Gin has never been so chic. Illustration / Rod Emmerson
Joanna Wane on the rise of the "Ginaissance" and the boutique New Zealand distilleries leading the way.
I was a young cadet journalist with an 80s poodle perm when I leaned confidently on the bar at Auckland's Occidental Hotel and ordered a gin and tonic for my first Friday after-work drinks. Moments later, I was summarily ejected back out on to Vulcan Lane. The legal drinking age was 21 back then. How the barman busted me, I'll never know.
Later, flatting in Sydney, I changed my allegiance to vodka. Blame that on my big sister, who introduced me to Stolichnaya — rebranded as "Stoli" last month as founder-in-exile Yuri Shefler consciously decoupled from Russia; he'd decamped to Latvia 20 years ago.
The millennium was all about 42 Below, pure Ponsonby cool. Then came flavoured vodka. Blame that and Australia for the abomination of Feijoa Lumps. "Yeah ... nah," someone posted on Twitter after they hit the supermarket shelves in February. "Also #bringbacksnifters."
Growing up in Hawke's Bay, there was always some Beefeater gin in my mother's liquor cabinet. In the early 90s, it felt like the peak of sophistication when I discovered Bombay Sapphire, bottled in chic icy-blue.
Once the scourge of 18th-century England, "mother's ruin" is now the most popular spirit in the world. More than 800 dedicated distilleries are spread across the UK, where gin is so popular it's been officially added to the basket of goods that the Office for National Statistics monitors to measure inflation.
Like fine wine and craft beer, designer gin has carved out an increasingly upmarket clientele. In Soho, the London Gin Club offers "tasting flights" at $60 a glass. A limited-edition Morus LXIV, distilled from the leaves of a single ancient mulberry tree, sells exclusively at Harvey Nichols for around $8000 a bottle.
The first New Zealand gin to make a real splash offshore was Scapegrace Gold, named best London dry gin in the world at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in 2018. Judges described it as "staggeringly good". The 2021 Guide to New Zealand Gin (it's sold out) features 145 different varieties, from traditional to contemporary to a special category of aged gins — matured in lightly toasted French oak barrels or "rested" in casks that were used to make bourbon.
Questionable as the call may have been, alcohol was available as an essential item when we went into level 4 lockdown, in early 2020. In that first phase, I pretty much gave up drinking altogether. Then the "support local" campaign kicked in and my lockdown luxury of choice became an occasional bottle of New Zealand boutique gin.
Apparently, I wasn't alone. Internet searches for "gin cocktail recipes" have doubled during the pandemic, I wrote for a small piece in Canvas late last year. Marlborough's Giesen Wines had got into the spirit of it too with Strange Nature, a new grape-based gin made using alcohol removed from sauvignon blanc and double-distilled with juniper.
PR companies are a canny lot and, a few weeks ago, an email landed in my inbox: "Kia ora Joanna, I couldn't help notice your interest in gin and wondered if you would like to try a new one on the scene — Awildian. Can I send you a bottle?"
At the 2022 World Gin Awards, which had just been held in London, Awildian's Coromandel Dry was named the "World's Best Classic Gin". Impressive, but New Zealand has a few award-winning spirits. Then I saw where it was made — at a micro-distillery in Thames. So, I decided to do my own research, as any good journalist should, and headed to the Coromandel.
The Saturday morning market was in full swing as I made my way through the Thames town centre to The Depot, a restored heritage building that once housed buses. In custom-built premises added on to the rear, the Coromandel Distilling Company is open for tastings on Fridays and Saturdays. You can smell wafts of juniper — the defining essence of gin — long before reaching the cellar door.
Paul Schneider and Daniela Suess met at university (she's German, he's part-Austrian and was born in South Africa) and Schneider worked as a conservation ranger on Stewart Island before they moved to the Coromandel. The couple began making mead five years ago, in their sleepout at home, using mānuka honey from their hobby beehives on the peninsula's west coast. Then they distilled a batch of mānuka gin.
"We both have a scientific background and love plants," says Suess. "That fascination with the natural world and botany helped us to experiment with things. Gin is quite a creative spirit, not like whisky. There's a bit of freedom to develop flavours and be creative in what you pick and choose to put in."
In the early days, they'd hand out hip flasks filled with their latest brew to get feedback from locals. Not everything worked. When they tried using jasmine, Suess thought it tasted like cleaning detergent. Their first commercially distilled gin, called The Cuckoo, was sold in old syrup bottles and won gold at the 2020 New Zealand Spirits Awards.
An old English word, "awildian" means a refusal to be tamed. The couple's "hero" gin, Awildian Coromandel Dry, is made from 20 botanicals, including locally sourced citrus, blueberries and lemon thyme, distilled with water from the Kauaeranga Valley. A special Coromandel Blue edition is infused with butterfly pea flowers (a technique they saw used in Thailand to colour rice). Add tonic water and it turns pink.
Schneider describes gin and tonic as dancing partners that work beautifully together. However, instead of overpowering the flavour with citrus peel, he recommends adding a sprig of rosemary.
"It goes beyond science; it includes art," he says, of the distillation process. "Things happen that still cannot be explained. Sometimes the difference between a really good outcome and an unacceptable outcome is frustratingly close. I don't know any other craft that combines science and art and magic in such a perfect way."
In New Plymouth, another husband-and-wife team — Dave and Jo James at boutique distillery Juno Gin — are collaborating with scientists at Massey University to explore the potential of developing a juniper berry industry in New Zealand. A key area of research is whether different soil and climate conditions influence the berry's flavour, creating the potential for gin to have "terroir", as wine does, with distinct regional characteristics.
It might sound far-fetched but there have already been positive results from a trial plantation of angelica (a common gin botanical) on a farm in Oakura that looks, smells and tastes different from another further south, on the boundary of Egmont National Park, despite both sprouting from the same seed stock imported from Germany.
Juno Gin is also working with the university's Food Experience and Sensory Testing laboratory to analyse juniper berries (actually seed cones) for specific attributes around flavour. "We'll make some gin here with New Zealand and with overseas cones," says Dave, "and see if we can describe a difference."
The distillery opened a bespoke cellar door in January and produces four limited-edition seasonal releases each year. Their internationally recognised Juno Extra Fine was awarded "Tasters' Pick" in both the 2020 and 2021 editions of the Guide to New Zealand Gin.
Author George Grbich, who's on the tasting panel, is now working on an Australian guide and compiling a database of the estimated 7500 to 8000 gins produced around the world. Still in his 20s, he has three bookshelves at home dedicated to gin, divided by style and region.
The prospect of a fully New Zealand gin is exciting, he says. "Will it work? I have no idea. But I'll be at the front of the line to try it."
Auckland's only dedicated gin bar, The Churchill, is set to reopen on the rooftop of the Four Points by Sheraton hotel on June 10.
The new free open-air saltwater pool is already proving popular.