaymay theme too!  I'm not sure I'll manage to make my tour posts work every day, but happy to support and join in, as I've done for the past couple of years!

Last year for my whistle-stop world tour before World Gin Day, I stopped in McLaren Vale as well...or rather visited my bottle of Triple Juniper Gin from the Never Never Distillery.  It's reminded me again about the similarities between South Africa and Australia - not only the climate but also the unique wine region of McLaren Vale which we also find in the Western Cape.  Much like the vineyards and wineries that I've visited in the Cape, the founders (George, Sean and Tim) of Never Never Distilling have gone the extra to ensure that a visit to their distillery will be a regular occurrence.  They offer distillery tours, tastings, an on site bar, outside seating and picnic areas and should you wish to make a full day of it, they have ensured there will be food on site too via an Italian-Mediterranean kitchen. Pizza, gin and a vista - my kinda heaven!  

There has been a trend for wine estates to also start to offer a range of spirits and there are already many estates in the Western Cape doing this.  This is also mirrored in McLaren Vale where there are several other gin brands attached to a wine label.    Last year Never Never released a limited release Grenache Gin, called Ginache, which is a nod to the wine produced in the region and seems to follow a trend to release gin expressions using grapes as a botanical (not as a base spirit).

Although they didn't start out on Chalk Hill, Never Never knew that this is where they wanted to end up and so their label design is a representation of McLaren Vale and serendipitously happens to be pretty close in design to the actual view when you park up at the distillery. They were also very much inspired by the Never Never, from which they take their name. This comes from the term used to describe the vast Australian expanse beyond the horizon, for to step into the Never Never is to be adventurous and make a journey into the unknown, which I'm sure mirrors the journey they have taken setting up their distillery. They wanted to start a juniper revolution all over again and bring juniper back to the limelight and they certainly have done just that.

Triple Juniper gin is so-called as they process the juniper three different ways - by steeping, pot and vapour distillation. Juniper is at the heart of everything they make and along with your classic botanicals & bags of citrus, they also use the Australian pepper berry.  

HALF WAY - TIME TO TWIST & SHOUT!

Today's theme for #ginadaymay is #twist so this is a twist on a traditional Martini!

Seppeltsfield Martini

50ml House Gin

25ml Orange Liqueur

50ml Orange Juice

5-10ml Simple Syrup

Squeeze of Lemon Juice

Seppeltsfield Road is known locally as the Avenue of Hopes & Dreams. It's a picturesque road in the Barossa Valley near Adelaide in Australia, lined with massive palms on either side and leads up to the Seppeltsfield Winery, which was established in 1851.  Along the road are restaurants and of course, the Seppeltsfield Road Distillery, built out of shipping containers, and where you will find distiller Nicole Durdin and her husband Jon. 

Nicole's family has produced wine in the Barrossa region for four generations and she was keen to continue the legacy forward by creating some wonderful spirits.  With their imported German still, Christine, named after Nicole's grandmother, they have created a signature range of gins and offer tours and tastings as well.  All three gins feature local botanicals, but each has it's own twist.  The award winning range includes their Dry Gin, Savoury Allsorts and House Gin and they also produce a Shiraz Gin (Semi-Gin) because they claim the Barossa makes the best Shiraz in Australia! 

The Barossa Valley is said to have some of the oldest Shiraz vines in the world, planted as early as 1847.  The region still has strong German traditions, which are a result of German settlers arriving in the area in the 1840s.  The three major towns of the area all have distinctive personalities which are a result of German and English (Cornish miners mainly) having settled there, but it's the German influence which seems to be most prominent and still reflected in religion (Lutheran) and food production in the region, with lots of bakeries and butchers producing traditional German breads, pastries and meat products.

If you haven't picked it up already, this is a gin distilled by a female distiller and Nicole also used a female artist and designer to create the label and branding.  The pattern is a mandala, featuring botanicals and grapevine leaves, which not only represent the Barossa Valley, but also the grape base spirit used.  The House Gin is what Nicole refers to as a modern gin, with less focus on juniper.  It contains lots of floral elements, including cornflower, borage, chamomile, elderflower and lavender.