Taupo Distilling founder and head distiller Scott Forsythe. Photo / Rachel Canning
Taupo Distilling founder and head distiller Scott Forsythe. Photo / Rachel Canning
Starts business, three months later wins top industry award.
Gin is taking the country by storm, and Taupō businessman Scott Forsythe began selling his own gin, distilled at home in March this year.
Scott thought his 5 Mile Gin was pretty tasty, and so the same day he held the four licences required to make and sell gin, he entered it into the NZ Spirits Awards. Two and a bit weeks later it was awarded a gold medal for gin in the style of London Dry Gin. One month after that 5 Mile Gin was awarded the trophy for Best Overall in the category by the NZ Spirits Awards.
Coming out of nowhere, Scott was keen to get a reaction from the gin industry.
"I asked Amplify chair Jo Bransgrove because she is a foundation shareholder of Reefton Distillery Co, and she says we stunned the industry.
"Others have been going 10 years and have won silver," Scott says.
There are over 70 gin distilleries in New Zealand, and it's a relatively new industry, with most distilleries starting up in the past five to 10 years. Scott says before this, New Zealanders were restricted to drinking Gordon's, Beefeater, Tanqueray, or Bombay Sapphire.
Scott didn't even drink gin until May 2020 when his local pub, Two Mile Bay Sailing Club, ran out of whiskey and so he decided to drink what his friends were having. Gin!
Quite a bit of YouTubing later, Scott had ruled out making whiskey because by law it takes three years to make. However, he says the background and knowledge he has about whiskey is useful when applied to making gin.
Scott Forsythe with a bottle of 5 Mile Gin that won best overall in category for London Dry Gin style gin at the 2022 NZ Spirits Awards. Photo / Rachel Canning
"A lot of whiskey distilleries need an income for the first three years, and they have the white spirit already, and so they make either vodka or gin. But vodka is boring. Gin you can do so much with it."
By November he owned a testing still that produces four litres at a time, "and I began to play". He uses a standard gin recipe, which he has published on his website, with the addition of walnuts.
"As far as I know, I'm the only one in New Zealand using walnuts."
He says recipes one to 10 were undrinkable. Recipe 11 was good but harsh and needed tonic to make it drinkable.
"And I wanted to make a gin that you can drink by itself, the same way you can sip a good whiskey."
He visited other gin distilleries in New Zealand to get ideas and says the industry is "quite open" to sharing knowledge. On Waiheke Island at Botanical Distillery he met Helen Elscot an ex-perfumer who runs workshops for gin lovers to help give them an understanding so they can go to a bar and knowledgeably taste gin.
"It can be hard to taste gin, the high alcohol can blow your taste buds out. A trick is to dilute it to 22 per cent with water.
Scott's gin-drinking friends, Jessica Sparks, Sarah Dempsey, and Natalie Bell-Booth (were recruited to help taste test recipes 12 to 17.
5 Mile Gin is recipe 19, and Scott says this evolved after a blind tasting of recipes 17 and 18 and a commercial gin. The gin is 43 per cent alcohol and is diluted with bottled water from an aquifer in National Park supplied by Tongariro Water.
Scott says there is a real culture around gin in New Zealand, and says the main market for 5 Mile Gin is women aged 40-plus years. He says younger gin drinkers like a sweeter, pink gin. He says the London Dry Gin style is quite old-fashioned with a focus on the juniper berries. The third style of gin is barrel-aged gin and Scott says he will probably make this style of gin at some point in the future.
He says in a contemporary new world gin, the juniper berry is not so forward, and other flavours are used to make the juniper more subtle. Hemp, mānuka, and horopito are popular botanicals New Zealand distillers are adding to their gin recipes.
Scott and his wife Kim own Taupō cafe Baked With Love, and they have plans to build a manufacturing distillery that is also a tourist attraction.
"Distilleries take a lot of power, I've got to find a site that has power, has access to beautiful water, and is somewhere tourists can find.
Scott Forsythe has set up a gin distilling business in his home garage. Pictured with the award winning 5 Mile Gin. Photo / Rachel Canning
He says his new distillery will embrace environmentally friendly technology so his business can give back to the planet.
Kim is excited about Scott's gin distilling business and says her input so far has been into the feel of the brand and sales.
Scott and Kim say their cafe experience has given them the confidence to take on this new business venture.
The Details 5 Mile Gin, comes in a 700ml bottle, RRP $89.99 Taupō outlets: The Merchant of Taupō, Bottle-O Taupō, Two Mile Bay Sailing Club, Millennium Hotel and Resort Manuels Taupō, Jolly Good Fellows, Brantry Eatery, and at the Hare & Copper Eatery in Tūrangi. Online sales: www.taupodistilling.com
