The distillery nestled in the back of a... fruit shop!?
If you’ve ever wondered what happens to all the fruit on an orchard that’s a bit too small, too ugly, too ripe or too pecked to sell… Well, around here we don’t waste it. We turn it into booze.
Even after a couple of years we watched trailer loads of perfectly good “seconds” heading for the unthinkable and thought bugger that. So we built a distillery instead. Now we take nearly every piece of orchard fruit we grow (even the wonky ones) and turn it into something you would proudly pour for your mates. At this point we’re wasting less than 3% of the fruit we harvest… and honestly, we are pretty chuffed about that.
Everything we make starts with real Central Otago fruit. No shortcuts, no fake flavours, just fruit grown on our own trees, fermented slowly and distilled properly. Here’s what we get up to:
Apple Spirit (the base)
The backbone of nearly everything we make. We ferment and distill our own apples from the old school classic ‘cox orange pippin’ to the popular and dark rich red pacific queen apples into a clean, crisp, orchard-driven spirit. This becomes the base for our gins, schnapps and liqueurs. It’s the hero behind the scenes.
Gin
All our gins start with our apple spirit, then we layer a range of botanicals, citrus and fruit from around the orchard. Fresh, bright and Roxburgh. The kind of gin you can sense before you even open the bottle.
Fruit Liqueurs
If you’re after sweetness, this is where we send you. Real fruit, real flavour, a little sweetness to round it out. Bloody good over ice or splashed into a cocktail. And yes… much closer to the classic “American-Style Peach Schnapps” vibe people expect.
Cider
Made from apples we actually grow to full flavour (instead of picking them green). Fermented slowly, left clean, crisp and dry. No added sugars, no added sulphites, no preservatives. Just proper cider with a clean finish.
Schnapps (European Style)
No sugar. Just fermented fruit distilled once or twice to capture its true flavour. It’s raw, honest, proper schnapps. Plum, Cherry, Nectarine... you name it. If we grow it, we have probably distilled it…
Barrel-Aged Spirits
Every now and then we tuck something away in American oak (apple, barley or whatever else Jered’s decided to experiment with…) These are slower projects, but they tell the story of our orchard in a whole different way. Patience in a bottle.
Cheers to the fruit!
Jered Tate
Distiller
