I like winemakers, and I especially like finding out what the drink when the harvest is done and the ferment is slowly at work. It’s even better when they like drinking bourbon and talking about the creative concept of making something new from great components. They are usually thoughtful, well-informed and almost always unique in character, just like what they make. And they always have personality.

“I’m probably going to piss off both the Americans and the French in saying this,” Daniel Brennan tells me, with a particular sparkle in his eye that suggests he doesn’t mind a little cheek here and there.

He’s talking about French oak. Specifically, French oak tannins in bourbon—angular, direct, spicy—meeting American whiskey’s fat vanilla roundness inside the decanter-like bottle of Nowhere bourbon. The globe explodes within this glass, along with some traditional ideas about how spirits are shaped and shape the world of flavour we experience. Nowhere Bourbon is new and distinctive, first arriving on my desk in late 2025, sparking plenty of curiosity until I finally sat down with the team.

Nowhere is bourbon, and a little bit more. An elevated expression of what bourbon has traditionally been and what happens when a winemaker gets hold of it with disciplined restraint and some very specific ideas about oak.

The bourbon inside Nowhere was made in southern Indiana by a distiller named Wilbert Best, who also makes wine. He’s a little mad scientist, a little distilling genius. It crossed the Pacific, arrived in Hawke’s Bay, and finished its journey in French oak that previously held Brennan’s Decibel Pinot Noir.

I promise you, this story is more than just another craft product on the market. It’s about a philosophy on making good spirits, seizing opportunity and exploring the bourbon landscape against the backdrop of New World Whisky* and wine. A frontier of expression and exploration with plenty of personality.

Not Everything From New Zealand Should Be Mashed Together

Sometimes good ideas start with not so great ones.

The Nowhere story begins with manuka honey and family. Enter Zach Gustafson’s father-in-law, who approached Daniel Brennan with surplus honey and supply chain issues left over from COVID. “What about making a honey whiskey?”

Daniel wasn’t initially enticed, but he’s pragmatic. “I know he’s a smart guy and he does his research. So I said, go ahead and have a look at where the honey whiskies are on the shelf.”

A month later: “Man, they’re all pretty bad, and they’re pretty cheap, and they’re not doing too well out there in the market.”

“Yeah,” Daniel said. “But we should look into bourbon.”

New Zealand has a bourbon problem. “I just kept cringing at the fact that people think bourbon in New Zealand is just about the bourbon and coke RTD cans,” he says.

“Bourbon is completely underserved in New Zealand,” Daniel says. He grew up in a bar in Philadelphia. Bourbon was a big part of the portfolio there. Every time he visited home, there were new and interesting bourbons behind the bar. The contrast with what he could access in New Zealand was stark. New Zealand is the highest per capita consumer of Jim Beam globally. We’re not talking about bourbon appreciation. We’re talking about a category dominated by RTD consumption, where bourbon exists as a delivery mechanism for fizzy sweetness rather than as a spirit worth contemplating.

Back in the US, American craft spirits have exploded over the last 15 years with explorations into grains, cask play and maturation styles flooding the market with good quality and interesting styles of spirit. Daniel had been watching bourbon explode in North America while travelling for Decibel wines—his biggest market is the US, while facing ongoing frustration at limited shelf selection here in New Zealand.

Bourbon’s footprint in Australia and New Zealand is growing steadily, but New Zealand presents a challenge: demand for bourbon and rye is increasing again as classic whisky cocktails find prevalence at the bar but more premium bottles are only available in small numbers moving ever so slowly off the shelf. There’s a taste for bourbon, but not enough variance or drive to move the category forward.

So maybe not honey whisky, but bourbon, he thought. That’s worth a crack.

And where does Zach fit in? Well, he and his young family had also made the move from the US to Hawkes Bay, so an introduction between the two was only a matter of time. Some might say perfectly timed to help bring the Nowhere bourbon project together.

They started by bringing in other brands first via South Street Imports, learning New Zealand market dynamics in liquor before launching their own. For bourbon fans like myself, the arrival of Copper Still and Doc Whiskey, was quiet but rewarding. Last year, they picked up a swag of local spirits awards medals to add to the international gongs too.

“It was a good way to cut our teeth.”

Finding Wilbert Best

Meanwhile, the project to launch a premium bourbon that really suited and grabbed the attention of the New Zealand market was all go. At first when I read “Southern Indiana” on the label, I assumed the bourbon was coming from MGP—that Indiana giant producing bourbon for half the “craft” brands in America. So I asked the question and got a firm no. After all, why would a winemaker devoted to single vineyard expressions all of a sudden go bulk spirit?

“I’d realised so many of these ‘craft’ bourbons were all made at the same place in Kentucky or Indiana,” Daniel explains. “They might have two barrels of their stuff sitting up there. Not to take away from the quality, but to me, finding someone personal to work with was part of the adventure.”

Which is where we meet Wilbert Best. “I thought, oh, this is the perfect name for a whiskey maker. And the bourbon was good too.”

Best Vineyards Winery and Distillery in Elizabeth, Indiana is remarkably close to the Kentucky border with a vineyard established in 2000 and a distillery operating since 2016. “I’ll just say New Zealand’s definitely ahead of the winemaking from Indiana”.

But they were there for bourbon, not wine. In that, the location mattered: southern Indiana, close to the border and across the river from Louisville, KY offers the same great access to good soils, good grain and great water as some of bourbon’s greatest producers. It just looks and feels a little like the middle of nowhere, according to Daniel. Or maybe even further, according to me.

“It felt right. But I was wondering where the hell am I? Probably the opposite end of nowhere. But Wilbert was was really cool and very authentic and even a little questionable but in a good way”, Daniel says with a grin. You start to get a sense of the personalities ringing Nowhere Bourbon to life.

The plan was relatively simple, to begin with. (We’ll get to execution).

Source gorgeous spirit, bring it to New Zealand and finish it in Daniel’s Decibel wine casks. A marriage of skillsets, spirit and cask. A unification of two great products, each characterful with place and provenance. Get it to market. Solve the NZ bourbon problem.

Salt and Pepper, Not a Whole Meal

Of course, nothing is quite that straightforward. Craft takes knowledge, skill and time. Daniel Brennan is a winemaker. This matters more than it might seem.

Building a sustainable and internationally recognised career in winemaking is no small feat for a boy from Philly. Born into a Sicilian-Irish Philadelphia family steeped in hospitality, his winemaking style has evolved to bring New World willingness to try and Old World skill and sensibility together. He says his wines aren’t about mass-market appeal, instead they’re meant to be expressive, distinct, and interesting. He works with a range of small-scale grape growers, using a variety of fermentation techniques to explore what stories the wine can tell of place.

Unsurprisingly, this same approach comes across to the finishing of Nowhere Bourbon.

When he started thinking about finishing bourbon in wine barrels, he had advantages most bourbon-makers don’t: his own actual wine barrels. But more importantly, he had a winemaker’s discipline about intervention. About knowing when enough is enough.

“I’d rather be understated and safe and just let the process and product speak for itself.” This is not common thinking in a spirits landscape where barrel finishes can be heavy-handed, where more is often confused with better.

He chose Pinot Noir barrels specifically—from 2020 and 2021 vintages—steamed clean. Not Malbec, not Syrah, nothing with heavy tannins that would overpower. The winemaker’s knowledge shows in the details: “Spirits will penetrate the oak a lot more. They’re going deeper into the pores and into the staves. It’s going to pull out some extra tannins from the oak itself.”

French oak, specifically. Which is where the pissing-off-two-nations comment comes in. “American oak tannins are more like fat and vanillas and coconuts. French oak—which is why it suits New Zealand wine so much—they’re more direct tannins. You could literally look at them under a microscope and they’re like a little bit more angular. So they add like a little more spice.”

The result: softness up front from the Pinot influence, then that angular spice finish from the French oak, layered over the bourbon’s inherent richness and the 21% rye in the mash bill.

“So dare I say some American bourbon is clashing with some French oak and I can piss off two nations at the same time. But I think everybody here in New Zealand will be real happy with it.”

The finishing time was carefully monitored. Weekly tastings. “This is just going to be like a finishing touch, maybe just a little salt and pepper on it. The bourbon itself, we knew it’s a beautiful product already. We didn’t really want to muck it up too much.”

Threading the Needle

Zach is direct about their positioning: “We know bourbon is not a big market. Doing a wine barrel finish in bourbon is something that’s not super popular, so all of it’s like a bit of an entry point.”

Everything about Nowhere is calibrated to be approachable without being simplistic. The rye influence is just enough to balance and add depth but nothing with too much attitude. “It’s got a little bit of spice but not something that’s gonna burn their face off.” The wine finish? Present but not overpowering. “If someone is kind of just getting into these finishes, it’s good for that.”

They use the term “threading the needle” repeatedly—appealing to whiskey nerds while staying accessible to bourbon newcomers, creating something distinctive without being alienating, premium but not absurdly priced. Finding the narrow space between two rigid ideas.

“It’s got like a little Kiwi twist without being inauthentic with what it is,” Zach says. They’re not calling it Hawke’s Bay whiskey. It’s bourbon, made in America, finished thoughtfully in New Zealand.

The real consumer test came at Barrels by the Bay in Tauranga last year. Daniel gets animated describing it: “People who liked Scotch and knew Irish whiskeys but really hadn’t had a quality bourbon at all. They were tasting the bourbons and just being immediately blown away. Hey, bourbon can be this good, you know. You just haven’t experienced it.”

“They were like, what the hell?” The realization that bourbon could have this kind of complexity challenged assumptions for many. For Scotch drinkers, wine cask finishes are increasingly common and growing in popularity. And a lot of New Zealand whisky makers use Pinot Noir barrels too. But bourbon and wine? “We can convert a lot of these people that love Scotch to just try this sometimes, based on that bridge.”

When I ask what Nowhere compares to, Daniel deliberately steps away from bourbon comparisons. “I’d almost want to step away from bourbon and maybe take some other spirits, like Irish whiskey or Scotch.” He references lowland Scotches—richer, less peaty—and premium Irish whiskeys with alternative cask finishes. The Green Spot finished in Château Montelena barrels is a touchstone. “That’s sort of a benchmark that we were trying to reach, and we’re getting there.”

What Comes Next

Nowhere’s journey to market took too long, both Zach and Daniel admit. Ocean crossings, customs delays, development time. “Definitely not an advantage for our bottom line,” Daniel admits.

But there’s a silver lining. “At the very least, the stuff isn’t getting any worse.” The bourbon still in barrel in Hawke’s Bay, aging through warm summers and cool winters? It’s developing character. Each batch will be unique.

Daniel’s already playing with the next evolution. “We’ve taken one old bourbon barrel and I put some Malbec in it. We’re going the opposite way now too.” They’re also collaborating with a local brewery, passing bourbon barrels over for a bourbon barrel stout. “Trying to put bourbon in different places that you might not see it in New Zealand,” Zach says.

This is the craft ecosystem story New Zealand hasn’t fully realized yet—the cross-pollination between distilleries, breweries, and wineries that’s been happening in the American Pacific Northwest for years. Barrels moving between producers, experiments building on experiments.

They’re pragmatic about timing. “Maybe not the world’s greatest time to launch a spirits company,” Zach acknowledges. “There’s a lot of industry headwinds right now.”

Still, there’s opportunity in the underserved market. “If we were trying to sell them a new gin, I don’t think they’d give us the time of day. But bourbon is just somewhat of an underserved market where there’s a little more of a conversation to be had.”

“We’re really trying to focus on New Zealand and not trying to mimic the US,” Zach says. But they watch what Mitcher’s is doing—”pushing the premium bourbon desire, which helps all of us build out that market.”

Recently joining the portfolio of Wag & Co, they’re set for growth in bars and retail this year.

The Philosophy of Nowhere

I’d usually want to challenge the brand promise associated with the word ‘Nowhere’, but there’s something satisfying about bourbon made in Indiana (not Kentucky), finished in New Zealand (not America), with French oak (not American), by a American winemaker (not a distiller), that pushes the existing boundaries of how we understand New World categories.

Nowhere as concept. Nowhere as the productive, creative space between certainties.

“We’re borrowing the best from all cultures and ending up with something that elevates the experience as a whole,” I tell them during our conversation.

Daniel immediately responds: “We’re gonna steal that.”

They’re welcome to it. Because that’s exactly what they’re doing—not pretending to make New Zealand whiskey, not over-claiming the wine connection, not cosplaying American craft distilling. Just making something good with intelligence and restraint, letting the process speak for itself in the end result.

The bourbon inside Nowhere is beautiful already, Daniel keeps saying. They didn’t want to muck it up or over-complicate it. Just adding that salt and pepper. That little extra dimension of finesse and seasoning that elevates it to something unique.

“We’re seeing a lot of that with my wine peeps and friends who taste it,” Daniel confirms. “They like good spirits, maybe they don’t know that much about bourbon. Right away they’re like, oh yeah, give me a bottle. I got a gift lined up for myself.”

@thespiritswriter

Tash McGill, Spirits Writer. on Instagram: "NOWHERE IS GOING SO…

I tasted the Nowhere Bourbon for myself before I interviewed Daniel and Zach:

TASTING NOTE:
Full noise sweetness, vanilla and chewy toffee on the nose with a hint of milk chocolate. Big sweetness up front with complexity that suggests nuttiness and spice. Very smooth on the palate, mouthfilling with cinnamon and nutmeg. Traditional caramel notes of traditional American corn, creamy with a touch of minty herb from rye. The shape of the whisky is like a teardrop, sharp and sweet at the beginning and then a juicy drop that sinks into the palate. Roasted peanuts and fruit character soften the edges holding bold flavours in tension with complexity.

Nowhere Bourbon is available at select retailers and on-premise accounts.
www.nowherebourbon.com

*Whisky and whiskey are used interchangeably in this story to best reflect the provenance and style of spirit being discussed at the time.

Valuable lessons for anyone looking at (or cooking) the books.

I was visiting Nearest Green Distillery, the Tennessee home of Uncle Nearest’s Premium Whiskey in May 2024, fourteen months before the big legal envelopes started arriving at their door. Big, beautiful copper stills glinted through the stillhouse windows under the blazing sun. No visit inside though, according to the guide. No point, they were still not wired in after being installed years prior. Not unplugged, not being serviced. Never once fired up, not even as an expensive tourist attraction at the place they call Malt Disney World. If you know the price of copper these days, you’ll understand how extraordinary a concept it is to spend that much money and then never bother turning them on. After all, if you’re in the whisky business, making whisky is usually pretty key to making money.

The brand-tastic whisky I’d been following since 2018 wasn’t being made there either, as it turned out. Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey was actually distilling (by their team, I was assured) down the road at a contracted facility while the brand equity compounded at an extraordinary rate. Beautiful facilities. Great story. Growing faster than almost any whisky brand in American history. And those stills, sitting cold and quiet in the Tennessee heat.

The more questions I asked, the more my guide’s frustration showed.

It was about then I knew something was very, very wrong in Shelbyville, TN.

The Uncle Nearest Problem

If you haven’t been following the legal drama unfolding around Uncle Nearest, here’s what you need to know. Founded in 2017 by Fawn and Keith Weaver to honour Nathan “Nearest” Green — the man historically credited with teaching Jack Daniel his craft, and America’s first known Black master distiller — it became the fastest-growing American whiskey brand in history. By 2024, it was supposedly stocked in more than 30,000 venues across 12 countries. Fawn Weaver claimed a valuation of $1 billion and had raised capital from over 160 individual investors at an average of around $500,000 each. It was the kind of brand story that makes the industry feel buoyant.

Then the numbers arrived.

In July 2025, primary lender Farm Credit Mid-America filed suit in a federal Tennessee court, alleging Uncle Nearest had defaulted on more than $108 million in loans. Among the sharpest accusations: the company had overstated its barrel inventory by $21 million, inflating its borrowing base to access larger credit draws. When third-party inspectors conducted a physical collateral check, significant discrepancies emerged between the barrels that existed on paper and those that existed in the warehouse. The lawsuit also alleges that the borrowers bought an estate on Martha's Vineyard for $2 million and sold futures on their business at a discounted cost.

It is undisputed that a then-officer of the company misrepresented Uncle Nearest’s barrel inventory to obtain an additional $24 million under the revolving loan. The Weavers maintain they were unaware, placing responsibility on former CFO Michael Senzaki, who was fired in 2024. Senzaki denies wrongdoing. A federal judge ordered the company into receivership in August 2025. The court-appointed receiver found that company records before 2024 had been deleted, that Uncle Nearest owed an additional $50 million to vendors and creditors beyond the original loan, and that federal tax returns had not been filed since 2018.

The question of fraud versus catastrophic mismanagement is ultimately for the courts to resolve. But the structural problem at the heart of the case — barrels used as collateral at valuations that didn’t survive scrutiny — isn’t unique to Uncle Nearest. It’s a feature of the craft spirits investment model globally.

Promises, Knocks on Wood and Big Dreams

Anyone willing to spend an afternoon on PledgeMe or Snowball Effect can read what New Zealand distilleries have told retail investors about what their barrels are worth, what they’ll sell for, and approximately when. That’s the value of a public document, much the same as the Companies Register, the Security Register and the Insolvency Register.

So let’s take a look at two campaigns, as illustrations of an industry-wide challenge: in a market still writing its own rules. With no established secondary market for NZ aged whisky casks and no historical price benchmarks at auction, optimistic projection isn’t a character flaw. It’s almost structurally required to make a compelling case for investment. The tension is that the market you’re projecting into eight years from now may not resemble the one you’re standing in today, as recently proven by a global spirits over-supply. Which shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone investing in agricultural commodities.

In late 2018, The NZ Whisky Collection raised $780,030 via PledgeMe to fit out a distillery in Oamaru and expand cask production. The offer was pitched against a booming global appetite for new world whisky — Japanese, Taiwanese, Australian, now New Zealand. The language was confident about trajectory: traditional brands declining, craft experiences ascendant. All reasonable to say in 2018.

What’s harder to evaluate now is where those projections sit against a retail whisky market that has since become significantly more crowded and price-sensitive. They got the stills and eventually installed them in Dunedin.

More recently, Reefton Distilling Co. raised $1.7 million via Snowball Effect in 2024 to scale whisky inventory and warehousing. Reefton is a serious operation with genuine credentials—Little Biddy Gin has driven successful revenue. Their raise positioned maturing cask inventory as a core asset in the company’s value story. Which it is.

Cardrona Distillery took on private equity to cashflow operations before selling to International Beverage, Scapegrace have a group of investors. Investment tends to be an easier answer than traditional bank business lending in NZ, due to the nature and risk associated with the industry.

The question that applies to every whisky business raising on the promise of aged inventory is the same one: is the projected value of that inventory grounded in market reality, and could a lender verify it if they needed to? Inventory is only an asset if you can actually sell it when required. Otherwise we might call them liabilities.

The type of projections you produce tells you a lot about the strength and validity of the business model.

Across the Tasman, It Already Got Serious and Scandalous

Between cautiously optimistic market projections and genuine ambition, every aged spirit valuation assumes someone will inevitably pay more for what time and wood have produced. But what happens when the barrels are filled with nothing but air?

New Zealand has no documented cases of barrel investment fraud, and nothing in the crowdfunding campaigns examined here suggests anything other than genuine attempts to build whisky businesses. But across the Tasman, the worst-case version of this story is still playing out in a Hobart courtroom.

Keith Batt, founder of Nant Distilling, appeared before the Hobart Magistrates’ Court in January 2025, charged with 736 alleged offences — including 622 counts of fraud — relating to a barrel investment scheme that allegedly ran from 2007 to 2016. The scheme offered investors two barrels of Tasmanian single malt for AU$25,000, with a guaranteed 9.55% return at maturation. One investor paid approximately $170,000 for 14 barrels. He was later told his barrels did not exist.

When Australian Whisky Holdings undertook a forensic audit prior to purchasing the distillery, they found over 1,300 barrels that simply didn’t exist — 720 missing, others never filled, others already decanted and sold without investors’ knowledge. Some barrels had been filled well below the industry standard ABV, meaning the spirit would eventually fall below the legal threshold to be classified as whisky at all. The owner names and barrel numbers had been sanded off others.

This is the extreme end. But industry observers watching the broader Australian craft whisky market have noted structural vulnerabilities that predate Nant and don’t require bad intent to cause harm. Several small distilleries have closed, stopped production, or quietly dumped maturing stock to claw back funds — because the business model couldn’t sustain the long wait for aged inventory to generate revenue. The gap between when you fill a barrel and when you can sell what’s in it is the central financial challenge of every whisky business. Creative accounting, or optimistic projection, can paper over it for only so long. And given the whisky industry is largely ungoverned here in Australasia, the question of who is paying attention to whether the casks on the balance sheet match the casks in the barrel hall is one worth sitting with.

Scandal gets headlines. Bad business practice is often ignored.

Every Dollar in a Barrel Is a Bet

There is financial reality that whisky-making romance tends to obscure: capital expenditure can’t be wishful thinking. Every dollar you spend building a distillery, purchasing casks, filling barrels, and paying rent on bonded storage has to generate a return. Especially when it’s not your money to begin with. The clock starts running the moment new make spirit goes into wood — not when it comes out. Your exposure as a business is how long you can hold stock or cover the cost of time, which is why so many distilleries are now throttling production back.

That makes aged whisky inventory a uniquely punishing asset class. It’s not just illiquid; it’s actively expensive to hold. You’re paying the cost of capital — the interest on a loan, or the opportunity cost of equity tied up — on an asset that won’t generate revenue for years. Whether you’re running your business on debt or on equity raised with optimistic projections, you’re still running it on a future position. Long-horizon inventory doesn’t compress to fit a short-horizon cashflow problem.

The wine industry is providing an object lesson in what happens when the market moves against you before the asset matures. In California, the scale of recent closures is staggering: Vintage Wine Estates — which owned more than 60 brands and went public at a $600 million valuation in 2021 — filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2024, weighed down by $310 million in debt after overextending through acquisitions. Gallo, the world’s largest wine producer by volume, closed multiple facilities across Napa and Sonoma through 2024 and into 2025, shedding capacity it built for a market that no longer exists at that scale. The 2024 California wine grape crush hit a 20-year low. Growers are replacing vines with alternative cash crops.

Australia is no different. Treasury Wine Estates closed its Karadoc winery in Victoria, describing it as a “last resort.” Accolade Wines — Hardy’s, Croser, Banrock Station — ended up in the hands of distressed asset specialists after private equity reached end of tolerance. In the Riverland and Barossa, some growers are walking away from vineyards without seeking a buyer, because the cost of administration and asset disposal exceeds what a distressed sale would recover. This is the end stage of a business model that borrowed against future market conditions.

Whisky isn’t wine, and the production cycle differences matter. Similarly with craft beer that is also wrestling with new ways of funding business as usual, not even growth. But the underlying equation is identical: if the gap between what you spend now and what you receive later is funded by debt or investor optimism rather than genuine market data, you are exposed.

What the Lender Sees

Aged spirits inventory valued on a projected future sale price is fundamentally different from inventory valued at cost. The gap between those two numbers is where risk lives — specifically, the unknown cost of converting cost-basis inventory into that projected value, in a market nobody can fully predict.

In New Zealand, where there’s no established secondary market for domestic whisky casks and no historical price data for what a mature NZ single malt actually fetches, those projections are aspirational almost by necessity. For a business with genuine quality and patient investors, that’s a manageable position. For one facing a cash crunch before the barrels are ready, the gap closes very fast.

Any NZ distillery that has raised public capital on the promise of maturing stock owes its investors clear answers to a few basic questions: What’s the cost-basis valuation of current inventory? What are the projected depletion timelines, and are they on track? What’s the plan if the aged whisky takes longer, or fetches less, than originally modelled?

The Books Don’t Lie. Sometimes Owners Do.

The Uncle Nearest evidence keeps circling closer and closer to this inevitable truth bomb: business failure at this scale doesn’t arrive suddenly. It’s constructed, slowly, through a series of decisions that each felt defensible at the time. Another draw on the loan. Creating new entities to borrow and spread risk, moving money and assets to cashflow payroll. Another quarter where the depletion numbers weren’t quite what the model predicted, but the brand was growing so the trajectory was fine.

Founders in the craft spirits sector are almost always product people first. That’s not a criticism but it also means that the gap between what a founder understands about maturation, flavour development, and cask selection, and what they understand about their own balance sheet, can be large. The best ones identify the gaps, learn fast and surround themselves with experience and experts. The job of the Boss, whether CEO or Founder, is to know, to steer and to deliver good business, regardless of what the business is.

Fawn Weaver has maintained throughout the Uncle Nearest proceedings that she was unaware of the inflated barrel inventory figures. That may be entirely true. But “I didn’t know” is a statement about information flow, not a defence of governance. When you sign the loan documents, when your name is on the entity, when investors have written cheques on the basis of projections you presented — the books are your responsibility. Not your CFO’s. Not your accountant’s. Yours. Delegating crunching numbers is reasonable. Abdicating responsibility for them is not.

This matters for New Zealand’s craft distillery sector because the conditions that enabled the Uncle Nearest situation — operating debt as a growth strategy, barrel valuations that outpace reality, retail investors whose enthusiasm exceeds their financial analysis, lack of validated business model and governance — are not unique to Tennessee. The question isn’t whether NZ distillers are honest. The question is whether our businesses are literate: in best business practice, business finance and projections and building a profitable model.

Liquidation and going out of business are not things that happen to you. They are, with rare exceptions, the compounded result of decisions: to grow faster than cashflow supports, to value assets at what you need them to be worth rather than what they are, over-estimation of market opportunity, cost of customer acquisition and market repositioning. Every one of those decisions is a choice. They rarely feel like choices at the time. They feel like strategy, or necessity, or just keeping the lights on one more quarter. But they accumulate, and the bill arrives, and by then the options have narrowed considerably.

Even if a miracle investor came along to soak up Uncle Nearest’s $108m Farm Credit loan, the receiver estimates you’d need a purchase price of $250m just to tidy up the remaining debt ledger before you could turn the lights back on, not accounting for what it costs to turn the lights on at a $50m distillery. (Ask the Scapegrace boys at Lake Dunstan).

The distilleries that survive are the ones run by leaders who are willing to be honest with themselves about the numbers and learn what it takes to run a business by the books, instead of trying to magic up results that fit a farcical projection. It can be learned. It has to be.

Perhaps best summed up as yes, you have to spend money to make money. But you better show us exactly how the money you spend will generate the revenue at a price worth the cost.

Managing the Forecast When You Can’t Control the Market

The distilleries most likely to navigate this environment successfully share one characteristic: they treat their financial projections as living documents rather than sales documents. And they don’t take on debt that can’t be financed out of real cashflow. These are not sophisticated disciplines. They are the minimum viable requirement for running a business that holds long-horizon assets in a variable market. The fact that so many operators in this sector treat them as optional extras is precisely why the sector produces so many cautionary tales.

The first question I always ask a spirits brand is not about sales figures. It’s about depletions. Sales figures tell you what left your warehouse. Depletions tell you what actually sold off the shelf. The gap between those two numbers is inventory sitting in a distributor’s warehouse or retailer’s shelf, which is not the same thing as measurable consumer demand. Brands that track and communicate depletion metrics honestly have a real-time read on actual product movement. Brands that report only sales figures, or conflate the two, are either deceiving their investors or deceiving themselves. Sell-through is the realest validator of whether a market exists for your product at your price point, and it’s the metric every investor in a craft spirits business should be asking for first.

The second discipline is scenario planning against that data — not one optimistic trajectory, but a range. What does the business look like if sell-through tracks 20% below projection for the first two years of release? What if the premium whisky category softens by the time your aged stock is ready? What levers exist to generate cashflow in the meantime — contract distilling for other producers, early release of younger expressions, cellar door revenue? The distilleries with answers to these questions before they’re needed are the ones that survive the market moving sideways. Every business model needs a net-zero option: a clear, honest picture of exactly how to keep the lights on without profit, and for how long.

The third discipline follows: value inventory conservatively, and generate revenue aggressively. Cost-basis valuation — what it actually cost to produce and store the spirit — is defensible to a lender, an auditor, and an investor. Projected future market value is a forecast, and it should be labelled as one. The gap between those two numbers is your exposure. Your best business solutions start with what the numbers actually tell you, and what you can do with the resources you have.

Most of what Uncle Nearest is experiencing is a case of bad business leadership, not bad whisky or a bad market. Those circumstances only compound the problem. Brand equity and founder charisma carried it far further than the balance sheet could justify — which is exactly the warning, not the comfort.

The New Zealand spirits industry is genuinely exciting. It deserves business leaders who are as rigorous about their books as they are passionate about their product. Those two things are not in tension. One is what makes the other sustainable.

The barrel will cost you money every single day it sits in that warehouse, regardless of how good the story is. The question is whether you know exactly how much, exactly why, and exactly what you’re going to do about it. The Uncle Nearest story should be the wake-up call to every NZ spirits business owner to get their head in the books, get sharper than ever on realistic market predictions and sharpen the knives; ready to rid themselves of magical thinking and buckle up for the ride ahead.

The whisky loch is full to overflowing, as are the shelves. The question that used to be what price would you get is now whether bottles will get to shelf at all. Case in point, Uncle Nearest is now selling for as low as $19.99 in some markets, a far cry from it’s full price hey-day.

The Uncle Nearest case is still unfolding. As is Keith Batts’ case.

Capital promises solutions. The still that will finally let you scale production. The warehouse that will house ten years of maturing whisky. The marketing budget that will crack export markets. It promises to solve all the problems you’ve been white-knuckling your way through with cashflow and credit cards and sheer bloody-mindedness.

Sometimes it delivers. Sometimes it creates other problems, bigger than the ones it solved.

I’ve talked to lots of food & beverage founders about money. The ones who raised capital and learned hard lessons about governance. The ones who raised it brilliantly, some who crashed and burned, and the ones still untangling themselves from decisions made five years ago. Some who chose to go it alone. What’s that internet meme? Everything is hard, choose your hard.

Most know they want capital—who wouldn’t want a million dollars to make problems disappear?—but capital doesn’t make or break success. So I’m bringing you the stories behind some of the successful (and unsuccessful) raises of 2025.

Buckle Up, Buttercup - Before We Begin
Before you know whether you’re ready to sell, raise capital, or keep reinvesting profits, you need strategic clarity on what you’re actually building. Not what sounds good in a pitch deck. What you’re building, why you’re building it, and what success looks like when you get there.

Many raise capital without that clarity on why investment is the right path to the result. They’re raising because competitors did, because it feels like the next milestone, because the narrative of growth requires it. These are terrible reasons to take on investors.

So before you build that pitch deck or approach that platform or court those investors, answer this: Why are you actually seeking capital? Not “what would you do with it”—anyone can fill a spreadsheet with uses for money. But why? What breaks in your business without it? What accelerates with it? What changes fundamentally?

Why Distilleries Seek Investment (And When It Actually Makes Sense)

The spirits industry is brutally capital-intensive. Scaling production requires space, equipment, and working capital that most bootstrapped businesses can’t self-fund. Warehousing whisky that won’t generate revenue for a decade ties up hundreds of thousands in inventory.

But there’s a world of difference between raising capital to accelerate a working business model and raising capital to fix a broken one.

Legitimate reasons: You need infrastructure for scale after proving the model at small volume. You’re making whisky or aged spirits and need capital to build maturing inventory while cashflow comes from other products. You’ve proven product-market fit domestically and need capital to enter new markets with different distribution requirements.

Problematic reasons disguise themselves as legitimate ones. Raising capital to cover monthly operating losses means you have a business model problem, not a capital problem. Chasing revenue growth without margin improvement is expensive failure in slow motion. Raising capital to “fund expansion and growth” can also read as code for “figure out your business model”. Or asking investors to fund your education.

The fundamental test: if you can’t raise capital, does your business fail or just grow more slowly? If the answer is “fails,” you’re not ready to do anything but fix your business model.

The Market Reality: Buyers Are Divesting

Ten years ago, five years ago and as recently as last month, the conversation rolls like this: I’ll start, build, grow, invest, grow more, sell bigger, everybody makes a profit. But today that reads more like a South Park plan.

It was almost two decades ago that Geoff Ross sold 42 Below to Bacardi for US$91 million. The company had never turned a profit. Bacardi bought potential, story, swagger. Seventeen years later, 42 Below is all but a memory and Four Pillars Gin—three-time world’s best gin distillery with distribution in 25 countries and proven profitability—sold to Lion for AUD$50 million after a decade of relentless excellence. Swagger no longer sells. And it shouldn’t - whether to a big buyout or a small investor.

Another important story is happening in reverse. Campari Group announced in October 2024 that it would divest approximately 30 brands generating €220 million—roughly NZD $400 million—in annual revenue. Because they don’t deliver enough margin. Diageo launched its Diageo Luxury Group the same month, consolidating only brands retailing at $100 and above. They’ve been systematically divesting over the last 7 years—selling Seagram’s VO and other brands to Sazerac for $550 million in 2018. Yep, you read that right. Before the crunch came.

The big buyers aren’t buying how they used to. They’re pruning portfolios, cutting anything that doesn’t deliver premium pricing and exceptional margins at scale.

Even when acquisitions happen, it’s not a silver bullet. International Beverage acquired Cardrona Distillery in September 2023 with promises of global growth. The investors got liquidity, but changing market tides mean global expansion has been slow as International Beverage’s Scotch business wades through an industry-wide slowdown.

Even when you’ve got the plan, you can run out and keep asking for more. Scapegrace are currently (quietly) advertising for a investor visa opportunity. I asked them for comment on this story and their success, but they declined.

Most New Zealand distilleries chasing $5-30 million exits haven’t confronted the buyer’s market shift (weird, given how obsessed when it happens in property). Which means most distilleries need to build businesses that work without exits.

Pathway One: Equity Crowdfunding

Wills Cameron’s Remarkable Cream came to PledgeMe with 15,000 direct customers already generating real revenue. When their Keto range launched, they did $340,000 in sales in 30 days. The crowdfunding campaign came down to the final three hours before hitting its minimum target, but it worked because they weren’t asking strangers to believe in potential—they were inviting existing customers to own what they already loved.

Choosing the right platform mattered as much as having the right foundation. Wills initially approached both Snowball and PledgeMe.

“I did actually initially try and go to Snowball,” Will told me. “They were like, ‘Oh no, I don’t think you’re going to be able to get that valuation. And it’s really not a good time to raise, you should come back in a year and a half.’ And then I spoke to Anna from PledgeMe, and she’s just full of energy. She was like, ‘I reckon you can do it. This is a great story, and you’re in a great position and everything.’”

PledgeMe believed in what Remarkable Cream had already built. They weren’t asking Will to wait for better market conditions—they recognised the proof was already there for the platform, the product and the pitch.

The capital deployment strategy was precise and easy for investors to grasp: one-third to capex, two-thirds to growth and working capital. Not sexy equipment that photographs well for investor updates, but the unsexy essentials that keep a scaling business from choking on its own success.

“I’ve seen people in the beverage industry raise money, move into a big factory, and then all the staff are just sitting around,” Wills said. “They didn’t keep enough money aside for the growth.”

The crowdfunding model delivered something beyond money: 145+ shareholders who function as brand ambassadors, buying product, gifting it globally, making introductions. When you’re competing against established international brands, having hundreds of people championing your product creates competitive advantage.

Crowdfunding works when you have existing revenue (minimum $500k-$1M annually) and for Wills, that engaged audience of 10,000+ direct customers who actually buy, not just follow on Instagram. Your raise target needs to sit under $2M. You want brand ambassadors as much as capital. You’re comfortable with 400+ shareholders and the reporting requirements.

This won’t work when you’re pre-revenue, when you need more than $2M, when you want strategic investors bringing governance, when you can’t articulate exactly where every dollar goes, or when you’re not prepared for radical transparency. If platforms tell you to “come back later,” listen.

Watch for these red flags: your pitch centers on “if we just had capital, then we’d figure out the business model.” You don’t have product-market fit validated by actual sales. You’re hoping the campaign will “create buzz.” Your customer acquisition cost makes the economics unsustainable.

Pathway Two: Strategic Investors

Blair Nicholl at National Distillery Company went out for a capital raise and the market said no. Global economic slowdown, heavy US focus during uncertain times, and a valuation that didn’t match their investor type all contributed. They wanted strategic investors bringing governance and connections but the pricing model and service provider didn’t fit. The result was a crash and burn.

“We naively assumed that paying a large external firm meant they’d automatically ‘hook the fish,’” Blair admitted. “It was a huge learning curve.”

The pivot came quickly: a smaller internal raise among existing shareholders, forming a solid advisory group, role restructuring, and redirection to the domestic market. Most importantly, a shift from chasing top-line growth to focusing on gross profit. If you’re paying attention, you’ll begin to see a pattern.

“Growing without the right working capital turns into a race to the bottom where you compete on price instead of building a brand,” Blair said.

The failed raise forced the right question—do we need capital, or do we need a better business model?—and the answer turned out to be the latter. They started saying no, especially to new product releases. Strategic discipline looks like the painful “no, because...” of focus rather than the exciting “yes, and...” of expansion. You don’t get there by raising more money. You get there by not having the option.

Blair learned something crucial about investor selection: “We’re looking for the needle in the haystack—an investor who truly aligns with our vision, not just financially but strategically. It’s not just about capital anymore; it’s about governance, shared belief, and business synergy.”

This pathway works when you need significant capital ($2M+) that crowdfunding can’t deliver, when you want governance and strategic guidance alongside money, when you have a proven business model with clear path to profitability, and when your valuation matches the value-add you’re asking investors to provide.

It fails when your valuation is based on comparable tech startups rather than drinks businesses, when you’re chasing investors who won’t understand industry economics, when you’re seeking capital to “figure the next step out with their help” rather than scale what works, or when you want the money but not the governance or accountability.

Red flags: focusing on export expansion without proven domestic traction, emphasising growth rate without explaining margin, hiring an external firm that was inevitable a mismatch, optimising for a valuation number instead of building a sustainable business.

Pathway Three: Patient Capital for Long-Term Products

Patsy Bass at Reefton Distilling Co. has done multiple successful capital raises while thinking in decades rather than years. The model is familiar to many: gin provides cashflow while whisky matures, cask sales pre-fund future inventory, and capital raises fund infrastructure and scale.

“We articulated our vision clearly since we launched the first capital raise,” Patsy told me. “Our shareholders invested in that vision, in me as Founder and the team we have.”

But articulating the vision was only part of it. Choosing the right partners to execute that vision mattered just as much. “It is all about relationships; about the right people,” Patsy said. “We have a strong relationship with our raise partners and the process is relatively smooth now.”

That relationship building wasn’t accidental. Reefton has worked with boutique investment bank Arcbridge Partners as a raise partner (they also wrangled the Cardrona deal). They’ve also used Snowball Effect for broader retail investor engagement. The key was finding partners who understood the long-term nature of whisky production and believed in the regional economic development story as much as the financial returns.

Trust comes from radical transparency. When global gin markets crashed and recession hit, Patsy didn’t hide it. She explained the pivots, the cost cuts, the hard decisions. They operate on a “no surprises” approach. When you’re asking people to invest in a product that won’t reach its peak for a decade, trust becomes the only currency that matters.

The result: 800+ shareholders who visit the distillery, gift products globally, make introductions, and wear Reefton t-shirts around the world.

The real sophistication shows up in governance. Patsy built a board with the right mix of skills, experience, and personality, then started exploring a COO or GM role to handle operations while she focuses on her strengths.

“One of our early advisors said the entrepreneur with the vision is not typically the right person to run a business once it gets past those first early years,” Patsy said. “And I agree.”

“Once our whisky is ready for market in greater volumes, we won’t need to raise capital to support production,” Patsy noted. The strategy is capital to reach sustainability, not capital as a substitute for sustainability.

This succeeds when you have long-term products requiring patient capital, when you’ve built trust through consistent communication, when you have near-term cashflow generators funding operations while inventory matures, and when you’re comfortable with evolving governance.

It fails when you can’t articulate a clear long-term vision, when you’re not prepared for radical transparency, when you lack cashflow generators and need capital to cover operating expenses, or when you’re working with raise partners who don’t understand your business model or timeline.

Cashflow vs. Capital: The Critical Distinction

It’s easy for distillery founders conflate cashflow management with capital investment. They’re fundamentally different.

Cashflow pays staff, covers rent, buys ingredients, funds marketing. You generate it from sales and manage it by controlling the timing of money in and money out.

Capital funds equipment, builds infrastructure, creates inventory that won’t generate revenue for years, and scales operations.

Reefton’s model demonstrates this clearly. Gin production generates cashflow: product ready quickly, revenue within months, funds ongoing operations. Cask sales create a hybrid: pre-selling future whisky inventory at a discount, generating near-term cashflow while building long-term asset value. Capital raises provide true investment: funding for stills, warehouses, land expansion.

The mistake some make is raising capital thinking it will solve cashflow problems. It won’t. Capital has to fund the long-term. You need revenue-generating products to keep the lights on while your premium inventory matures.

Wills Cameron at Remarkable Cream demonstrates a different version—they’re scaling a proven cashflow-positive model. Their capital went to infrastructure and working capital for scaling, not to funding operating losses.

Blair Nicholl learned this through failure: “Growing without the right working capital turns into a race to the bottom.” They needed to fix their business model, not just inject more capital to cover losses.

Does your business generate positive cashflow from current operations, or are you funding losses? If you’re building aged inventory, what generates cashflow while that inventory matures? Are you raising capital to fund growth or to cover operational shortfalls? Can you time your brand launch to minimise operating costs while maturing and realise the big cash investments upfront?

Raising capital to cover operating losses without a clear path to positive cashflow isn’t fundraising—it’s buying time before failure.

Strategic Alignment Matters More Than Valuation

Before choosing your pathway, work through these questions honestly.

How much revenue do you generate, how consistently, and how profitably? Can you acquire customers at a cost that makes economic sense? Does each sale contribute to covering fixed costs? Without this proof, you’re not ready to raise capital—you’re ready to validate your business model with minimal investment.

What problem does capital actually solve? Scaling a proven model suggests considering all pathways based on amount needed. Building infrastructure for future revenue points toward strategic investors or multiple raises. Funding operating losses means stopping to fix the model first.

How much control are you willing to trade? None? Crowdfunding or friends and family, but accept limited capital and many shareholders. Some? Strategic investors, but accept governance and accountability. Significant? Institutional investors, but accept pressure for exit or returns.

What’s your realistic timeline to profitability? If it’s 12-24 months, bank debt might be cheaper than equity. If it’s 2-5 years, you need strategic investors who understand the model. If it’s 5-10 years, you need patient capital from people who believe in the long game. If it’s unknown, you’re not ready to raise capital.

The Auld Distillery story becomes a cautionary tale here. Auld took on shareholders who, according to Companies Office records, quietly exited the business just two years later. That’s not a normal investment timeline for a distillery—it’s strategic misalignment. When investors exit quietly and quickly, they didn’t understand the business model or timeline, they expected different returns, they weren’t prepared for spirits industry economics, or the founder and investors had fundamentally different visions.

Strategic alignment isn’t about finding investors prepared to give you money. It’s about finding investors who understand your industry’s economics and timelines, share your vision for what the business should become, are prepared for the actual journey rather than an idealised version, and will be there for the long haul—or at least won’t destabilise the business when they exit.

Ask potential investors: What’s your typical investment timeline? What exits have you made from similar businesses, and what triggered them? What would cause you to want to exit this investment early? How do you define success for this investment? What happens if we don’t hit projected milestones but the business is still viable?

If their answers don’t align with your vision and timeline, keep looking. The wrong investors are worse than no investors.

What happens if you can’t raise capital? If the business fails, your model is broken and capital won’t fix it. If growth slows, you have a sustainable business and capital is optional acceleration.

What Actually Matters

Build revenue before you build the pitch deck—proof, not projection.
Choose partners who believe in what you’ve already built.
Match your valuation to your investor type.
Be radically transparent. When things go wrong, tell people. When hard decisions come, explain why.
Know exactly where every dollar goes.

A serious business leader knows how to spend other people’s money well. It starts with ensuring strategic alignment with investors, but how exactly should you do that?

From inside the process, here’s my advice and backed up by the stories above. You need to ask the hard questions about investor timelines, expectations, and definitions of success before taking their money. And listen to what people tell you.
You may not have your governance gold wings, but understand that good governance is your best competitive advantage. The businesses surviving downturns have smart people around the table who help founders see blind spots before those blind spots become crises. Be sure all all times, you are distinguishing between cashflow and capital. You’ll regret sinking the capital that was going to propel you forward on everyday operating costs. Profitability and margin are not optional in the current climate—even if when you started, sustained losses were okay with the accountant. Profit is the only reliable long-term strategy.

Investment Isn’t The Success

Securing capital—regardless of amount or source—is just a transaction. The question that matters is simpler: what do you actually want this business to do?

Maybe you’re building for local employment, like Reefton creating jobs on the West Coast where they’re desperately needed. Maybe you’re building for sustainable work you enjoy, like Blair. Maybe you’re building quality products that reflect craft and place and family legacy. Or maybe you’re genuinely building for global scale. That’s legitimate. But understand what that path requires: Four Pillars spent a decade becoming genuinely world-class before their exit. You need to run a good business to grow or sell one. You don’t become a better business operator once you have more money (or more production) in the bank.

Capital has gravity. Once you take it, your business bends toward the expectations that came with it.

Wills Cameron told me something that cuts through the noise: “I’d rather turn a profit and grow slowly than chase capital and hope the growth covers the cost.”

The Counter-Argument: Choosing Not To Raise At All

Rachael Thomson at Thomson Whisky took a different path entirely. She and Mat chose to grow organically, reinvesting profits back into production rather than taking on external investors. They kept their day jobs until the business turned a profit—literally didn’t take a wage for years.

“Those years were hard and home felt like a train station with all the comings and goings between jobs,” Rachael told me. “I had 2 girls under 4 years old and the business was growing at like 70% at that time, so I was averaging about 5 hours sleep a night between breastfeeding, home life and working. I was selling whisky over the phone, doing the accounts, brand work, and also dispatching whisky orders from home.”

She describes putting the baby in the pushchair with cases of whisky in the compartment below, wheeling them down the long driveway to the courier box for pickup. “Looking back I sound like a character from a Roald Dahl book,” she said.

The sacrifice was brutal. “You do everything you need to do without reasonable limits, and the business takes from you what it needs, not the other way around. But if you want something others don’t have, you have to be prepared to do things others aren’t.”

The benefits of remaining family-owned? “You make decisions that will benefit your family long term. You have everyone’s futures clearly in your sights and you want to see your family succeed and thrive, and the distillery gives you possibilities for that. It becomes an enabler and a source of real pride. And when you look back it’s hugely satisfying that you’ve created it. You took the risk, got off the bleachers, and ran the race, instead of being a bystander. It gives you purpose.”

Rachael isn’t against investment as a concept. “Taking investment in a company is not a bad thing at all, and it’s certainly a really smart option for many models. Capital is king as they say, but nothing comes for free. It shouldn’t be jumped into without careful consideration, and extrapolating out in your mind where it will lead over years.”

Her observation about the New Zealand market is sharp: “There’s a tendency for small NZ brands to under value their businesses and go for investment too early. They let go of too much of their shareholding before they’ve solved some fundamental business issues that sets them up for growth—and at times end up going for multiple rounds of investment and losing more share.”

Her advice: “You have to ask yourself what your end game is, what do you want to be or do within the biz long term, and who do you want along side you. Every business owner will have a different version of what ‘success’ looks like for them and it’s good to be honest about it, and go after your version of success, not the cookie cutter model.”

Thomson Whisky now has international recognition, awards, distribution in Australia and Europe, and a sustainable business that supports two households. They got there by selling bottles to make more whisky, reinvesting profits, and building slowly enough that they never had to compromise on what they were creating or who they were creating it with.

It’s a valid path. Maybe the most valid one for distilleries that can generate enough revenue to fund their own growth. Because the business remains entirely theirs to shape, grow, and eventually pass on—or not—as they choose.

Choose Your Hard. Choose What Success Looks Like.

Right now you have possibly already thought how another $100,000 in capital could solve problems for you. Maybe three or four times over. But have you considered what success actually looks like for your distillery? Seeing your product in 25 countries, or knowing the people who work for you have stable jobs? Selling for eight figures, or waking up each day doing work you enjoy in a business that pays you well?

The spirits industry has spent two decades telling founders that the only success that matters is scale and exit. But in 2025, when buyers are divesting more than acquiring, when exits rarely transform businesses, and when building acquisition-worthy businesses requires a decade of world-class execution, success needs a more honest definition.

Maybe success is building a distillery that does exactly what you want it to do. Know which one you’re building. Be honest with yourself, your investors, your team. The capital you raise and how you raise it should serve that specific version of success—not distort it, not replace it, and certainly not become the goal itself.

Before you build that pitch deck, ask yourself: if this business never exits, never scales beyond regional distribution, never makes you wealthy—but it employs good people, makes products you’re proud of, pays you a decent living, and lets you do meaningful work—would that be enough?

If the answer is yes, build that business. Raise capital to support it if needed, but never let capital requirements distort what you’re building. Or follow Rachael’s path: reinvest profits, grow sustainably, maintain complete control over your vision.

If the answer is no—if you genuinely want global scale and eventual exit—understand the path is brutal, long, and requires a decade of world-class execution with no guarantees.

Matt Johns is mid-sentence about 30-year-old sherry butts when a guy on a motorbike rolls up to the Pōkeno distillery. Apparently this happens every four months—a UK-based fan who occasionally lives somewhere in New Zealand, rides around and pops in unannounced to say hello. There’s no question that we pause our conversation and it’s a nice reminder that behind every savvy piece of branding, the customer relationship will always take priority. After a quick hello, Matt returns to our chat about some of the oldest and most precious casks in the warehouse.

“The 30-year-old sherry butts were really interesting because they gave us a dried fruit, but not a massive PX (Pedro Ximénez sherry) influence,” he says. “So it accentuated the fruitiness of our natural grapefruit, orange, lemon, but it didn’t bring as much of the PX as I might have expected. It gave more of a dried fruit, figgy notes to it, which I would have almost associated with an old red wine cask.”

Pedro Ximénez casks usually offer rich, syrupy sweetness that accentuates molasses and chocolate in whisky, rather than the drier, nuttier effect of Oloroso cask maturation. But that’s typical in Scotland. What PX casks would do in the new world, in this instance Pōkeno’s humid and variable valley, was previously unknown.

This is what we’re here to talk about: Alchemy, Pōkeno’s newest core range release. Three and a half years in the making, six different cask types, some of the distillery’s oldest stock.

Going All In

Matt has always been methodical about releases. The core range launched in June 2022 with Origin, a bourbon-cask expression designed to prove a point.

“I wanted to prove that we could make a really good whisky in New Zealand in a short period of time; because of the climatic conditions, because of the quicker maturation, and I wasn’t going to hide behind other barrel types,” he says. “That’s Pōkeno, that’s who we are. It’s our fantastically fruity, smooth, easy drink.”

Origin did its job. Discovery followed—a sherry-influenced sibling. Then came the Exploration Series for the truly experimental work, and single casks for the showcase moments. The initial core lineup was working, especially some of the single cask releases showcasing local beer collaborations and native wood.

But it came time to start looking at those stocks differently. My first visits to the site were clear: the Pōkeno team were filling warehouses full of ‘ingredients’, a wide variety of casks that would create options and discoveries of flavour. A catalogue of how the influence of the valley might collaborate with very old, very good cask stocks to produce blendable components.

“You’re going through the warehouse, you’re looking at your stocks, you’re looking at the range, you’re looking at what’s going on in the market,” Johns explains. “And I think as a brand, we’re evolving more and more to the fact that we always said from the start that we’re very proud of making New Zealand whisky in New Zealand, that we’re not making a Scotch whisky in New Zealand.”

The idea started percolating: what if they went all in? Not just on New Zealand provenance, but on complexity, boldness, a showcase of everything Pōkeno hadn’t yet released. And put it into core range product.

“I’d never gone in for that big, bold, massive product before,” Johns admits. “And we’d got some feedback from people saying, ‘When are you doing a sherry bomb? When are you doing this?’ So I’m looking at the stocks, going, ‘Okay, well, if I’m going to play around with something, we’re going to go big, we’re going to go bold, and we’re going to go creative—not only on the product, but on the packaging as well.’”

He had to wait. Some of the casks he wanted to use were good, but they’d be better with more time.

How Alchemy Got Its Name

The name came from an odd place. Johns and his team were talking Weta Studios, discussing making casks for a film set. Someone mentioned Lord of the Rings. Wizards. Potions.

“I kind of went, ‘Ah, potions, wizards, Alchemy,’” Johns recalls. “And I’m thinking blending, the art of the old school... Hold on a second, there might be something here.”

Then he was in Dunedin, looking at street art, and something clicked. The aesthetic, the vibe, the sense of creative alchemy—it melded together. They brought in a Japanese-Kiwi street artist for the packaging. The result looks nothing like traditional whisky, which is the point.

The liquid is where it gets technical. Six cask types: 15-year-old PX hogsheads, 30-year-old PX butts, tawny port, ruby port, light toast virgin American oak, medium toast virgin American oak. Some of the stock is over five and a half years old—ancient by Pōkeno standards. All full maturation, no finishing shortcuts.

“This is not something that we’ve gone, ‘F**k, we need to do this product, we’ll stick stuff in for finishing and shortcut it,’” Johns says emphatically. “This has been full maturation, all of these different cask types, and we had to wait until we had enough stock coming on board in the next two years to be able to maintain the product if we’re going to launch it.”

How Six Casks Work Together

The challenge was making six strong personalities play nicely together. The 30-year-old butts brought depth but risked going flat—”almost like when you have a Bordeaux which is a bit overaged, which is going on that serious kind of side, maybe a bit too woody,” Johns explains. The 15-year-old hogsheads provided the vibrancy—”that fresh bang of PX fruitiness, the ripe cherries, the Black Forest gateau, everything you’d expect.”

They couldn’t use just the butts. “There was depth coming from the butts, but I needed the vibrancy from the hoggies.” The blend uses more hogsheads than butts because “the dried fruit can be overpowering, and I lose the vibrancy.”

Then came the virgin oak—light toast for body without excessive spice, medium toast for “lovely caramel, biscuity butterscotch.” And finally, the port, pushed to 20% of the blend.

“It was really interesting for me that the port shows at the back end,” Johns says, still sounding somewhat mystified. “At the start, I was going, ‘Wow, I just can’t get the port to show,’ but it shows at the back end... You get right to the end of the product and the finish, and it’s almost pure port. The last thing—you wait for the first five, ten seconds, then the back end is almost pure port.”

As I finish this story, I can’t help but agree.

Matt’s approach to blending is that of storyteller and architect. He wants the blend to be harmonious in how it works together but he’s laying out a beginning, middle and end. The result is multi-dimensional in a way that demonstrates the intentionality of the blender. There’s a real journey going on.

“For me, the product is multi-layered,” Johns says. “You’ve got the PX, but the port really kicks in at the end. The virgin gives it the body, the PX gives it those notes everybody’s looking for, but the port gives it the length of the back end and that additional layer of fruitiness.”

With some of Pōkeno’s oldest stock, multiple expensive cask types, and significant investment in packaging, the question of approachable pricing must be asked.

“We don’t want this to be a special edition selling at 250 bucks a bottle, which it could have been,” he says. “This is us continuing to give the consumer products which are affordable at a price point they can taste and drink, and trying to give something which people want to have on the shelves.”

The pricing sits in sharp contrast to some (not all) New Zealand whisky. There are two paths emerging — affordable price points for regular whisky lovers or premium pricing for collectors, gifting and the one-off purchaser. Matt is clear about which path Pōkeno is taking.

“You can sell anything to anybody once,” Johns says. “But if you want your brand to be drunk, tasted, enjoyed and bought again, make it accessible.”

When we talk about the broader industry, he comes back to this point repeatedly. As a New World whisky producer, how do you justify being double or triple the price of Scotland?

“They’re still buying the barley, they’re still buying the wood, they’re still laying it down for three years. Yes, they’ve got economies of scale, but they’ve still got all those processes and costs. How can we justify being double their price or triple their price? We can’t. There is absolutely no justification.”

He allows for a 15% premium based on smaller scale, longer fermentations, slower distillations, higher transport costs. “But you can’t multiply by three and go, ‘I’m a New Zealand whisky, buy me.’ Or ‘I’m an Australian whisky...’ And the Australians are worse than us at doing that.”

What Alchemy Tells Us

Since I first started writing stories about Pōkeno and tasting her young spirit, there’s been a sense of quest and adventure, an air of anticipation about what Pōkeno spirit can handle, what we might discover about our own whisky-making climate.

“What Alchemy has taught me is that my new make spirit can support heavier casks, which I wasn’t convinced it could at the start. It shows that our new make spirit, although it is fruity and light, is also robust because you’re still getting the fruitiness of Pōkeno through Alchemy even though it’s got all of those incredibly powerful casks blended into it.”

This matters for a young industry still figuring out its identity. At five and a half years, Johns was worried his bourbon casks were getting too woody, losing fruitiness, picking up “notes of woody spice which I wasn’t overly fond of.” But at six and a half, seven years? “This evolved again. That woody spice has gone, and we’re back on the fruits, but accompanied by butterscotch, caramel, some of the more Scottish notes.”

The climate remains a moving target. “Today we’re on a journey—in 20 years time, ask me the question if I’m still around, but we’re not far enough in that journey to really know what the climate’s going to do to us in the next five or six years.”

His advice to other makers: “I’d say never be afraid to make mistakes. I’m still throwing stuff into new casks today that I’ve never tried before, that I’ve got no idea what it will be like in four or five years time, but if you don’t do it, you’ll never know.”

He pauses, then adds: “I’m sitting here today looking at Alchemy going, ‘Thank God I filled those PX butts and those old port casks five, six years ago, because otherwise I wouldn’t be able to do this.’”

Native Wood: Not a Gimmick

We also talk about Pōkeno’s native wood program—specifically, how perception measures it as marketing or genuine exploration. “For me, it’s not a marketing gimmick,” Johns says. “If it was, I’d have brought out six different native wood casks already, and it would have been done, and you’d have a set, a series, it would have been a little kind of trunk and you could... but it’s not. For me, it has to add something to the product.”

So far, they’ve found one wood that works fantastically: Totara. They get enough to make ten casks a year. “We sell all the Totara we’ve got. A couple thousand bottles a year. It’s shipped around the world, and that’s it.”

The kauri took two and a half years to come good after initial disappointment. “Six months after filling the kauri cask, we said, ‘This is never going in a bottle, it’s shit.’ Two and a half years later, it came good.” They’ve got enough kauri for one more cask, which might be the last one ever if they can’t source more wood.

And then there’s the New Zealand oak story, which perfectly encapsulates the trial-and-error reality of making whisky somewhere new. They sourced heartwood, dried it carefully, made a barrel. Thankfully they filled it with water first, on Matt’s instinct just to check.

“It literally went like that through the wood,” Johns says, making a whooshing gesture. They tried again with different wood, being more vigilant about heartwood, no sap. Same result.

Deep dive into the problem revealed that robur oak in Europe takes 100 years to grow. In New Zealand, it takes 40. What makes our fast-growing climate great for pine is terrible for oak, which will make the whisky nerds go a-ha. Our European and Scottish colleagues are a hundred-plus years into the business, so they understand that nurturing your forests is as important as the barley when it comes to whisky-making.

“The structure of the wood is just not concentrated or tight enough to hold liquid. You will never have a New Zealand oak wood barrel. It’s impossible. But until we built two barrels, gone down that path and did it, we didn’t know that.”

Building a Category While Building a Brand

When we shift to discussing exports and market realities, Johns’ frustration with the current whisky landscape becomes palpable. Pōkeno is one of the few New Zealand distilleries genuinely moving volume internationally—they’re in 30 markets—but even that success comes with caveats.

“The world is not waiting for a New Zealand whisky,” he says plainly. “The world is not waiting for an Australian whisky, or a Japanese gin, or whatever. Markets are overstocked. Whether you’re talking about retailers, wholesalers, importers—everybody’s overstocked. The big brands are still pushing stock to market because they’ve got to report to the industry that their share price is performing, so they’re throwing incredibly aggressive commercial deals all over the place, which has widened the gap between New World whisky and scotch whisky.”

Two years ago, Pōkeno was a niche, interesting product that people were excited about. Now? “You’re a hard-to-sell. And when you’re a hard-to-sell, it means you get no focus, which means you sit on a shelf somewhere at the bottom of a little independent retail store, which nobody’s got a hope of seeing when they walk into the store unless somebody’s going to talk about it.”

The only way forward is liquid on lips, building customer by customer, old school. “A small business like ourselves can only do so much of that. We’re out there fighting the good fight.”

Next year, instead of focusing on 30 international markets, they’ll focus on five. “How do we build those five to be a real success story and make sure that we’re positioned for when the markets take off again?”

What It Actually Tastes Like

My first taste was in a liquor store, in one of those tiny plastic cups. Not ideal. At home, in proper glassware, with time: different story.

@thespiritswriter

Tash McGill, Spirits Writer. on Instagram: "PŌKENO ALCHEMY: The…

When I tell Johns what I think, I talk about the depth and complexity. “That classic Pōkeno new make, which is sweet, fruit forward, designed to have this light, expressive kind of bounciness—you described it as vibrancy—it still stays pretty true throughout the whole thing.”

I’m a Totara fan, partly for the story and knowing about the experiment, but also because that candy, tropical fruit, the coconut really sings through. With Alchemy, I went in wondering: will I be able to pull out the individual influences? How is the difference between light and medium toast actually playing out? How is it all blending together?

“For me, what’s most exciting about this is that it’s a showcase of blending. Taking these ingredients and creating something that offers much more than the sum of the individual parts. I’d still love to taste all the individual parts, because they’re doing such a lovely job. But the way the fruit develops and changes in the glass over time is probably what sings out most.”

Not a story about wood, even with six cask types. The length carries nice and big and juicy—doesn’t get too dry and velvety at the end, which I’d sometimes expect with that amount of those kind of velvet tannins, the syrupy nature of PX. It stays beautiful, long, juicy all the way through.

“It’s balanced, it’s long, it’s got complexity and depth. Straightforward words, but that’s what I’d hope for. It’s just delicious.”

And validating: here’s something that shows yes, we can have humid valley temperature fluctuation, things we’d expect to have certain impacts. But out of that can still come something very juicy, very sweet, with lots of pliability. “The intensity of its climate, its age, hasn’t stripped away. It’s added to. That’s really exciting.”

For the category, this feels like the most exciting development in a while. Not because it’s laced with sherry and port influence—though I naturally enjoy those things. But because pour it into a glass, look at it on a shelf, and there’s a sense of quality and a sense of “I’m going to enjoy this.” It’s a cask play that actually tastes really good.

Johns nods. “I think it’s important the consumer understands you can make a fantastic complex New Zealand whisky and still put it out there at a price point which isn’t crazy. And I think it’s important as an industry, that’s what we need to be doing. We need to recruit the consumer. We just need to show them what we can do and that we can stand up against anything else.”

It’s nowhere near the end of the journey, he’s quick to add. It’s a stage, a milestone. “We were ready to do that now, and then we’ll see what the next part of the journey looks like.”

Alchemy by Pōkeno Whisky, 46% ABV, RRP $149

Two stories caught my attention this week. Get ready to cringe as we walk through how we’re apparently talking about alcohol in 2025.

First: “Gin and tonic is the least harmful alcoholic drink” (because quinine! because white spirits!).

Second: “Teenage binge drinking leads to greater success in life” (because social capital! because confidence!).

One wellness-washes gin into a harm-reduction strategy. The other sent parents into panic with headlines about teenage binge drinking—before revealing that alcohol’s relationship to success has nothing to do with the alcohol itself. Together, they expose how our cultural conversation around drinking has stripped out the fun, injected social status anxiety and shame-inducing contradictions where nobody wins.

We’ve arrived at a place where every discussion about alcohol ends up in codified social norms (”here’s the less harmful choice”) or moral panic (”no amount is safe!”). We measure alcohol units, calculate risk ratios and debate resveratrol content and argue about safe consumption limits. And somewhere along the way, we’ve stripped all the joy, all the human connection, all the experience out of the conversation.

Absurdly, what science actually tells us is that the fun—the social fabric, the emotional and intellectual wellbeing that comes from genuine human connection—is the most important part of how we drink. No binge required.

So let’s be clear about what gets conveniently left out of every “least harmful drink” article and wellness guide that treats your gin and tonic like a medical intervention:

It’s not what we’re drinking. It’s how we’re drinking.

As someone who drinks for a living, I often feel the shadow of booze-shame. It’s what I’ve coined the uncomfortable shadow— the pressure and expectation that on a night out that I will naturally push the boat out, keep up with the gang, that I’ll always open another bottle or be down for shots. Or conversely—in a world where everyone’s talking about sobriety, I feel the need to explain I do drink moderately, that sometimes it’s just my job and that I don’t have to drink every night—although, I mostly do. Even when it’s not for work. Booze-shame is the anxiety of feeling like my choices are now part of a public conversation because so much public messaging is ‘alcohol is bad’.

Booze-shame pushes us to the binary edges of self-assessment: either having a problem or being completely fine, when most of us would probably benefit sooner from an healthier alcohol conversation that is judgment & anxiety-free. One with moderation actually in the centre. Because alcohol conversations have become so serious in every corner, it’s getting harder to see what a socialised, healthy alcohol culture might look like.

Which brings us back to those headlines. Buried in the wellness-washing and the panic is something actually useful:

Bourbon neat at a dinner table with friends beats bourbon and coke with a cigarette at a bar where you’re drinking to forget.

A glass of wine with a long meal beats three glasses alone on your couch because Tuesday was hard.

Champagne at a wedding beats bottomless prosecco at brunch where you’re just trying to survive the Sunday Scaries.

But which three scenarios do we hear about most? Headlines sag under the weight of how bad drinking alone, drinking to forget, and drinking through depression is for our bodies, our brains and our relationships. I want to remind you how joyous it can be to enjoy a good drink of whatever you like, in a setting that lifts you up. When we inject shame into the conversation, we remove the positive impacts that drinking contexts offer.

That Norwegian study that went viral this week? University of Oslo sociologist Willy Pedersen found that those who drank socially in their late teens and twenties had higher education and income levels—while those who started drinking heavily in early teens were less successful, and those who drank alone showed no career benefits whatsoever. As he explained: “The most likely explanation is that all alcohol is a kind of marker of sociality and that habit comes with some types of benefits”.

It was never about the drinking. It was about the social capital, the connections, the confidence built through communal experience. The alcohol was just... there.

If you’ve ever felt anxious about whether you’re drinking too much or too little, whether you ordered the “right” drink, whether you should justify that second glass or explain why you’re stopping at one—you’re not alone. The entire cultural conversation has been designed to make you feel this way.

This is the social messaging that has seen New Zealand’s alcohol consumption per capita drop by 30% since the mid-1980s. And as for the latest edition of wellness-washed ‘least harmful choice’ claims? The gin and tonic can sit right alongside these choices:

Mezcal neat — because agave is a vegetable, and vegetables are good for you. Definitely healthier than a salt-rimmed Margarita while stress-eating fried chicken at midnight.

Single malt whisky — rich in antioxidants from all that oak barrel aging. Far superior to whisky and Coke with self-loathing on the side.

Vodka soda with fresh lime — basically a vitamin C supplement at this point. Much more virtuous than vodka Red Bull at 2am when you’re already three bad decisions deep.

Garibaldi — you’re practically doing a juice cleanse. The citrus aids digestion, restores electrolytes. Infinitely healthier than tequila slammers followed by a kebab and the certainty you’ll nail karaoke tonight.

Champagne — the bubbles aid digestion, darling.

Negroni — taken for the botanicals of course, and definitely not three Negronis deep and texting your ex.

The quinine in tonic exists in such infinitesimal amounts it couldn’t ward off a particularly lazy mosquito. But the mozzie will make the effort for the added sugar in your bloodstream. You’d need roughly forty G&Ts to get anywhere near a therapeutic dose for leg cramps, at which point you’d have far bigger problems than your calves.

The Myths That Let Us Ignore Context

We fixate on the contents of the glass because it’s easier than examining why and where we’re holding it. So we tell ourselves stories:

“White spirits are easier on your body.” No. The reason you feel better after vodka than red wine isn’t purity—it’s the absence of congeners, those flavour compounds that can contribute to hangovers. But you know what contributes more to hangovers? Drinking too much.

“The quinine in tonic water is good for you.” If you’re drinking G&Ts for health benefits, you’re essentially trying to prevent malaria while giving yourself liver disease. The colonial-era antimalarial properties have been diluted into marketing copy, not medicine.

“Red wine is good for your heart.” The resveratrol debate. Yes, there are compounds in red wine that show promise in laboratory conditions. There are also compounds that are literally poison, which is why your liver works overtime. The “Mediterranean diet” studies that made red wine look beneficial were never able to separate the wine from everything else—the social eating, the vegetables, the olive oil, the walking, the not being chronically stressed. Correlation isn’t causation, and “moderate” means less than most people think.

Welcome to the wellness wash.

We do it with chocolate milk after workouts (perfect protein-to-carb ratio! Never mind you’ve consumed more sugar than you burned). We do it with green juice cleanses (detoxifying enzymes! Ignore the stripped fiber and fruit-punch sugar levels trying to do a job your body does naturally). We do it with kombucha (gut health! Don’t think about how some brands contain more alcohol and sugar than light beer).

The pattern is always the same: isolate one beneficial component, ignore all context, declare something “healthy,” and give yourself permission to over-consume while feeling virtuous.

But this thinking is particularly dangerous with alcohol because the context we’re ignoring is often the thing actually harming us.

What Context Actually Means

The most dangerous drinking isn’t the messy nights or dramatic binges. It’s the kind of drinking that doesn’t feature meaningful connection, and only offers escape.

”Mate, have you got time for a beer?” Recent studies show that solitary drinking is strongly associated with increased risk of alcohol use disorder and negative health outcomes, even after controlling for the amount consumed. The problem isn’t drinking alone occasionally—it’s drinking because you’re alone. Or being alone because you’re drinking. The context reveals the pattern, and the pattern reveals the problem.

Meanwhile, research on Mediterranean drinking patterns has often been used to justify that glass or two of red wine. It often ignores the most important part of why the Mediterranean way seem to work—it’s characterised by moderate wine consumption with meals, spread throughout the week, and accompanied by food. And again: this pattern occurs within a broader Mediterranean lifestyle that includes social meals and strong community connection

It’s not the wine. It’s the table. The people around it. The food, conversation, music, laughter, ritual of shared experience. Okay, that bit might be about the wine.

During the pandemic, alcohol sales went through the roof - but research has revealed that when young heavy drinkers lost access to social drinking contexts, their alcohol consumption and related problems decreased substantially—not because alcohol became less available, but because the social context changed. Without bars and parties, drinking lost its social scaffolding. What remained was just the drinking, and many people realised they didn’t actually want it.

This is why the International Academy of Wine’s 2025 statement to the UN matters: “It is dangerous to reduce wine to a health risk, because this overlooks its cultural, social, and human dimensions.”

They’re right, even if they have commercial interests. The WHO’s stance that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption is technically accurate from a pure health perspective, but it flattens something important: the difference between drinking embedded in social connection and drinking as a substitute for it.

Social connection itself—independent of alcohol—is what drives wellbeing and longevity. The Mediterranean pattern works not because of the wine, but because it’s embedded in a culture of genuine human connection.

Remember, that’s the fun bit. The laughing, the shared experiences, the awakening of the senses. Whether wine, whisky or agua fresca—liquid refreshment with friends and family is essential to good health.

What Actually Matters (And What Doesn’t)

Remember when drinking was allowed to be fun? Not optimised, not justified, not measured against health metrics—just fun. Somewhere between “gin prevents malaria” and “no amount is safe,” we lost permission to simply enjoy a drink with people we like. That’s what needs to come back.

If you’re going to drink, the only thing that matters is ‘are you present?’ Are you connected? Are you having the kind of fun you’ll remember, not the kind you’ll need to forget?

The drinking that doesn’t hurt you is presence, not absence. Connection, not escape. It’s about the conversation that makes you think differently, the music that makes you feel something, the food that anchors the experience in pleasure rather than intoxication.

And bloody hell, when did you last see an alcohol brand that was genuinely expressing this fun without resorting to day-glo RTD cans? The booze barons need to remember this too: drinks need joy, not just health monitoring and whisky wank. Let there be laughter and frolicking (it is possible in moderation, you know!). Let there be festivals and flavours and the kind of fun the term ‘social lubrication’ was inspired from.

The healthiest drinking choice isn’t about antioxidants or congeners or which spirit your liver prefers. It’s choosing a way of drinking that enhances your connection to life and other people. And crucially, it’s about preserving your ability to choose not to drink at all. And for that also to be fun. Because if the social connection is there—the laughter, the conversation, the shared experience—the drink becomes optional. And that’s when you know you’re doing it right.

The language we use around alcohol matters because it shapes how we think about our relationship with it. Calling a gin and tonic “least harmful” isn’t just reductive—it’s actively combative. It gives us permission to ignore the context, the patterns, the creeping dependencies. It lets us pretend optimisation is the same as examination. But it also takes the fun out of gin, which didn’t really need any help with that. Oh wait—that’s another myth. Gin doesn’t make you sad. Drinking badly makes you sad.

If you’ve ever felt anxious about drinking the “right” amount or the “right” way, this cultural conversation has failed you. Your choice of drink has never mattered as your motivation in reaching for it. And good ol’ healthy fun is perfectly acceptable motivation too.

So here’s your permission slip: drink what you like, with people who make you laugh, in moments that matter. The gin doesn’t need to prevent anything. The wine doesn’t need antioxidants. You don’t need to justify the second glass or explain stopping at one.

The only measure that matters is whether you’re drinking with your life or drinking at it. Whether you’re there for the connection or the escape. Whether tomorrow you’ll remember the conversation or need to apologise for it.

That’s it. That’s the whole guide.

The best part was never what was in the glass. It was always the people around it.

So I wrote a little article this week about the Michelin thing, and there were a lot of new faces around here. Not to mention, sometimes it’s important to explain things. So here’s a little manifesto to help you find your way around More Good Drinks!

There’s a moment—you know the one—where the liquid hits the glass just so, the sound inviting you in before you’ve even lifted it to your lips. Maybe it’s whisky unfurling like smoke signals across crystal. Maybe it’s wine exhaling three continents of sunlight. Maybe it’s that first cold beer after the kind of week that ages you in dog years.

And here’s what happens next: someone asks what you’re drinking, and suddenly you’re not just tasting—you’re talking. At first it’s hops and juniper and forest floor and ‘have you tried this one yet?’ but then it’s ‘how was your day?’ and ‘what are we going to do about that? and ‘how can I help, mate?’

That conversation? That’s where More Good Drinks lives. In the space where curiosity meets craft, where a sip becomes a story, and where what we drink reveals who we are.

You Can’t Miss What You Don’t Have

Most drinks writing falls into two camps now: breathless press releases where journalism is also marketing activity, or coded insider language that might make you feel like you need a degree to order a drink. And then there’s the booze-shame, the feeling that even if you drink responsibly, we’re just not meant to have too much fun with drinks right? Except I’m obsessed with peach soda and there’s nothing guilty in that.

Here’s what gets lost in that gap: the story.

New Zealand’s media landscape has already retracted. If you’re in your twenties, you don’t remember when food and drink journalism was rich and deep—that’s what TikTok is for now. You can’t miss what you never had.

But I think that makes great stories even more meaningful. In an ocean of 60-second hot takes and sponsored content, journalism that actually goes deep stands out. Writing that takes time, asks hard questions, and follows threads until they make sense cuts through the noise precisely because so little else does.

Independent journalism—the kind where someone spends an hour with a distiller instead of rewriting a press release, where calling out false advertising is still possible—comes at a cost in a world that despises a paywall.

But you deserve writing that cuts through the marketing, explains why something tastes the way it does, introduces you to the humans behind what you’re drinking, and respects your intelligence without requiring a sommelier certificate.

That’s what More Good Drinks does.

The Joy & The Technique

Our mission is simple: More Good Drinks.

First, the joy. Drinks should be fun. Alcoholic content shouldn’t impact fun content. Remember when you used to put Raro straight on your tongue, seeing how sugar you could dissolve in a litre of water before your teeth buzzed? Debating whether Milo was better hot or cold? The irresistible thrill of a fizzy from the dairy on a hot summer’s day when you’d been playing with your mates. The relationship between good drinking experiences and fun started the first time you tried slipping Mentos into a Coke bottle. And you might have even tried adding bubbles to your wine using the Soda Stream you got for Christmas. Then maybe you explored the first sip of a perfectly made Negroni and laughed til you cried at how it made your sinuses burn. The discovery that you love mezcal when you thought you hated tequila. The wine that tastes exactly like summer in Central Otago because that’s precisely what it is. Pleasurable—even if it’s cold fruit juice when you’re sick or a Golden Pash from the servo. Memory, senses, taste buds alive.

Then, the technique. You’re spending your money and time—you deserve honest answers. Which alternative nootropic beverages are genuinely innovative and which are expensive snake oil? What does “low-intervention winemaking” actually mean? Why are craft distilleries struggling and what does that mean for what’s available to you? Wouldn’t you love it if drinks menus were as thoroughly reviewed as what comes across the pass?

We celebrate the good. We call out the rubbish. We explain the complex without dumbing it down.

Who’s Behind This

I’ve spent two decades in this industry—tasting, yes, but mostly learning. I’ve worked inside New Zealand’s tourism strategy machinery, consulted for brands navigating impossible markets, judged spirits competitions from Auckland to London, and been shortlisted for international awards alongside writers I’ve studied for years.

I’ve facilitated whisky regulation negotiations and led Food Writers New Zealand as food writing has undergone significant change. I’ve served cocktails on breakfast television and written analysis that makes industry leaders uncomfortable.

But here’s what matters more than credentials: I’m still curious. Still discovering. Still excited when someone makes something genuinely new. Still frustrated when industry has short-term vision.

Dave Broom taught me you can be technically rigorous and poetically expressive at once. That expertise should illuminate, not intimidate. That’s the approach here.

What You’ll Find: Three Ways We Pour

1. This Tastes Good:

Honest reviews that help you navigate the shelf. We separate genuine innovation from expensive marketing. That $120 gin? We’ll tell you if it’s worth it or if you should spend $80 and save the rest. We’ll tell you the reason why this is no ordinary cocktail. Alternative beverages delivering impact versus adaptogens in pretty bottles. Non-alcoholic spirits that truly bottle complexity without ethanol. And occasionally we may give you a Best of the Best list of products that really caught our eye.

2. Drinks Leaders: Their Stories

The humans behind what we’re drinking. The distiller betting everything on a botanical no one’s heard of. The winemaker deciding whether to pour vintage down the drain or gamble on one more year. The bartender building a menu around ingredients most people throw away. The importer bringing you drinks with centuries of cultural meaning. The people making decisions that impact your fun and your options.

3. Full Pour: The Stories That Shape Our Liquid World

The big, complicated questions with real consequences:

Questions I’m asking right now: While France pours vintage down the drain and Australian vineyards rip out vines, New Zealand winemakers face a defining question—compete on volume or bet everything on quality?

Why hasn’t Western culture embraced tepache, horchata, and milk tea as culturally refined non-alcoholic options when they are entire beverage philosophies with centuries of story?

And for those in the industry, the bigger questions of strategy, food systems and how people are changing the way they engage with the drinks industry altogether. Those stories matter for everyone, because they are inevitably stories of culture being shaped and formed.

Why This Actually Matters

What we drink is how we connect. How we celebrate and commiserate. How we mark time and memory. How we welcome strangers and deepen friendships. How we signal identity and share culture.

A good drink is a time machine, a conversation starter, comfort and adventure at once. The visceral experience of tasting—that shock of flavour, that revelation of texture—is how we learn our world, how we understand place, how we connect with each other.

That deserves better than press releases and tasting notes. That deserves a bit of time. A bit of care.

What You’re Supporting

When you subscribed, you joined a community of curious food & drink lovers who refuse to settle. You’re supporting independent drinks journalism that answers to readers, not advertisers. And I haven’t even asked you for a dollar yet.

More Good Drinks exists because what’s good to drink should also be good for the people making it, good for the places it comes from, and part of a good life. But not so Good we forget that it’s meant to be fun.

Good product. Good taste. Good business. Good health.

Pull Up a Chair

If you’re a curious drinker who wants the stories behind the bottles, the truth beneath the marketing, the context that makes every sip richer—this is your table.

Pour yourself something good now.

Tash McGill is a drinks writer and industry consultant who’s spent twenty years learning this business from the inside out. IWSC Spirits Communicator Trophy finalist, former President of the NZ Food Writers Guild—but more importantly, still excited to discover something new in a glass.

Six million dollars to bring the Michelin Guide to New Zealand, and the country has collectively lost its mind. The good news is that this time, everyone arguing is a little bit right.

But here’s my favourite detail: Tourism New Zealand spent $6.3 million to secure Michelin, then immediately had to budget for crisis PR management because - plot twist - nobody could agree if it was brilliant or catastrophic.

“Michelin Guide partnership: $6.3m. Explaining why we did it: TBC.”

The outrage merchants are in full throat: “Moral bankruptcy!” “What about Cuisine?” “People are hungry!” “Australia said no!” Meanwhile, I can tell you - having spent over three years with Tourism New Zealand - pitching food and wine activity every step of the way based on what travellers told us they actually wanted to know: the real scandal isn’t the $6.3 million.

It’s that we’re showcasing our disconnected, binary understanding of food and tourism, two of our biggest exports and industries.

The Problem Nobody’s Naming

Here’s what the Michelin hysteria is really exposing: New Zealand has no government agency responsible for food as a complete system.

Think about it:

• Tourism NZ promotes food to international visitors ✓

• Ministry of Primary Industries manages biosecurity and primary production ✓

• Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment oversees hospitality sector compliance ✓

• Ministry of Health issues nutrition guidelines ✓

• Ministry of Education manages education pathways and qualifications ✓

But nobody owns the connective tissue. Nobody links:

• Tourism promotion → hospitality careers pipeline

• Export produce quality → economic growth and employment

• Primary production → nutrition literacy → domestic food security

• Food criticism standards → restaurant culture → international reputation

We have excellence in silos. We have no food strategy.

And that’s why when Michelin arrives, everyone loses their minds. Critics aren’t really angry about $6 million. They’re angry about everything they wish existed but doesn’t: food security and nutrition access, food literacy, value over volume in production, local supply resilience, proper support for local food media, clear career pathways for young chefs, consistent quality standards, professional food discourse, someone - anyone - thinking about food holistically.

So they project all of it onto a Tourism New Zealand tourism marketing initiative.

Of course a $6.3 million tourism programme can’t deliver comprehensive food policy, media support, hospitality training, and social services.

It shouldn’t have to.

But the fact that everyone expects it to? That’s where the real gap lives.

Why Everyone’s Projecting Their Wish List Onto Michelin

Watch how the criticism splinters:

The Taxpayers Union sees it as wasteful spending during a cost-of-living crisis. What they’re really saying: “Why isn’t there better prioritisation of social spending?”

The Spinoff’s Nick Iles wants that money supporting Cuisine magazine instead. What he’s really saying: “Why isn’t there support for local food media?”

Chef Al Brown warns about toxic kitchen culture and suicide risk. What he’s really saying: “Why don’t we have better mental health support and professional standards in hospitality?”

Regional operators and commentators are furious only four cities are covered. What they’re really saying: “Why isn’t there comprehensive infrastructure and promotion for food tourism nationwide?”

Newstalk ZB’s John MacDonald compares it to Lifeline’s funding gap. What he’s really saying: “Why aren’t social services properly funded?”

All valid concerns. None of them are Tourism New Zealand’s job to fix.

But because there’s no one agency responsible for the big picture - no one connecting tourism to hospitality to food security to cultural infrastructure - everyone’s legitimate frustrations get funnelled into attacking whatever food-related initiative happens to make headlines.

Michelin just had the misfortune of being that initiative.

So Let’s Talk About That $6 Million

Now that we understand what’s really happening, let’s address the money.

Tourism New Zealand has one mandate: promote New Zealand as a destination to high-value international visitors. Not feed hungry people. Not fund crisis helplines. Not support domestic media. Promote tourism.

The $6.3 million comes partially from the International Visitor Levy - collected FROM tourists FOR tourism infrastructure - plus TNZ baseline funding. It literally cannot be redirected to Lifeline or food banks. That’s not how government funding works. And yes, TNZ had a mandate change during Covid, but now their job is to get the numbers back up (still 13% away) and they need to be the right tourists.

Comparing tourism spend to social services is like demanding the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra solve homelessness. Worthy cause, wrong agency, different budget line.

The question isn’t “should we spend this on restaurants instead of people?” It’s “is Tourism New Zealand effectively executing its actual mandate?”

On that measure? They nailed it.

The Scale Nobody’s Grasping

Let’s get some perspective on what New Zealand actually spends money on.

Since 2010, we’ve given nearly $1 billion in subsidies to international film productions. The scheme pays out around $200 million annually. Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series alone cost taxpayers $160 million for the first season - before relocating to the UK.

The Peter Jackson LOTR trilogy? We subsidised it $150 million. The return? An estimated $620 million in tourism revenue between 2001 and 2021.

In April 2025, Tourism New Zealand spent $13.5 million on an Australia campaign. Earlier, they dropped $500,000 on the “Everyone Must Go” slogan that got mocked mercilessly but apparently worked.

This Michelin investment represents less than 2% of Tourism New Zealand’s $130 million annual budget.

If we can spend $160 million helping Amazon film hobbits, we can spend $6 million helping our outstanding food experiences become top of the must-do list with elite food travellers.

The Australia Comparison That Makes Us Look Smart

“Australia declined Michelin, so we should have too!”

Let’s examine this brilliant logic (insert eyeroll).

Australia was quoted $40 million over five years. We’re paying $6.3 million over three. Australia has 26 million people. We have 5 million. Australia already has World’s 50 Best representation, established fine dining tourism infrastructure, and multiple domestic food guides with genuine international reach.

We are not Australia. Different scale, different food media landscape, different value proposition. Australia is over 15 years deep into a highly effective food and drink tourism strategy - hello South Australia, hello Melbourne? You know the reputation of those destinations and there’s a reason. Australia has already been spreading the food and drink word—New Zealand needs Michelin to help us get the job started. Because every critic of the Michelin package has already been outspoken that we don’t do enough to spread the good word.

If anything, we negotiated Michelin at a bargain price while Australia’s Tourism board looked at their quote and thought “probably not worth it at that cost.”

We got in cheaper. That’s not us being stupid. That’s strategic.

Understanding Tourism Math

“Only 36,000 extra visitors? That’s $175 per visitor!”

This reveals a spectacular misunderstanding of how tourism economics work - which, having spent years in tourism marketing strategy, I find both amusing and depressing.

Those 36,000 visitors don’t materialise at Auckland Airport and immediately vanish. They stay in hotels (multiple nights). They eat at restaurants (multiple meals). They drink wine (hopefully lots). They visit regions. They shop. They return. In fact, all of Tourism New Zealand’s other projects support stay longer and do more. So like compounding interest, no one comes this far to go to a single city. And you can’t help but travel through the regions as you get to our other must-do experiences. Stay longer: spend more.

Tourism New Zealand’s own research - including datasets I worked on - shows 87% of people actively considering New Zealand cite “trying local cuisine” as their number one interest.

Once visitors are here, they MUST spend on food and drink. That’s not optional tourist behaviour - that’s survival meeting destination experience.

More critically, Michelin creates what economists call a “quality signal.” It’s not just about the tiny percentage who specifically hunt Michelin stars. It’s about positioning New Zealand as a serious culinary destination in the minds of millions who’ll never eat at a starred restaurant but whose decision-making is influenced by that reputation.

Chef Peter Gordon, who’s run restaurants across London, Auckland, New York, Istanbul and Wellington, gets it: “If you end up in the guide, it’s going to guarantee tourism visitors will come to you that maybe wouldn’t have heard of you before.”

Michelin International Director Gwendal Poullennec noted that internationally, 82% of restaurants in the guide report increased profits - not from raising prices, but from increased customers who spend more on wine and return visits.

The ripple effect compounds. That’s not $175 per visitor. That’s $175 into an economic multiplier that flows through accommodation, transport, retail, regional tourism, and repeat visitation.

The Cuisine Conflict That Reveals the Gap

Yes, New Zealand has Cuisine magazine’s Good Food Guide. Editor Kelli Brett and her team work hard. The industry respects them. They awarded hats to over 100 restaurants this year.

The Spinoff’s Nick Iles suggested we should have spent “just a fraction of that $6m” working with Cuisine instead.

This perfectly illustrates the systems gap I’m talking about.

Cuisine is a privately owned commercial business. It’s responsible for making its own Good Food Guide commercially viable. The government doesn’t subsidise Metro magazine or the Herald’s restaurant reviews. Why would it subsidise Cuisine?

Because people think it should. Because there’s no clear understanding of what’s government’s job versus what’s commercial media’s job versus what’s industry’s job when it comes to food culture.

Tourism New Zealand’s mandate is international tourism promotion, not domestic media support. Cuisine can’t drive travellers from Shanghai or Chicago the way Michelin can. Its reach is primarily domestic - which is exactly what it should be.

Michelin’s 125-year global brand recognition is precisely what TNZ is buying. And it’s only available by partnering with Michelin, not by artificially inflating a local publication’s international profile with government cash.

Both can thrive. Both should thrive. But in different lanes, serving different purposes, funded by different models.

The confusion about this? That’s the gap talking.

The Real Opportunity Hidden in the Noise (And Why It Scares People)

Now we get to the genuinely exciting bit that everyone’s missing while they’re screaming about budget lines.

Michelin’s arrival forces New Zealand to confront something uncomfortable: our food criticism isn’t anonymous, isn’t formally trained to a unifying standard, and operates with zero degrees of separation.

Chef Al Brown’s concerns about Michelin’s “dark side” are valid. He told RNZ: “Chefs have taken their lives over Michelin Stars... if we’re living and dying by a star system, I don’t think that’s healthy at all.”

He’s absolutely right about the toxicity risk. But some of the fear and angst about Michelin isn’t just about pressure - it’s about the unknown. About a higher standard. About actual anonymity.

Because here’s what we actually have: Kerry Tyack, Kelli Brett, Lauraine Jacobs - some of the most recognisable faces in New Zealand dining rooms. Brilliant food writers, absolutely. But everyone knows exactly who they are the moment they walk through the door.

When Jesse Mulligan, the Herald’s influential dining-out editor, wrote a truly scathing review of The Grill, he later went back by invitation to assess what had changed. And scatching is a stretch, he was kind in trying to understand if it was meant to be that way! Good, thorough work. But zero degrees of separation. The restaurant knew he was coming. They knew who he was. They could prepare.

Michelin is the opposite. Anonymous inspectors with rigorous training, consistent methodology, and standards calibrated across 40 countries. Restaurants can’t prepare. Can’t butter up the critic. Can’t offer the special table or the off-menu tasting.

That’s terrifying if you’re used to the cosy intimacy of New Zealand’s small dining scene. But it’s also exactly what professional food criticism looks like. A constructive partnership between the critic and the kitchen.

The solution isn’t to claim “no one else can understand our food” because they’re uncomfortable. Too late, the assessors have already been here. It’s to level up our own discourse while Michelin does its job. To professionalise food writing. To develop formal training. To build genuine critical infrastructure.

That’s the opportunity. And it’s worth far more than $6.3 million.

Only Four Cities? That’s Actually Strategic

Regional exclusion complaints are predictable. Craggy Range in Hawke’s Bay - one of only six restaurants with three hats - isn’t eligible because it falls outside Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Queenstown.

Frustrating for them? Absolutely. Fatal to the programme? No.

Michelin is making a targeted bet on New Zealand’s primary tourist centres. If the inaugural guide succeeds, expansion becomes possible. If TNZ had tried to cover the whole country in year one, $6.3 million would be spread too thin to make meaningful impact anywhere.

Better to do four cities brilliantly than ten cities badly.

And let’s be pragmatic: regional restaurants have been building international reputations without Michelin for years. Craggy Range doesn’t need a star to be excellent. But four major cities landing decisively on the global culinary map? That raises the profile of every food and wine region in New Zealand.

A rising tide lifts all boats. Even the boats not directly in the harbour.

PS why is no one screaming about the lack of drinks representation in Michelin judging criteria?

The Silence That Speaks Volumes

You know what’s fascinating? The relative quiet from some of our most established food voices.

Jesse Mulligan has been (so far) notably silent on the Michelin announcement. Perhaps that’s wisdom - staying above the fray while everyone else loses their minds. And Kelli Brett has been collegial and supportive, acknowledging it’s validation of Cuisine’s domestic efforts. Or perhaps it’s because people closest to the actual work of food criticism understand how complex this conversation really is, how many competing interests are at play, and how little anyone seem capable of nuance right now.

Meanwhile, the loudest voices are often those furthest from the kitchen, the business case, and the actual work of building food culture.

That tells you everything.

What We Actually Need (And Won’t Get From Michelin)

Let me be crystal clear: Michelin won’t solve our problems.

Not every restaurant will get a star. Most won’t be reviewed. Some cities won’t be covered. Excellent chefs will be overlooked. The guide will make mistakes. It will probably misread New Zealand’s casual dining culture. It will take years to calibrate properly.

All true. None of it changes what matters.

What we actually need - what this entire hysterical debate proves we desperately need - is someone whose job it is to think about food holistically. To connect:

• How we grow food → how we eat food → how we export food

• How we train chefs → how we review restaurants → how we promote culinary tourism

• How we support food security → how we celebrate food culture → how we build food literacy

• How we develop hospitality careers → how we retain talent → how we professionalise the industry

That’s a food strategy. A proper one. With budget, mandate, and accountability.

We don’t have it. We’ve never had it. And we’re not getting it anytime soon while our loudest voices are distracted by the wrong debate.

So when Michelin arrives - a narrow, specific, tourism-focused initiative doing exactly what it’s designed to do - everyone projects their wish list onto it and screams when it can’t deliver everything from social services to domestic media support to mental health care.

The Real Scandal

As Restaurant Association chief executive Marisa Bidois said: “This is an incredible moment for our sector, and one that will inspire many operators to continue lifting the bar for hospitality in New Zealand.”

That’s it. That’s the entire point. Not perfection. Not salvation. Inspiration and aspiration within a very specific mandate.

If Michelin’s arrival forces a national conversation about how we value, discuss, and systematically support food culture - from paddock to plate to criticism to tourism - then $6.3 million will prove to be the bargain of the decade.

The critics are right that we have problems. They’re just wrong about which ones matter.

The real scandal isn’t that Tourism New Zealand spent $6 million on Michelin.

It’s that we’re a country of 5 million people with world-class produce, talented chefs, and passionate food lovers - and we still don’t have anyone whose job it is to connect all the dots.

That’s the gap Michelin exposed. And no amount of screaming about budget lines will fill it.

Every great dairy nation has one. Now we do too.

Ireland has Bailey’s. South Africa has Amarula. The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Canada, the USA—every major dairy country in the world has a premium cream liqueur that people recognise and reach for. New Zealand? We’ve been missing from that conversation.

Wills Cameron thinks it’s time we joined it. And after understanding what he’s creating at Remarkable Cream, I’m inclined to agree.

To be fair, Bailey’s is fairly ubiquitous in family liquor cabinets around the country. And up til a few years ago, the New Zealand options were always under-priced to compete and consequently, under delivered on flavour and quality of ingredients. But in a very Kiwi way, Remarkable Cream is turning it all around diligently, purposefully and—up til now, quietly.

Why New Zealand Deserves This

Think about it: we’re one of the best dairy countries in the world. We export cream and milk powder globally. Our pastures, our climate, our dairy quality—it’s all world-class. So why wouldn’t we have a cream liqueur that stands alongside the international icons? Why shouldn’t we be just as proud of our cream liqueurs as we are of our butter and lamb exports?

“Ask anyone in the world what is the New Zealand cream liqueur and they’ll give you a blank look,” Will tells me. “If you ask them what’s the South African cream liqueur, they’ll say Amarula. Irish one? Bailey’s. If we can convince some portion of the world that, oh yeah, Remarkable Cream, that’s that New Zealand cream liqueur, and if we can be the first mover on that... I think the valuation would, in hindsight, by then, look pretty good.”

It’s not about nationalism or tall poppy syndrome. It’s simply about taking something we’re already exceptional at—dairy—and creating a premium product that showcases it properly. What we’ve been guilty of is underselling our own ability to make and enjoy, something delicious.

What Makes Remarkable Cream Actually Remarkable

Will’s approach starts with understanding what actually matters in a cream liqueur.

“The big thing about the product, and what you talk about in terms of quality, is that texture and mouthfeel is such an important part,” Will explains. “I think in cream liqueur, it’s almost more important than flavour, because it’s the aftertaste and the after effect that lasts longer and longer.”

They use fresh New Zealand dairy cream—no powder, no shortcuts—combined with high quality spirits. Everything is gluten-free, made with all-natural ingredients. No artificial flavours or colours. Just quality ingredients doing what they do best—showcased by the top gongs they picked up at the NZ Spirit Awards in 2025.

They started with traditional flavours: butterscotch and dark chocolate, familiar territory. But then Wills started thinking about what flavours could feel distinctly New Zealand. “It wasn’t going to be kiwifruit, or feijoa,” he says, laughing. And even I can’t imagine that working. So he went botanical—kawakawa, horopito, slightly floral profiles, combining Thomson whisky and mānuka honey. “That’s probably turning into our flagship product.”

But the breakthrough that really changed things? The keto range.

Last November, Remarkable launched their low-lactose, keto-friendly range. “We did like $340,000 in 30 days,” Will says, still sounding a bit surprised by it. “So it was a big uptick for us.” Low sugar options are all the rage.

Since then, they’ve launched two more keto products and gotten the process down to create fully lactose-free options. And while you’d be right to hold a certain skepticism about health food labelling claiming ‘keto-friendly’, a brief five minute dive into the process showcases the recipe skill and process behind everything Remarkable are doing.

And that Keto Irish Cream they developed? It foams beautifully—something cream liqueurs typically can’t do well because the alcohol inhibits foaming. “But the Keto recipe that we’ve done, it’s very high protein, very high fat, so it foams very well.”

Cafes in Shanghai, Ningbo, and Zhujiang already have samples. They’re interested not just because it’s keto-friendly, but because Wills has unintentionally solved a problem in bar and coffee service.

The Christmas Eggnog Worth Your Attention

Which brings us to this year’s exclusive Liquorland launch, available from November 10th: a Christmas Eggnog.

Traditional eggnog is already rich and indulgent—all that cream and egg yolk luxury with warming spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and vanilla. The kind of family recipe that sits in a grandmother’s handwriting. Remarkable’s version (proudly not low in lactose or sugar, it is Christmas after all) takes that festive warmth and indulgence but refines it by their obsession with texture and mouthfeel. Made with fresh New Zealand cream and extremely drinkable. A Christmas miracle, if you will, now you don’t have to slave in the kitchen.

The packaging embraces our summer Christmas reality. Will describes it as having “pohutukawa instead of mistletoe”—that distinctly New Zealand Christmas vibe rather than trying to replicate a Northern Hemisphere winter.

It’s exclusive to Liquorland’s 170 stores, representing something Will’s been working toward for five years: getting core range distribution with a retailer who understands what he’s building.

Where This All Started: A Father’s Dream, A Son’s Determination

The story behind Remarkable Cream makes it more than just another craft beverage. Will’s father tried this exact business. Twice. Both attempts failed.

“Five, six years ago, he was totally broke, living in a caravan,” Will says. “And for the last 15 or 20 years of his life, he really beat himself up. It was all for nothing. Two businesses down the drain, lost the family home and everything.”

But Will grew up in this world, putting caps on bottles at age eight, watching his father make cream liqueurs in Otago for 20 years. When his dad arrived in Auckland with nothing but some nearly-expired bottles and the recipe, Will decided to try selling them.

Will had noticed something: the quality was always there. “With all his failures, I saw lots of lessons in there,” he says. The product was good. It was the business model needed work.

So Will took his father’s production expertise and combined it with tools his dad never had: e-commerce and digital advertising direct to customers.

“The two biggest things that have changed is e-commerce, so Shopify for us, and then advertising, paid advertising, like Facebook,” Will explains. “If my father had that 20 years ago, maybe it would have worked to an extent.”

The other critical difference? Will refused to compete on being the cheapest option. “He always went to undercut Canterbury Cream. It was like, cheaper than cheap.”

Will went premium instead. At $55-60 a bottle, his own father thought he was crazy. The Kiwi perspective on cream liqueurs needed to be challenged - no one blinks twice at paying that for imported Bailey’s.

And it worked. Because the quality justified the price.

Today? “It’s kind of redemption for him and that it was a truly great idea,” Will says of his father. A three-generation story that went from failure to failure to finally finding success, a lot of which is due to the people, the customers who have fallen in love with the product.

The People Who Believe In It

Will didn’t build Remarkable Cream alone. He built it with his wife Jay, who’s been running marketing and digital full-time. “For three, four, six months at a time, sometimes we didn’t make any progress. But even when the online sales are slow, she doesn’t stop,” Will says.

Together, they built an online customer base of over 15,000 people. Real people who bought the product, loved it, and keep coming back.

One of those early customers became their second-ever investor. “He came to us from being a customer,” Will explains. “And then I thought, well, if one of our customers will invest, maybe 100 of them would.”

A few months ago, Will and Jay decided they needed capital for factory expansion and Australian growth. (Australian customers were already dropping $400-500 at a time buying bulk online—a big chunk of their e-commerce revenue was suddenly coming from across the Tasman.)

They could have gone to institutional investors. Instead, they went to their customers through equity crowdfunding.

It came down to the wire—literally the last three hours—but they hit their minimum. Then closed at nearly 20% over target, raising roughly $480,000.

That’s hundreds of people saying with their wallets: we believe in this product. We believe New Zealand should have a world-class cream liqueur.

Additional investors have expressed interest in coming on board after the crowdfunding round, wanting to be part of what Will’s building without seeking publicity or influence—just believing in the product and the vision.

When hundreds of customers become investors, when Australians are bulk-buying online before there’s even proper distribution there, when a major retailer like Liquorland finally commits to 170 stores after five years... that’s validation. That’s proof the market is there. That’s a signal this isn’t just a nice idea—it’s working.

New Zealand has the premium quality product, it’s just time the world hears all about it.

Why This Matters

We have incredible dairy. We have the capability to make world-class products. And now we have someone actually doing it with cream liqueurs—not apologising for being local, not competing on being cheap, but creating something premium that stands up against the best in the world.

Wills isn’t asking you to lower your standards or buy something out of patriotism. He’s made something genuinely excellent and asking you to give it a shot. And I’m telling you: this tastes good. From the business model to the aluminium bottles that are easy to open, lightweight and reducing carbon footprint to the silky mouthfeel and bright, vibrant flavours. When Grandma asks for Bailey’s on ice this Christmas, pour her this instead.

So when you see that Christmas Eggnog at Liquorland, wrapped in pohutukawa-festive Kiwiana, remember what’s behind it: three generations of work, thousands of customers who already love it enough to buy regularly, hundreds of investors who believed in it with real money, and a genuine attempt to put New Zealand on the map for something we should have been known for all along.

That’s worth raising a glass to.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some Christmas shopping to do. And possibly some eggnog to sample.

Remarkable Cream’s Keto Christmas Eggnog is available at Liquorland stores nationwide from November 10th. Find your nearest stockist or purchase your new favourite cream liqueur at remarkablecream.nz

I recently interviewed Michael Morton from Federal Merchants. He spoke directly about the role his teams have played in achieving strategic success for Scotch. Harnessing the power of your team (however you put that team together) is the difference between a good idea and a winning strategy. Read on..

Businesses need good decisions more than they need good ideas.

Let that sink in for a moment. Because if you’re a founder, there’s a good chance you’ve got the equation backwards. After all, this business is your baby. It came from within you. This idea all started with you.

The most dangerous position in business is being a business leader who’s fallen in love with being the ideas person. The only one who comes up with solutions, the one who always gets their way. You’ve got more than skin in the game, it’s emotional investment. I’ve seen thriving businesses brought to their knees because an ideas person didn’t just need to succeed, they needed to succeed doing things their way. A game of ego and identity, and not just business anymore. You know the ones—every strategic decision or marketing tactic has to go up the chain to the big boss, because they’re personally invested in every move. Heck, it used to be me.

These are the moments your brain starts playing tricks on you. Back in 1974, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman published their landmark paper “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,” demonstrating how people systematically seek information that confirms their existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence. It’s called Confirmation Bias. When it’s your idea? That bias goes into overdrive.

Creativity and productivity go hand in hand for most founders, but when times are tough, it’s time to stop being the ‘ideas’ person and start stepping up as the tougher, less glamorous “decisions” guy role. Your business needs a cohesive set of leadership skills—ideas, execution, and objective decision-making—and it doesn’t matter where those skills come from. But here’s the problem: if you’re the only person who’s always coming up with the solutions, your ability to make tough, objective decisions is under threat. You can’t be both the architect and the quality inspector. Not effectively.

The Trap You Can’t See

Studies on entrepreneurial decision-making show that confirmation bias causes founders to latch onto information that confirms pre-existing beliefs while dismissing naysayers or negative information, which can lead to the death of a startup. You start seeing only the evidence that supports your vision. Research shows that professionals across management are particularly prone to overconfidence bias—especially CEOs—which significantly impacts their decision-making.

It’s like being a blender who falls in love with their own recipe before anyone else has tasted it so doesn’t bother getting feedback. Justin Fenchel, founder of BeatBox Beverages, learned this the hard way: “Don’t just assume your idea is great. Even if your family and friends say so. Get a prototype out into the market. Get people outside of your network to tell you it’s a good idea.” This is particularly crucial in the NZ drinks industry where there are low barriers to entry making it easy to create a drink and bring it to market—but the real challenge is getting the market share.

Consider Blockbuster in 2000. Executives were convinced their business model would never fail—and laughed Netflix’s founders out of the room, ignoring a partnership deal that would have changed everything. They filed for bankruptcy a decade later. Netflix is now worth billions.

Be the Decisions Guy Instead

Imagine if someone had the courage to pause that meeting to ask some constructive questions of the Blockbuster CEO?

In your business, whether you’re the founder or the Managing Director, your job isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to filter and direct the solutions to get the right outcomes. To make sure the right questions are being asked. You’re the master blender, so you taste everything, understand the full palate, know what to keep and what to cut and—crucially—when to stop. And you know who’s palate to trust for feedback. Most importantly, you don’t lone-wolf it.

Umberto Luchini, founder of Wolf Spirit Distillery, nails it: “The most important habits I must maintain are focus, resilience, and flexibility. I must enforce a delicate balance of not changing strategy too often, but being nimble enough to change it when I realise that something is not working out as hoped.”

If survival in the drinks industry was a game, the spoils will always go to the winning strategy, not the strategist. It’s a tough lesson for a strategist to learn, but it changed the course of my career. Ultimately, it rarely matters who comes up with the winning idea because it’s only execution that matters. See? A poor strategy is always blamed, but a good one is rarely praised. Being the ideas guy ain’t so much of a thrill. Trust me, I worked in advertising.

How to Become a Better Decision-Maker

Here’s the uncomfortable bit: founders can be some of the hardest people to tell the truth to, because they’re used to creating their own universe; surrounding themselves who also believe in the cause. Cue scenes from WeWork, The Dropout, The Social Network.. you name it.

If you’re working solo or with only one or two employees who rely on you for their livelihoods, you have yes-people by default. Not because they can’t say no, but because power dynamics are real.

Three practical moves:

Build an advisory board. Not cheerleaders. Find constructive and qualified people who have nothing to lose by telling you no or giving you challenging but constructive feedback. People who’ll look you in the eye and say “show me the data.” They’ll interrogate your business model.

Demand evidence, not enthusiasm. The fix for confirmation bias is straightforward: embrace criticisms and negative information. Use it to make your idea stronger and more likely to succeed. Ask for market validation. Ask for numbers that back up the brilliant hunch. Never rely on a single source of feedback.

Ask the uncomfortable questions.
“What are we missing?”
“What would have to be true for this to work?”
”What would have to be true for this to fail?”
“Where’s the data that says this will work?”

Make these questions routine, not emergency measures. Investigate your own magical thinking.

The liberation here is profound. Less pressure to be brilliant, more space to be effective. You’re not the source of all innovation—you’re the quality control that ensures the best ideas win.

A Boring Strategy Still Beats A Brand-New Idea (Usually)

Here’s the thing about great ideas: most of us don’t have them. And that’s fine. There is only one Taylor Swift. (IYKYK).

Regardless of how good the idea is, you’ll still need to do the work that makes every good idea successful. The hygiene. The COGS management, the marketing investment and finding an audience ready to engage. No revolutionary idea alone can generate revenue. You’ll always have to do the work. Which is why sometimes you don’t need a flashy new idea (did somebody say rebrand?). You need to knuckle down to consistent strategic decisions, methodical improvement, and the discipline to execute what works rather than what feels like the exciting silver bullet. Over time, strategy beats the sizzle of a new idea, because most customers are mainstream and not early adopters.

(Unless, of course, your idea actually is Netflix. Then Netflix wins. Evenutally. So far.)

The exception that proves the rule: if you’ve got the capital to play with and can carry the risk of your good ideas not delivering outcomes, then play all day. Experiment. Follow your instincts. Learn from failure and success. Refine and master your craft. But if the outcomes matter more than how you get there—if cash flow is tight, if margins are razor-thin, if you’re betting the business on this call—then you need strategy based in reality, not ideas that sound good in an echo chamber.

There’s a NZ producer making two products—one costs him $4 a bottle to sell and the other $0.30. He’s still making both because the opportunity cost still outweighs the opportunity investment. But he’s done the work and rationalised the strategy. Simple.

But here’s a critical self-reflection: do you have the clarity to know which role you are fulfilling right now? Are you being the solutions-lead or the strategy mastermind?Because that is exactly the kind of objective assessment that’s impossible when you’re lost in defending your brilliant solution.

Most businesses succeed through relentless execution of sound strategy, not flashes of genius. The best idea in the room should win. Not just yours. That’s not weakness. That’s leadership.

So start being the strategist, pulling together your A-team of advisors and challengers. Because businesses need good decisions more than they need good ideas. And if you can’t tell the difference, you’re already in trouble.

Need Someone to Tell You No?

Look, I’ve just spent 800 words telling you to find people who’ll challenge your ideas. So here’s where I remind you I’m here to help.

I work with drinks business leaders who need objective input—someone who’ll ask the hard questions and demand to see the data or help you find it. No nodding along. Just years of experience helping you sort the good from the great decisions. Available for consulting or as a strategic sounding board. Let’s talk.

“It gives you the responsibility to act as a leader and do the right thing.”

It could be a quote from any leader in almost any industry, but when Michael Morton (or Morts, as he’s known) says it, he’s talking about stewardship. About what it means to be a custodian of Scotch whisky in a market 18,000 kilometres from Scotland.

When the Federal Merchants’ MD placed his hand on a giant silver quaich at Blair Castle, he wasn’t just accepting an honour – he was becoming part of New Zealand’s place in Scotch whisky’s global story. And yes, there were bagpipes. Fanfare. A banquet in a castle.

Let’s be honest: the drinks industry loves its awards. We hand out medals like confetti at a wedding, slap “Best in Show” on everything from gin to glassware, and create enough trophies to stock a small museum. But some honours operate on a different frequency entirely.

The Keeper of the Quaich isn’t something you campaign for. You can’t buy your way in. You get nominated by people who’ve watched you work, who’ve seen you build something meaningful in Scotch whisky, and who believe you’ve earned a seat at one of the industry’s most exclusive tables.

When Morts walked into Blair Castle in Scotland’s Perthshire Highlands earlier this year, he became one of roughly 2,700 people worldwide – and only the eighth New Zealander – to receive this designation.

This matters. Not just for Morton, not just for Federal Merchants, but for what it signals about New Zealand’s evolution from Scotch whisky consumer to Scotch whisky market that matters. The Keepers are a unique industry initiative in the world of spirits. A group of whisky houses that fiercely competie for consumer affections, they band together twice a year to recognise those doing significant work to nurture, protect and promote Scotch whisky, uisge beatha - the water of life.

A Long-Serving Guardian

“I love Scotch. I love the industry,” Morts tells me, and there’s none of that corporate-speak polish you sometimes get when people talk about their work. “I’ve been fortunate enough to visit quite a few distilleries in Scotland, and when you meet the people, hear their stories and see them making the whisky, and the passion that they’ve got for it – it’s hard not to get swept up in all of that.”

This isn’t a recent romance but a path that has woven through William Grant & Sons multiple times – at Lion when they held the portfolio, directly for the whisky house itself, and now as Managing Director of Federal Merchants, which has distributed the majority of William Grant’s brands in NZ since 2017.

Michael is proud and open about that long standing connection, after all, relationship is at the heart of the Scotch industry. “You do need to be nominated,” he explains. “Now I’m a keeper, I can literally nominate anyone. But there is definitely a lot more weight behind your nomination if one of those whisky houses is nominating you.”

Because becoming a Keeper isn’t about sales targets. It’s about what you’ve actually done to advance Scotch whisky as a category. So I asked him where he sees the impact he’s made as a leader in the NZ industry and in particular with this recognition for Scotch whisky.

“Good question.”

When Federal Merchants took over the William Grant’s portfolio from Lion in 2017, they inherited brands underperforming their potential. Take The Balvenie – Morton’s personal favourite, with the 14-year-old as his everyday dram and the 21 Year Old Portwood for when he’s feeling generous.

“When the brand was at Lion, they had the 12 year old and Balvenie was very much an afterthought,” he recalls. “It kind of stuck around the same volume, year in year out. One of the first things we did at Federal was just to unlock the rest of the premium portfolio.”

Growing luxury malts in a market conditioned to think of Scotch primarily as blended whisky required actual strategy.

“That was one of the things that was called out in my nomination, actually – the role that I’d played in growing luxury malts here in NZ,” Morton says. “We’ve now brought in the first 50 year old Glenfiddich bottles into the country, things like that. A lot of people’s experiences in the past had really just been blended scotch. So we’ve gone out of our way to open up the consumer experience and bring premium expressions into the market.”

Federal has significantly invested in advocacy and education, including bringing in brand ambassadors, supporting consumer whisky events like Dramfest in Christchurch and convincing retailers to showcase premium single malt whisky in-store. That particular endeavour led to installing “maybe two, 300 Glenfiddich stands in retail,” Morton estimates.

“That was a bit of a turning point in convincing not just consumers but retailers that, hey, there is a market for this, and if you showcase them, guess what? You’re actually going to sell some.”

The Castle, The Quaich, The Ceremony

Blair Castle isn’t some industry conference in a hotel ballroom with bad coffee.

“It’s a beautiful ceremony,” Morton says. “The Scots do pomp and ceremony just as well, just slightly differently. Lots of bagpipes, lots of processions, and because we ate haggis, of course there’s the ode to the haggis.” The evening is a celebration of Scotch whisky’s best marketing strategy—a genuine camaraderie where time spent goes by in a blur.

Forty-eight new Keepers were inducted at Morton’s ceremony. You arrive to the Atholl Highlanders – Europe’s only private army – and move through different rooms in elaborate orchestration but the ceremony itself is smaller, private and imbued with meaning as new Keepers are inducted just five at a time.

“You go into the ceremony room, where the Grand Master is with the big quaich (the Grand Quaich of the Keepers of the Quaich),” Morton explains. “A citation is read out about you and the other four that you’re in that particular room with. You put your hand on the quaich and you take an oath to uphold the values and keep promoting scotch. It’s kind of like getting married, I guess – you say I do.”

Then comes the feast: 250-300 people, five courses, five whiskies matched to each. And not just any whiskies: Morton got to drink a Balvenie 19 year old that isn’t even available in New Zealand. The whole event ran until nearly midnight.

“It was one of those ‘money can’t buy that’ kind of experiences,” he says. “Something I’ll never forget.”

One detail he particularly loved: “The ceremony is exactly the same every single time. One of the guys on our table, Ken – he’s the William Grant’s representative on the committee – he’s been to it 30 times.” So if it sounds full of ritual, it is. With just slightly less hazing than welcoming a new brother-in-law to family Christmas.

Morts spent three days before the ceremony at Dufftown, living on-site at Balvenie House with three other William Grant’s nominees. “We spent three days together with some of the Scottish people, and they’re just so nice. And I just think there’s a lot of commonality, apart from the accents, in the way that we look at life and the way that we treat people, and how friendly everyone is.”

“We couldn’t be further away – you couldn’t get further away from Scotland than New Zealand,” Morton laughs. “But we’re very similar people.”

And he’s right for a reason. When you start exploring New Zealand’s history, people and whisky, there are deep threads of connection back to those Caledonian roots. It’s in the DNA, really – that sense of hospitality, of generosity, of valuing craft and time and doing things properly.

What It Means Now

Here’s what they made clear to Morton at the ceremony: “This is not to make you work harder on Scotch in the future. This is really a recognition and reflection of what you’ve done to date.”

But of course it changes things, Morts reflects. Hence the responsibility to do the right thing.

“Being a keeper kind of makes you broaden your horizon, just from your brand to the category as a whole,” Morton observes. “It gives you the responsibility to act as a leader and do the right thing.”

The Reality Check

Scotch whisky is having a rough time globally. New Zealand isn’t immune.

“Consumers – there’s only so many price rises they will accept,” Morton says frankly. “They get to the point where they just go, no, enough’s enough. I’m actually not going to buy that $80, $90, $100 bottle of whisky. I’m going to buy the $50 this time.”

Federal Merchants plays heavily in the premium end. Result? “Effectively, to maintain turnover in the market, all distributors and everyone involved are all having to squeeze their own margins.”

Morton’s been around long enough to see the ebbs and flows. “We’ve been around long enough to know that it is a cycle. We’re hoping that 2026 will return to some sort of normality when some people are willing to pay that extra to buy those premium products again.”

Here’s the thing about industry cycles: a lot of people working in the Scotch industry didn’t know, weren’t planning, weren’t prepared. You can’t get away with that for long. Morton has been in the industry long enough to know you survive by maintaining your allocations (product in country), by keeping your relationships strong, and not panicking and making rash decisions when times get tight.

Allocations have always been a challenge for small market importers. “Once you’ve got an allocation of a product or an aged malt, if you don’t use that allocation in any particular year, you can lose it. So the challenge for us is to maintain our allocations when we’re going through this phase of downturn, so that we’re fully stocked and supplied for when the market does return.”

Federal Merchants will keep bringing in the good stuff, even if it means losing margin short-term. When the market turns – and it will – they want to be ready.

The Blend Comeback

While luxury malts struggle, blended Scotch is “on fire at the moment, because consumers are trading down to mainstream blended whisky, just because it’s more affordable.”

Which brings us back to that idea of leadership. Of responsibility.

“We have the responsibility to make sure that Scotch is accessible and competitive in the market without cheapening blends or the category,” Morton explains. “Because Scotch is not, Scotch is premium. It’s harder to make. You’ve gotta put it in the barrel for three years. You can almost turn on a tap and make vodka, but you can’t do that with Scotch. So we certainly don’t want to be cheapening Scotch or giving it away. But you also do need to make it accessible.”

The tightrope: maintaining competitiveness while preserving premium positioning.

It’s a significant challenge to explain the value of time, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis when consumers are watching every dollar. But that’s the job. That’s the responsibility that comes with being a leader in the category.

The Independent Advantage

Federal Merchants is 100% New Zealand owned and operated. In an industry increasingly dominated by multinational consolidation, that’s rare.

“I think coming through those COVID years, everyone became quite patriotic and supporting local became really kind of like a badge of honour,” Morton observes. “We don’t shout it from the rooftops, but we just mention it – it’s in our email signature, just little things like that.”

The advantage? “They all own their own businesses, and they like the fact that we own ours. And they especially like it – our suppliers – like the fact that when they’re talking to me, I’ve got shares in the business, so they’re talking to one of the owners, rather than a brand manager or a marketing manager who might leave in a couple of years.”

The downside? “We haven’t got big, deep overseas pockets to absorb losses like some of our competitors.”

But: “If we think something’s a good idea, we can do it the next day. I’ve worked in those big distributors for big global companies a lot of my career, and it always slowed you down when you had to go up the chain of command. We’re nimble, and we have to be, because we haven’t got the money that some of these international companies have. So where we can win is on speed and flexibility.”

The Message to Industry

When I ask what he’d tell trade customers right now, Morton doesn’t hesitate: “Tough times never last, but tough people do. You’ve just got to survive and be ready for when the market does turn, because it will.”

He’s worried about venues closing. “We’ve seen so many restaurants and shops even closing recently, which is really, really sad. The danger is that people aren’t brave enough to open new venues. But thank God there are people out there still willing, because life would be pretty boring if we didn’t have restaurants and bars to go to.”

This is the message that needs to be heard across the industry right now. Don’t make groundbreaking or rash decisions based on the market as it is today. Survive. Be ready. Support each other.

“We’re all selling sociability and hospitality. It’s really important that we continue to thrive and look after each other as an industry, and make sure that we last. Because life would be pretty boring if we didn’t.”

And personally? He’s still reaching for that Balvenie 14. “I guess that’s one of the traps when you’re distributing some amazing products – you tend to drink those all the time. Nothing wrong with that.”

Though he did give The Balvenie’s Malt Master Kelsey McKechnie special mention for The Sweet Toast of American Oak. The woman is doing extraordinary work, and Morton knows it.

The Responsibility

For most Scotch single malt drinkers in New Zealand, they likely don’t realise how much they have to thank Morts and his teams for over the years. Did you taste the Glenfiddich Grand Cru after it won Best in Show at the 2022 New Zealand Whisky Awards? Have you seen the Gran Reserva or Project XX on a shelf or backbar? Tasted the Balvenie or enjoyed Monkey Shoulder? The journey from Glenfiddich 12 to the 50 year old bottles in market has been hard-won every step of the way. So the steps Morton took into Blair Castle weren’t just for himself, but for all the people that did the work along the way. And in a way, for the New Zealanders who love Scotch and keep pursuing their passion for it.

Because here’s the thing about becoming a Keeper of the Quaich: it’s not really about the ceremony, the castle, or even the recognition (though those are nice). It’s about being part of a global community that genuinely gives a damn about Scotch whisky as more than just a product category. It’s about caring enough to build bridges between Scotland and New Zealand that go deeper than simple distribution agreements. It’s recognition for doing the work but more than that, it’s a reminder that leadership in Scotch whisky isn’t about quarterly targets or market dominance but often about staying the course and doing things the right way.

The Quaich itself is a two-handled shallow cup, that has come to represent trust, love and friendship. It’s an apt reminder that being a Keeper is about stewardship—promoting, protecting and nurturing all that is Scotch whisky from the juice to the relationships with the people who make it, sell it, serve it, and drink it.

Even from the furthest corner of the planet.

Michael Morton remains Managing Director of Federal Merchants. His Balvenie 21 Year Old Portwood allocation remains jealously guarded. The haggis was consumed safely at the ceremony. The bagpipes, sadly, had to stay in Scotland.

Keen to hear more from industry leaders? Perhaps you have a burning question. The inbox in open for your questions, requests and feedback.

Did you miss last week’s Full Pour feature?

Dave Broom recently wrote about whisky’s twenty-year cycles—those giant swells of peaks and troughs that have shaped the industry since the 1960s. “There’s a storm a-comin’,” he warned, noting that many people running firms today have never navigated a downturn. They’ve only known rising sales, benign climates, clear horizons. Now the skies are darkening.

He’s right. But he’s only describing one front of the storm.

For centuries, the spirits industry understood something fundamental: you measure success in decades, not quarters. Plant agave, wait eight to ten years. Fill a cask, wait twelve. Build a brand, wait a generation. The industry’s greatest successes were built on patience, on understanding that demand and supply move like tides—slow, cyclical, inevitable. You batten down during the troughs. You sail hard during the peaks. But you always, always know which part of the cycle you’re in.

Then everyone forgot how to keep time, fell out of rhythm and focused on counting the wrong numbers.

What Broom identified for whisky—that cyclical downturn, falling demand meeting rising capacity—is just the visible wave on the surface. Underneath, four separate storm systems are converging. Climate chaos redrawing where we can grow and make spirits. Geopolitical upheaval closing borders we assumed would stay open. Digital vulnerability turning copper stills into code-dependent targets. And consumers fundamentally rethinking their relationship with alcohol itself.

Each storm alone would demand adaptation. But here’s what makes this existential: each storm is an accelerant to the core problem. We built too many distilleries for a shrinking market. And just when we needed growth to absorb that capacity, four forces arrived to ensure the market contracts even faster.

The Core Crisis: We Built Too Much for a Market That’s Shrinking

The numbers tell the story with brutal clarity.

U.S. craft spirits sales declined for the first time ever in 2023, with producers losing market share—dropping from 4.9% to 4.6% in volume and from 7.7% to 7.5% in value. Yet the number of active craft distillers grew by 11.5% to 3,069. American whiskey volumes grew at 5% annually from 2019 to 2022, then crashed: -1% in 2023, another -2% in the first eight months of 2024. MGP Ingredients—a major contract producer—announced plans to reduce production in 2025.

More distilleries chasing fewer sales. That’s not growth. That’s a glut.

And Asia Pacific is following the same trajectory. Twenty years ago, you could count New Zealand’s commercial distilleries on two hands. Today there are almost 200, with 321 NZ entries in the 2024 New Zealand Spirits Awards. In Australia, the number went from a dozen in 2010 to over 300 today, with distilleries rising by 30% in recent years. Scapegrace just opened a NZ$30 million distillery—New Zealand’s largest—capable of producing 160,000 cases of single malt whisky per annum.

Spectacular growth in capacity. Declining growth in consumption. The maths doesn’t work.

Australian data shows alcohol sales value grew by just 0.7% whilst sales volume dropped 3.9% in the year to June 2024. People are drinking less. The spirits business operates on long pendulum swings—boom and bust, scarcity and surplus, decades of patience followed by decades of reward and peppered with FMCG consumable trends. But somewhere along the way, the industry filled up with people who only understood quarterly growth. Who didn’t know—or didn’t care—that you can’t build a spirits brand on a start-up timeline or based on trends alone.

So they overplanted. Overproduced. Overpromised. And now we have a glut of liquid in a market that’s contracting under the weight of health trends, economic uncertainty, and consumer fatigue.

The standard response? Export. As one Australian distiller noted, domestic use of native ingredients “has reached saturation, and the industry will be looking to international markets to grow.” According to Deloitte Access Economics, whilst only 17% of Australian spirits manufacturers currently export, 40% are interested in doing so. And increasingly, NZ distillers are seeing it as business-critical, not optional.

Except when everyone exports, export isn’t a solution. It’s just moving inventory sideways whilst margins compress and competition intensifies. You can’t export your way out of a structural oversupply problem.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Rebase your revenue assumptions: If your forecasting model was built during 2019-2022, throw it out. Start with what you actually sold last year. Model for flat to -5% volume growth domestically. Better to plan conservatively than overproduce and carry unsold stock.

2. Factor in the real tax burden: In NZ, 60-70% of retail price is excise and GST. In Australia, spirits face $104.31 per litre excise—one of the world’s highest. Build your pricing models around this reality. On a $90 bottle, you’re working with $27-36 before production, packaging, distribution, marketing, and salaries. If those margins don’t work, your pricing or cost structure is wrong. And you can’t bank on excise being cut, dropped or frozen anytime soon.

3. Cut your SKU count in half: Many small distilleries carry 8-12 SKUs when they should carry 3-5 exceptional ones. Every additional SKU costs you in production complexity, inventory management, marketing dilution, and shelf space competition. Many are competing with themselves. Master your flagship products before launching variants nobody asked for.

4. Only pursue export when domestically profitable: If you’re not profitable at home, export will accelerate your collapse. Export demands volume, consistency, marketing support, and extended payment terms. Treat it as portfolio diversification (spreading risk), not your primary growth engine. And if you are export-capable, you’ll need to find clear space even one market at a time.

Now, here’s why this oversupply crisis is about to get worse. Four external forces are converging to ensure the market contracts faster than the industry can adapt.

Storm One: Climate Chaos Destroys Your Revenue Timing

Climate change isn’t coming for the spirits industry. It’s already here, destroying the revenue patterns you’ve built your cash flow around.

Scotland’s 2018 summer heatwave forced five of Islay’s ten distilleries to halt production, alongside Blair Atholl and Edradour in Perthshire. Glenfarclas in Speyside lost 300,000 litres of whisky—an entire month of production—simply because it was too hot to make whisky. The same heatwave caused a 7.9% decline in UK spring barley production, spiking prices from £145 to £179 per tonne and adding roughly £27 million in costs to an industry requiring 800,000 tonnes annually.

By 2080, researchers predict Scotland will face droughts every 20 years instead of every 40, with summer rainfall declining by up to 18% and temperatures rising by 2°C.

Here in the Asia Pacific, we’re watching our own version unfold. California and Queensland farmers have turned to agave as drought-resistant alternatives. Top Shelf International now farms nearly half a million agave plants in the Whitsundays. Australian grain production is booming but prices are dropping so market forces will look to correct for profitability - so your Australian NGS may not get cheaper. But here’s the immediate crisis for NZ and Australian producers: extreme weather is hitting during your peak revenue periods. Peak summer in New Zealand—January, when hospitality and tourism should drive massive spirits consumption—is increasingly disrupted. Nelson and Hawke’s Bay, two of our most important holiday hotspots, have faced cyclones, floods, and road closures during what should be the highest-revenue period. Remember Cyclone Gabrielle in January 2023? Roads closed. Deliveries stopped. Revenue evaporated. Not to mention contracted, low snowfall ski seasons back to back in the South Island, dropping visitor spend and days in market.

How this worsens oversupply: You built inventory expecting November - February to deliver 15-20% of annual revenue. When extreme weather cuts off key markets during peak season, that inventory doesn’t move. Meanwhile, you’re still producing because the still is running. The glut compounds whilst cash flow collapses at precisely the moment you need it most.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Remodel seasonal forecasting with climate disruption as baseline: Build scenarios—what does revenue look like if Nelson is cut off for two weeks in January? If Hawke’s Bay faces another Gabrielle-level event? If Auckland festivals are cancelled due to heat warnings? Make January variable (±30%) in your planning, not guaranteed.

2. Diversify your geographic revenue dependence: If 40% of your revenue comes from two regions, you have a climate risk concentration problem. Develop relationships with accounts in multiple regions so one weather event doesn’t sink your quarter.

3. Build deeper cash reserves: If your cash flow model depends on a massive Q4/Q1 bump that may not materialise, you need 12-18 months of operating reserves, not 3-6. That changes everything from production scheduling to staff planning.

4. Invest in climate adaptation proactively: Water management systems, backup power, temperature control. Sustainability can’t be an afterthought—it’s survival infrastructure.

Storm Two: Geopolitics Closes Your Escape Valve

The drinks industry has always relied on a gentlemen’s agreement: borders stay open, tariffs stay reasonable, and spirits flow freely between trading partners. That agreement is dissolving, and it’s destroying the one solution everyone counted on for oversupply—export.

When Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods in March 2025, Canadian provinces retaliated by stripping American spirits from government-controlled store shelves. U.S. spirits exports to Canada plummeted 85% in the second quarter. Ontario’s LCBO pulled more than 3,600 American products—Jack Daniel’s, Bacardi, California wines—creating empty shelves overnight.

Brown-Forman’s CEO called it “worse than a tariff” and “very disproportionate,” noting it was “literally taking your sales away.” Michter’s Distillery lost $115,000 in cancelled bourbon shipments to Canada, its largest foreign market. Cedar Ridge Distillery in Iowa had spent two to three years building the Canadian market after being forced out of Europe—only to watch that investment evaporate.

Not because of quality issues or consumer rejection. Because of political decisions made thousands of miles away from any distillery.

How this worsens oversupply: Export was supposed to be the escape valve. Domestic market oversaturated? Sell overseas. Except 40% of NZ distilleries are eyeing the same strategy where they’ll now compete with American whiskies dropping in pricepoint to move volume—cashflow is King. And when borders close or saturate—not gradually, but overnight—all that inventory meant for export has nowhere to go. It sits in warehouses, tying up capital, whilst you keep producing to hit the volume that justified the investment in the first place.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Diversify export markets before you need to: If you’re established in one market, don’t build 80% of export revenue there. Spread across 3-5 markets minimum. When one closes, you have alternatives. And start building those relationships now, before crisis forces desperate decisions.

2. Build contract flexibility for geopolitical disruption: Force majeure clauses that specifically cover tariffs and trade restrictions. If you can’t deliver due to political actions beyond your control, you need contractual protection.

3. Reassess your 20-year distribution strategy: The days of stable, predictable trade relationships are over. Plan for pivots every 18-24 months. That means lighter commitments, faster exit options, and relationships that can adapt.

4. Strengthen domestic market position first: You can survive losing export markets if your domestic business is solid. You can’t survive losing domestic market share whilst chasing export dreams. Get profitable at home before expanding abroad.

Storm Three: Cyber Attacks Destroy Production When You Can’t Afford Downtime

The spirits industry is digital now, whether it likes it or not. And that’s created vulnerabilities that can wipe out weeks or months of production overnight.

In September 2025, Asahi Group Holdings—Japan’s largest brewer producing Asahi Super Dry, Nikka Whisky, Peroni, Pilsner Urquell, and Grolsch—suffered a ransomware attack that shut down all 30 domestic factories. Production remained halted for days. The Qilin ransomware group claimed they had stolen 27 gigabytes of data. Convenience stores across Japan faced shortages.

Critical ERP systems and manufacturing execution systems were compromised, halting bottling lines and packaging equipment across multiple prefectures. Production control servers became inaccessible, triggering automatic shutdown of plant machinery. While the beer sat in tanks. While distributors pivoted to competitors. While market share evaporated and contracts went unfulfilled.

This isn’t happening in some distant market. This is our neighbourhood. And smaller operations are more vulnerable than the big players because they lack dedicated IT security infrastructure. Even your credit card on file for software subscriptions could fail you in a security breach.

How this worsens oversupply: A ransomware attack hits and production stops entirely—but your fixed costs don’t. Staff still need paying. Rent is still due. Distributors still expect deliveries. Except you can’t access your systems to manage supply chain or cashflow. Meanwhile, competitors fill your shelf space.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Budget for cybersecurity like insurance: Because it is insurance. If you’re using digital systems for production management, customer databases, or online sales—and you are—allocate $5,000-10,000 annually minimum. Regular backups stored offline, two-factor authentication on everything, employee phishing training, and a disaster recovery plan.

2. Test your recovery plan: Having a plan that’s never been tested is having no plan. Run disaster scenarios: what if your systems are locked tomorrow? Who has authority to negotiate? What’s the communication protocol with customers? Test it.

3. Maintain manual backup systems for critical functions: You should be able to run basic production and fulfil existing orders even if all your digital systems are down. Paper backups of customer orders, manual inventory tracking, alternate payment processing. Redundancy saves businesses.

4. Get cyber insurance with business interruption coverage: Standard insurance won’t cover ransomware losses. You need specific cyber coverage that includes business interruption. It’s not cheap, but a month of lost production is far more expensive.

Storm Four: Consumers Are Drinking Less—Permanently

The “sober curious” movement isn’t a fad. It’s a fundamental recalibration of how people relate to alcohol, and it’s shrinking the market faster than producers can adapt.

New Zealand data tells the story: hazardous drinking among adults declined from 21.3% in 2019/20 to 16.6% in 2023/24. In the year to June 2024, total alcohol consumption fell by 7.2%—the largest decline in eight years—with spirits dropping 14%. This despite the NZ population growing 11% over the same period. Translation: Kiwis are drinking significantly less, with 84% now drinking responsibly, but those who do drink are spending selectively on higher-quality products.

And we’re seeing signs that as people age and life-stage into more disposable income, drinking returns. But not as high or frequent so watch this space.

The market for full-strength spirits is contracting whilst demand for alternatives grows. For industry, this requires a rethink of new product development, branding, and target audience. And a cautious approach because the data is still moving.

How this worsens oversupply: You built capacity assuming 2019-2022 consumption patterns would continue or grow. Instead, the market is shrinking structurally, not cyclically. Fewer people are drinking spirits. Those who do are drinking less. Premium positioning helps margin but doesn’t solve volume problems when the overall market contracts 3-9% annually. You have more distilleries, making more liquid, for fewer consumers buying less alcohol. The mathematics is catastrophic.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Shift from volume to value immediately: Stop chasing case counts. Start building brands that command good margin from the shrinking but sophisticated consumer base that remains. Better to sell 5,000 cases at healthy margins than 15,000 cases at break-even.

2. Diversify into low/no-alcohol offerings: Not as token gestures, but as genuine business lines. But a word of caution—you must do the numbers and commit to a long term play or run the risk of the RTD-pop boom: products pushed out to meet boom trends only repeat the cycle of shelf saturation and quick consumer fatigue.

3. Build direct relationships with consumers: When the market shrinks, wholesalers and distributors consolidate too. They’ll carry fewer brands. Your survival depends on having direct-to-consumer channels that deliver 30-50% of revenue at full retail margins, not 10% at wholesale pricing.

4. Measure what matters: Stop tracking vanity metrics (social media followers, award medals). Start tracking survival metrics: gross margin per bottle, customer acquisition cost, repeat purchase rate, days of cash on hand, inventory turnover. If you don’t know these numbers monthly, you’re flying blind.

Special Considerations: The Medium-to-Large Distillery Paradox

If you’re producing 50,000 to 500,000 cases annually, you face the most acute challenges. You’re too large to operate on craft margins but too small to compete on multinational efficiency. Small operations can pivot quickly. Global giants have scale and reserves. You’re caught in the middle, with the worst of both worlds unable to just hit pause and ride it out.

In New Zealand, too many small craft distilleries can simply slow production, pull back hours, employee numbers and ride out the storm while managing day jobs to expect the kind of closures the US industry has reported since 2024 (25%). It’s time to be honest, 25% fewer New Zealand brands competing for shelf space sure sounds good, doesn’t it? But this is not Survivor and there’s no way to vote people off the island. And because it’s the medium size distilleries that face the toughest operating conditions, there’s no way to promise the best of the best will survive purely on quality alone. That’s no longer the prize.

Your cost of goods sold might look efficient on paper, but if you’re haemorrhaging value through a distribution model built for volume that no longer exists, time to rethink. You’ve invested in automation, professional sales teams, distributor networks, and marketing infrastructure but now you need to ask: is your infrastructure model delivering return, or just burning cash?

What You Must Do Now:

1. Apply rigorous brand value to COGS analysis quarterly: For each product, calculate true COGS (including allocated overhead), compare to realised wholesale price (not list price—what you actually receive after discounts), then measure against brand perception metrics. If a product isn’t delivering both margin and brand value (think onward sales opportunity and lifetime customer value), kill it. You don’t have the luxury of carrying dead weight.

2. Remodel sales forecasts with seasonal change as baseline: Peak summer revenue is no longer guaranteed. If your cash flow depends on January delivering 15-20% of annual revenue, you’re building on sand. Model January as variable, require deeper reserves, flatten revenue expectations across the year. This changes production scheduling, staff planning, and inventory positioning. And remember all the seasons that impact consumer spending in economic crunch—elections, OCR announcements, holiday seasons, winter downturns.

3. Bring in external commercial expertise: You’re too close to see where you’re burning money. Spending $20-50K on external analysis that finds $300K in inefficiencies or identifies pivots adding $1 million in margin is the highest ROI decision you can make. They’ll identify which channels are stalling versus moving product, which accounts are profitable versus draining resources, and inefficiencies you’ve become blind to.

4. Prepare for consolidation—as acquirer or target: The shakeout will create M&A opportunities. Either position to acquire struggling competitors’ best assets, or make yourself attractive for acquisition by building genuine brand equity and operational efficiency. Know which outcome you’re building towards.

Navigating the Storm

The perfect storm is here. Climate chaos destroying revenue timing. Geopolitics closing borders. Cyber attacks eliminating production capacity. Consumers drinking less permanently. And underneath it all, structural oversupply in a contracting market.

As Broom wrote: “Batten down the hatches, lash yourself to the wheel. It’s going to get rough.” But I’d add this: you also need to check your charts, recalculate your position, and make sure you’re sailing for a destination that still exists.

These aren’t theoretical concerns. Scotland lost 300,000 litres of whisky production in a single month due to heat. U.S. spirits exports to Canada dropped 85% overnight due to tariffs. Asahi’s 30 factories sat idle for days due to ransomware. Australian alcohol volumes declined 3.9% whilst distillery numbers grew 30%. The forces reshaping this industry aren’t coming—they’re here.

The distilleries that survive won’t be the largest, oldest, or the ones with the best products. No one is entitled to survival. They’ll be the ones who understood early that the rules have changed. Who rebuilt their financial models around disruption, not historical patterns. And kept embracing what customers were saying.

The question isn’t whether the industry can survive. It’s whether individual businesses can remember the principles that built this industry in the first place: patience, quality, and the understanding that some things—good whisky, strong brands, sustainable businesses—simply take time.

The compass is spinning. The survivors know which direction to sail.

And don’t stop there. Have your say in the comments below.

There’s a particular kind of courage required to invest in premium packaging when everyone else is battening down the hatches. While distilleries across New Zealand are pulling back, trimming costs, and riding out what has been—let’s not mince words—a brutal winter for hospitality and premium spirits, Kākāpō Distillery is doing something quietly audacious. They’re launching new bottles. Beautiful ones. Made from 100% post-consumer recycled glass.

And they’re not passing the cost on to customers.

Let that sit for a moment. In an environment where every margin matters, this B Corp-certified distillery is absorbing the increased expense of more sustainable, more distinctive packaging because, as they put it, “sustainability shouldn’t be a barrier—consumers shouldn’t have to choose between quality and doing what’s right for the planet.”

It’s the kind of principled positioning that either builds unshakeable brand loyalty or gets you laughed out of a distributor meeting. But when you dig into the strategy behind Kākāpō’s refresh, you start to see the method behind what might initially look like madness.

The Timing Paradox

“Moving to a new bottle is a significant investment, especially in the current tough economic environment,” co-founder Conrad Morley acknowledges without flinching. So why now?

Because sometimes the only way forward is through.

This wasn’t impulsive. The search for 100% recycled glass bottles has been part of Kākāpō’s vision since inception—three to four years of navigating barriers, investigating suppliers, and waiting for the right moment. This year, several factors converged: a natural evolution point in the brand’s lifecycle, preparation for national expansion with new distribution partner The Liquor Locker, and the completion of nearly 12 months of research, brand refresh work, and field testing.

“There are so many unique, interesting products on the shelf now,” Morley notes. “We want to make sure that we are not getting lost.”

Here’s the commercial genius: In a compressed market, visibility becomes currency. Getting lost on the shelf isn’t just a marketing problem—it’s an existential threat. The new packaging isn’t despite the tough conditions; it’s because of them.

The Search for Wild Glass

Finding a supplier that ticked every box turned into an odyssey—one that reveals just how challenging sustainable choices remain for small producers.

The wishlist was deceptively simple: 100% post-consumer recycled glass, achievable minimum order quantities for a small producer, visual distinctiveness, and practical functionality. In reality? Nearly impossible to find all four in one package.

New Zealand suppliers couldn’t meet the requirements. Often, recycled glass is only available with custom bottles—prohibitively expensive for a brand at Kākāpō’s scale, with MOQs designed for multinationals rather than craft distilleries. Australia and China presented similar challenges: either the sustainability credentials weren’t there, or the volumes required were out of reach.

“We considered suppliers closer to home (e.g. NZ, Aus, China), but we either couldn’t meet the minimum order quantities or they didn’t align with our sustainability values,” Morley explains. “The supplier we have chosen is one of the very few groups in the world we are aware of that do ‘stock’ bottles at 100% PCR.”

That supplier is Estal, a European packaging solutions company that has become a benchmark in sustainable glass manufacturing. What makes Estal particularly attractive to craft producers isn’t just their recycled content—it’s their entire approach to production efficiency and accessibility.

Estal has rewritten the paradigms of industrial glass manufacturing through patented processes that allow unprecedented flexibility. Their furnaces work with the highest percentage of post-consumer recycled glass on the market—up to 100% PCR—and crucially, they accept all types of recovered glass. By embracing aesthetic imperfections as part of the organic beauty of the glass, they’ve reduced production waste from 25% down to 10%. Bottles that would traditionally be discarded for cosmetic defects are retained, maintaining structural soundness while celebrating the authentic, slightly irregular nature of truly recycled materials.

For Kākāpō, discovering that Estal wasn’t yet distributed in New Zealand created an unexpected advantage: “This was a good opportunity to still have something unique in a crowded shelf.”

But Wild Glass comes with a twist that perfectly aligns with Kākāpō’s values. The high recycled content means variability across every bottle—imperfections, bubbles, shifts in colour. For brands focused on manufactured perfection, this would be a quality control nightmare. For Kākāpō, it became the point.

“The imperfections, bubbles, and shifts in colour are some of the beautiful features of the bottles,” Morley says. “They show craftsmanship and tell the story of the recycled product in addition to the handcrafted, bespoke nature of our gin.”

It’s a masterclass in values-driven decision making: the variability in the glass mirrors the ethos of the liquid inside. Each bottle becomes a tangible reminder that sustainability and beauty aren’t opposing forces—they’re complementary. The choice of supplier wasn’t just about finding the most sustainable option; it was about finding the partner whose production philosophy aligned with Kākāpō’s own approach to craft.

And here’s where Kākāpō’s move becomes prescient: while consumer surveys consistently show environmental factors rank lower than price and quality in purchasing decisions—particularly in the current economic climate—McKinsey’s 2025 global research reveals that 51% of consumers still rank environmental impact as extremely or very important. More critically, younger consumers (Gen Z and millennials) and higher-income consumers show the highest willingness to pay more for sustainable packaging. Kākāpō isn’t chasing today’s mass market—they’re positioning for the consumers who will drive premium gin purchases tomorrow.

The Counter-Intuitive Market Reality

Here’s where Kākāpō’s strategy gets interesting against the backdrop of what’s actually happening in spirits consumption.

The US market—the world’s largest—saw overall spirits sales decline by 2.7% in early 2024, with super-premium spirits (the $100+ bottles) taking the hardest hit with nearly a 20% volume drop. The premiumization trend that fueled industry growth for years is stalling. Consumers are cutting back, trading down, choosing value spirits over ultra-premium expressions.

Except for one critical category: spirits that demonstrate clear quality and authenticity justifications for their premium positioning. In the spirits industry, packaging has become the primary brand differentiator, sustainability statement, and user experience driver. The brands winning market share aren’t just those with exceptional liquids—they’re the ones whose packaging tells a compelling story at first glance.

And while premiumisation as a whole is under pressure, younger consumers and higher-income consumers show the highest willingness to pay more for sustainable packaging. Kākāpō isn’t playing for the mass market retreat—they’re positioning for the premium segment that’s still growing: RTD cocktails (up 16.5%) and craft expressions that can justify their price through authentic sustainability commitments and distinctive shelf presence.

Industry analysts note that in tough economic times, spirits benefit from being “affordable luxuries”—consumers cutting back on big-ticket items still want to treat themselves. But the key word is justify. The packaging needs to validate the premium. Sustainability is transforming beverage packaging, moving beyond simple eco-friendly designs to more innovative and visually appealing solutions. Brands can no longer choose between premium aesthetics and sustainability credentials—the market increasingly demands both.

Function Meets Form

The field testing process revealed something crucial: what looks good in a design meeting doesn’t always work in reality. The bottle needed to pour well, fit a standard nip pourer, stand out on the shelf, and not consume excessive retail space. Balancing shelf presence with usability meant considering bartenders, retailers, and consumers simultaneously.

This attention to practical detail explains why Kākāpō’s Kawakawa and Pink Peppercorn Gin recently took home the Fever-Tree New Zealand Gin & Tonic Award at the NZ Spirits Awards. The liquid has always been carefully crafted—now the packaging finally reflects that same level of consideration.

“We are honoured to have received this award and were utterly surprised when we heard our name announced,” Morley reflects. The win arrived at exactly the right moment, providing validation and momentum as the new packaging rolls out. It’s proving particularly effective for off-premise sales and gift boxes—critical revenue streams in a tough trading environment.

The Metrics That Matter

The sustainability improvements are quantifiable and significant:

• 25% weight reduction (lowering transport carbon output)

• 0% to 100% post-consumer recycled glass

• Cork closures now use a single industrial process with pressure instead of glue

Glass is infinitely recyclable but a finite resource. Achieving 100% recycled content isn’t just ticking a box—it’s a meaningful step in a broader commitment to circular thinking. The energy savings are substantial: recycled glass melts at lower temperatures than virgin materials, consuming 40% less energy during production and emitting fewer greenhouse gases.

But here’s where Morley gets refreshingly honest: “We are really only at the beginning of our carbon tracking journey.” He acknowledges that sustainability is broader than carbon accounting alone, incorporating environmental impact audits and waste measures to identify areas for improvement. It’s continuous improvement rather than performative perfection.

And that authenticity matters. The spirits industry has seen its share of greenwashing attempts, and consumers—particularly in premium segments—can smell inauthenticity from across the shop floor. Industry research shows that 86% of consumers under 45 are willing to pay more for sustainable packaging, and 57% are less likely to buy products in what they perceive as harmful packaging. But they also want transparency, not marketing spin.

The B Corp Commitment Beyond the Badge

Kākāpō gives 10% of profits to the Kākāpō Recovery programme. Their B Corp certification isn’t window dressing; it’s baked into decision-making at every level. The recycled glass bottles represent a visual manifestation of commitments that were always there but perhaps not immediately apparent to someone picking up a bottle for the first time.

Morley and the team are also exploring partnerships with local Auckland glass blowers to repurpose bottles returned through their return scheme, transforming them into products people want to keep rather than simply recycling them through standard channels. It’s circular thinking taken to its logical, creative conclusion.

The Long Game in a Short-Term World

With the move to a new manufacturing facility complete—yes, in the middle of winter, in the middle of an economic downturn—Kākāpō is playing a longer game than most. They’re looking at every material, every process, asking how it can be improved. Open days are planned to build community. Stirred Down Chat Season 2 is in development. International opportunities are being explored alongside the domestic expansion.

“We are still an incredibly small team, which allows us to be agile in our decision-making,” Morley notes. That agility has been critical for survival, but it’s the long-term vision that’s most striking in an industry where many are purely in survival mode.

The one-to-three-year vision? Establish a strong national presence, step into export markets, and potentially develop more creative, experimental expressions now that the core range of three distinctive gins is solidified.

What’s notable about Kākāpō’s approach is the controlled growth strategy: investment in brand differentiation rather than production scale, and a focus on building community and loyalty rather than chasing volume. The new packaging isn’t about rapid expansion—it’s about ensuring the growth they do achieve is sustainable in both senses of the word. When selecting a supplier, values alignment wasn’t just a nice-to-have; it was the primary filter. That philosophy—choosing partners whose approach to production mirrors your own commitment to quality and integrity—becomes increasingly valuable when market conditions tighten and every decision matters more.

The Motivation When It’s Hard

“Winter has been pretty tough,” Morley admits, “and this was heightened by the costs associated with moving facilities.”

So what keeps them going?

Partly the belief that conditions will improve. Partly the support of the craft community and wider industry. But mostly? Passion for the creative outlet itself.

And here’s where the strategy crystallises: the brand refresh, the recycled glass, the refusal to compromise on quality or sustainability—these aren’t separate initiatives. They’re integrated expressions of a distillery that understands its identity and is willing to invest in that identity even when (especially when) times are tough.

Because the brands that emerge stronger from difficult periods aren’t usually the ones who pulled back on everything that made them distinctive. They’re the ones who held the line on their principles and doubled down on what made them matter in the first place.

The Single Piece of Advice

If another small distillery was considering a similar move, what would Kākāpō tell them?

“It takes longer than you think.”

Finding suppliers that align with your values and meet your practical needs takes time. The brand refresh ripples outward—website design, boxes, labels, merch. Field testing is essential because assumptions don’t always survive contact with reality.

But perhaps the unspoken lesson is more fundamental: when selecting suppliers and making packaging decisions, values alignment should be the first filter, not the last consideration. Kākāpō could have chosen cheaper options, closer suppliers, or bottles that were “good enough” on sustainability metrics. Instead, they held out for a partner whose production philosophy genuinely mirrored their own commitment to quality, authenticity, and environmental responsibility. That alignment becomes the foundation for everything else—the storytelling, the brand credibility, the consumer trust.

The challenge for craft producers isn’t just finding sustainable packaging; it’s finding sustainable packaging at a scale and price point that makes sense for small-batch production. The fact that Kākāpō had to search globally to find bottles that met both their sustainability requirements and their MOQ constraints reveals an infrastructure gap that the industry still needs to address. “We would love to see New Zealand suppliers producing 100% recycled glass with smaller minimum order quantities to make this more of an accessible solution for smaller distilleries like us,” Morley notes.

Until that infrastructure exists, craft distilleries face an uncomfortable trade-off: compromise on sustainability values, or accept the complexity and cost of sourcing from overseas suppliers who can meet both criteria.

The spirits packaging market is projected to grow from $4.67 billion in 2021 to over $8.69 billion by 2033, driven largely by sustainability demands and the need for distinctive shelf presence. But that growth will be concentrated among brands that made the hard choices early—the ones who invested in premium, sustainable packaging even when market conditions suggested pulling back, and who chose suppliers based on values alignment rather than convenience.

Kākāpō Distillery is making their bet right now, with Wild Glass bottles that carry the beautiful imperfections of recycled materials and the weight of carefully considered choices. Whether it pays off commercially remains to be seen. But as brand strategy in brutal conditions goes, it’s certainly more interesting than playing it safe.

And in a market where getting lost on the shelf is the real risk, interesting might be the smartest play of all.

Kākāpō Distillery’s refreshed packaging is rolling out now through The Liquor Locker nationally. New look packaging is available exclusively in Liquorland til November 1, 2025 and then in all good liquor stores. The distillery’s new manufacturing facility in Auckland will host open days in coming months—details TBC.

Interested in a deeper dive? Check out the latest Full Pour Feature.

Here’s the question: When you dismiss a drink because it’s unfamiliar—too smoky, too strong, too foreign—are you exercising taste, or enforcing prejudice?

The liquid in your glass has never been just a drink. It’s a historical document, a power structure, a social contract written in alcohol and ritual. And if we’re honest about how beverages have shaped global history, we must confront an equally uncomfortable truth: what we refuse to drink reveals as much about power dynamics as what we’ve imposed on others.

As the International Wine Academy recently noted, “There is a danger of reducing wine to a mere health risk, thereby forgetting its cultural, social and human dimension.” This is the blind spot. Good drinks are the lubrication for human interaction, cultural transmission, and community identity. History is full of liquid commodities that altered destiny—and the drinks we now reject or embrace are telling us who will hold power in the 21st century.

Coffee: The Architecture of Dissent

Coffee didn’t just conquer the world; it funded it. Its journey from the highlands of Ethiopia is a lesson in the economics of cultural assimilation, but its lasting power lies in its ability to create dangerous social space.

The Kaveh Kanes of the mid-15th-century Ottoman Empire were the original disruptive technology. They were radical, accessible spaces where merchants and thinkers converged on equal footing—the original social network. Authorities repeatedly tried to ban coffee, not for the caffeine, but because these spaces were a low-cost engine for intellectual friction and dissent.

When coffee reached Europe in the 17th century, this power was amplified. London coffee houses became “penny universities”—and they weren’t just hosting the Enlightenment, they were monetising it. Lloyd’s of London started as a coffee house in 1686, where ship captains and merchants gathered to share intelligence and eventually underwrite maritime risk. Ideas and insurance policies were disseminated over the same cup, accelerating both the age of reason and the age of capitalism.

The communal ritual that coffee mandated—not just the bean’s economic value—created the modern world. Today, the Fair Trade movement isn’t just economic reform—it’s a cultural attempt to return agency to the soil and the grower, correcting colonial-era extraction one certified bag at a time.

Tea: Empire’s Thirst

Tea’s history is a relentless accounting of global power. Originating in ancient China, it was codified into the ritual of the Tang Dynasty—representing order and purity, the antithesis of the chaos it would soon unleash.

By the 18th century, British thirst for tea wasn’t just draining the coffers—it was a fiscal crisis. At its peak, tea accounted for 10% of British government revenue through import duties alone. The resulting trade imbalance with China was so severe that the British East India Company decided the best way to pay for tea was to get China hooked on opium. One imagines the board meeting was brief.

The Opium Wars of the mid-19th century were fought to maintain Britain’s tea supply. To break China’s monopoly permanently, the British introduced commercial tea cultivation to India after discovering wild plants in Assam. A single leaf, Camellia sinensis, became the primary driver of colonial violence, narcotic coercion, and agricultural imperialism.

Yet this dark history only underscores the human dimension: the British tradition of afternoon tea became a social institution defining class and civility, while in Japan, the Chanoyu evolved into a ritual embodying harmony and respect. The same plant was infused with radically different, yet equally profound, cultural meanings across the globe. If a drink becomes a national obsession, the cost of its acquisition will define foreign policy.

Sake: The Original Liquid Diplomacy

Before we discuss China’s baijiu, we need to acknowledge Japan’s centuries-long mastery of liquid diplomacy. Sake wasn’t just refined into a technical marvel; it was weaponised as social technology.

The ritualised exchange of sake cups—with its precise hierarchy of pouring, receiving, and toasting—has governed Japanese business and political negotiations since the feudal period. The o-choko (small ceramic cup) isn’t just a vessel; it’s a power map. Who pours for whom, who drinks first, who offers the refill—these aren’t social niceties, they’re non-verbal contracts that establish hierarchy and obligation.

When Western businesses entered Japan in the late 20th century, those who dismissed sake ritual as quaint ceremony lost deals to those who understood it as binding protocol.

Fortified Wine: The Original Liquid Capital

Before tea and coffee dominated global trade, European wines were already crossing oceans—but they had a spoilage problem. The solution, developed primarily in the late 17th century, was fortification: adding grape spirits to stabilise wine for long voyages.

Sherry, Port, and Madeira became the original liquid capital. By the time fortification became widespread practice, these wines had transformed from perishable cargo into durable commodities that could survive months at sea. Madeira, in particular, became essential to the Age of Exploration—the island was a standard provisioning stop for ships heading to the New World and East Indies, and local vintners discovered that adding neutral grape spirits prevented spoilage.

This durability made fortified wines valuable beyond mere refreshment. They provided a consistent, safe alternative to water aboard ships where fresh supplies spoiled quickly. Spanish and Portuguese colonial expansion was lubricated by these wines—they were provisions, trade goods, and cultural markers rolled into one cask.

Stability, in the form of fortification, became a commercial prerequisite for maritime trade. Wherever the European flag was planted, the wine glass followed, leading to the imposition of European culture and trade priorities. The message was clear: our drinks, our rules, our world.

The Marlborough Disruption

The role of a nation in the liquid economy isn’t always defined by imperial reach. Sometimes, it’s defined by a single, high-impact sensory disruption that arrives at precisely the right cultural moment.

New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc didn’t just find a niche; it detonated the entire category. But why did it work? Through the late 1970s and 1980s, French Sancerre had established itself as the benchmark for Sauvignon Blanc—elegant, mineral-driven, food-friendly wines that graced restaurant lists globally. The style was refined, restrained, sophisticated. All the adjectives that signal “you need to understand this to appreciate it.”

Then Marlborough Savvy B arrived. Rescued cuttings were planted by Montana in 1973 with the first commercial vintage in 1979 (followed by Cloudy Bay’s launch in 1985), introduced passionfruit, gooseberry, and cut grass so pronounced it felt like olfactory assault. This wasn’t subtle. This wasn’t polite. The intensity was the point. The global market, it turned out, was ready for something that didn’t require insider knowledge to enjoy—and New Zealand provided it with confidence.

This act of liquid branding demonstrated that a small country could, through distinct flavour and timing, dictate global drinking trends and reposition itself from a peripheral primary producer to a premium taste-maker. The exchange here wasn’t about colonial reach, but the power of sensory shock and cultural confidence. If a new region can deliver a product with an unmistakable, disruptive flavour at the moment the market craves disruption, it commands cultural attention, bypassing decades of tradition.

Mezcal: The Defiance of Scale

In contrast to the globalising sweep of wine, Mezcal is a spirit of radical grounding. It is the liquid signature of Mexico, inseparable from its micro-climates, its distinct agave species, and its ancient production rituals dating back hundreds of years.

Mezcal’s allure lies in its defiance of industrial scale. The slow-roasting of the agave heart in conical earth ovens is a liturgical act—a temporal commitment that rejects the efficiency metrics of globalized spirits. The smoke, the earth, the specific hands that harvest and distill—these aren’t marketing romance, they’re the irreducible conditions of the spirit’s existence.

The current global fascination has brought economic opportunity but also an existential threat: the rush for profit risks destroying its human and ecological foundations. The challenge is whether the spirit can survive its own cultural success without severing the thread that connects the drink, the distiller, and the community. When we fetishise mezcal in high-end cocktail bars, are we honouring its tradition or beginning the same extractive process that destroyed pulque?

Liquid Stigma: The Eradication of Local Culture

The rejection of a drink is often the rejection of a people. This pattern—the powerful rejecting the liquid of the marginalised—is a recurring feature of modern history.

In 20th-century Mexico, the cultural war against the ancient agave beverage pulque provides the starkest example. Despite being a nutritional and cultural staple for millennia, pulque was stigmatised. Industrial beer companies, often backed by foreign capital, launched campaigns that framed pulque as dirty, low-class, and dangerous.

The campaign worked with devastating efficiency. Consumption dropped by over 90% in the 20th century. This wasn’t market competition—it was near-eradication through weaponised marketing and political pressure. European-style lagers became modern and aspirational; pulque became backward and shameful. The message was explicit: to be modern, to be respectable, one must drink like Europeans.

This is how global economic interests weaponise taste to dismantle local identity. When a multinational corporation can make an entire population ashamed of their ancestral drink, we’re witnessing cultural violence disguised as consumer choice.

The Shifting Liquid Order: East vs. West

If history’s liquid companions defined the British Empire and the European Enlightenment, which libations are shaping the geopolitical landscape as the global centre of economic gravity shifts East?

The Western Response: Cocktails as Syntax

The cocktail is the West’s current liquid cultural expression, and it’s revealing. It’s not about a single commodity; it’s a syntax of spirits, a fluid recombination of global ingredients. The rise of the artisanal cocktail bar reflects the Western model of late-stage globalisation: taking parts from everywhere, creating a new branded narrative, and often fetishising the global sources it blends.

This is high-art social performance, but it’s also potentially symptomatic of cultural decline. When your liquid identity is defined by recombination rather than singular tradition, what does that suggest about cultural confidence? The cocktail is magnificent, but it’s also borrowed clothes—we’re making amaro in Brooklyn, vermouth in Hawkes Bay, single malt in Tasmania. It’s the Sauvignon vs. Sancerre playbook: adapt and sell. But unlike New Zealand’s disruption, we’re not creating new categories—we’re recreating old ones with ‘same-same but different’ marketing.

There’s nothing wrong with this, but let’s not pretend it’s the same as having a drink that’s been yours for centuries, inseparable from your soil and your identity. The cocktail is cosmopolitan fluid; it’s not rooted earth.

The Eastern Ascendancy: Baijiu and Soju

The real disruption is that the West is no longer setting the terms. For centuries, Asian spirits like China’s baijiu and Korea’s soju were dismissed as regional curiosities, despite being consumed in volumes that dwarf all other spirits combined. That dismissal is becoming costly.

As China assumes greater global economic power, baijiu has become the test foreign businesspeople cannot avoid. It is the medium through which serious business relationships are established in China. Business deals are routinely won or lost over a single toast. The ganbei toast system isn’t diplomatic theatre; it’s how hierarchy gets established, respect gets demonstrated, and trust (guanxi) gets built—not just between companies, but in the informal networks where real decisions happen.

Mistakes in protocol—such as holding one’s glass higher than the senior host during a toast—are not mere social faux pas; they’re breakdowns in the non-verbal contract, signifying a failure to grasp the power structure you’re attempting to navigate. Yet Western resistance to learning this protocol is palpable. Business executives who’ve spent years mastering the nuances of Bordeaux classifications or Scotch regional styles suddenly claim they ‘don’t drink strong spirits’ when baijiu appears. The intellectual curiosity they apply to their own national drink disappears, replaced by polite evasions and barely concealed distaste. Haven’t you seen it?

By now, the double standard should be clear. Watch what happens when baijiu appears at an international spirits competition. Judges who write 200-word tasting notes on the “terroir-driven salinity” of a single farm malt will dismiss baijiu as “challenging” or “an acquired taste”—code for “I don’t understand it, therefore it has no merit.” At industry events, Western buyers lean in with curiosity for the latest Scottish distillery using experimental cask finishes, but lean back when offered China’s national spirit. This isn’t discernment—it’s cultural gatekeeping disguised as palate refinement when we ought to be leaning into the lexicon.

This isn’t invited cultural exchange; it’s required cultural competence. And here’s the difference from historical Western liquid imperialism: China isn’t asking the world to drink baijiu out of fashion or taste—it’s requiring it as the price of doing business. The West imposed its drinks through colonial force; China through economic necessity.

Korea, meanwhile, is proving that cultural seduction works faster than economic coercion. Soju’s entry into Western markets didn’t require business dinners or trade agreements—it required Netflix. Fuelled by the global rise of K-Pop and K-Dramas, soju arrived not as a requirement but as an aspiration. North American imports of Korean alcoholic beverages, including soju, increased by 18% in 2023 alone—a growth rate that trade negotiations take years to achieve.

The mechanism is entirely different from baijiu’s path. Young Western consumers order soju bombs in bars not because they need to close a deal, but because Korean culture has become genuinely cool. The two-handed pour, the turned-away sip when drinking in front of elders—these rituals are learned voluntarily, even enthusiastically, by people who’ve never set foot in Korea. They’re absorbed through screens, adopted as part of a broader cultural package that includes K-beauty, K-fashion, and K-food. This is soft power at its most effective: the target audience doesn’t realise it’s being influenced because the influence feels like personal choice.

These represent two fundamentally different models of liquid power, and the West is losing on both fronts. China’s baijiu operates through economic leverage—learn the protocol or lose access to the world’s second-largest economy. Korea’s soju operates through cultural magnetism—young people choose it because Korean culture itself has become aspirational. The West can’t compete economically with China’s requirements, and it can’t manufacture the kind of organic cultural cool that makes an entire generation want to learn how to properly pour soju.

What both paths share is this: they’re no longer asking for Western approval. Baijiu doesn’t care if you find it challenging. Soju doesn’t need validation from spirits competitions. The drinks that once had to prove themselves worthy of Western attention are now dictating the terms of engagement. The question is whether the West will adapt with genuine curiosity, or continue to mistake its declining influence for discerning taste.

Embracing cultural intimacy

Beyond the macro-shifts of empire and geopolitics, the truest power of liquid is in its ability to enforce intimacy and identity. These aren’t just drinks; they’re gatekeepers.

In Scottish culture, the sharing of the whisky quaich—a shallow, two-handled drinking bowl—demands physical proximity and mutual trust, which is why it’s so often seen at weddings. You cannot drink from a quaich without bringing the other person into your intimate space. It’s a loyalty test disguised as hospitality.

In many Pacific Island cultures, kava—a non-alcoholic drink made from ground root—is the expression of community and hierarchy. The ceremony is elaborate, the flavor is challenging (muddy, numbing, vaguely medicinal), and the ritual is essential for lubricating discourse necessary to peace and governance. To refuse kava when offered is to refuse community itself.

Here’s where Western hypocrisy becomes visible: we romanticise the quaich and write poetic tasting notes about peat smoke, but we dismiss kava as “acquired taste” or baijiu as “too challenging.” We celebrate our own ritualised drinks as cultural sophistication while treating others’ as obstacles to overcome. The whisky enthusiast who can discourse on phenol parts-per-million in Laphroaig might physically recoils from kava’s muddy, numbing mouthfeel. The sommelier who champions “challenging” natural wines won’t give baijiu a second sip. The bartender who fetishises mezcal’s smoke dismisses soju as “too simple.”

The pattern is always the same: Western drinks are “complex” or “an acquired taste worth developing”; Eastern drinks are “too challenging” or “not for me.”

All drinking cultures enforce their rules. The question is: which enforcements do we celebrate as tradition, and which do we resist as imposition? The answer reveals who we believe deserves cultural authority.

Climate, Change, and the Death of Tradition

If climate change is redrawing the wine map—Champagne houses buying land in England, Bordeaux varieties migrating to Canada, traditional regions becoming unviable—then clinging to “Old World” traditions isn’t just culturally conservative, it’s environmentally irresponsible.

The liquid geography we inherited was never permanent; it was always shaped by climate, politics, and power. Burgundy’s dominance was partly terroir, partly the Catholic Church’s medieval land consolidation. The sacred wine regions we protect with appellations and UNESCO designations were often created by the same colonial and religious forces that destroyed other drinking cultures.

If we’re willing to accept that wine regions must adapt to survive climate change, why are we resistant to cultural adaptation? If we can celebrate Tasmanian Pinot Noir despite Tasmania having no historical claim to the variety, why do we balk at Mongolian arkhi (distilled fermented milk) or Ethiopian tej (honey wine)? The resistance isn’t about quality—it’s about whose traditions we’ve been taught to value.

The Question on the Table

The liquid on the table is never just a drink; it’s part of the cultural negotiation, dictating the human dimension of future power dynamics.

When we reject a drink’s origin story, its production, or its ritual, we’re making a political statement about whose culture deserves our attention. When we refuse to learn the baijiu toast because it feels like performative submission, but we master the Scotch whisky regions because that feels like connoisseurship, we’re revealing our prejudices.

The West spent centuries using its drinks as tools of cultural imperialism—imposing wine, spirits, and beer as markers of civilisation and modernity. We stigmatised and eradicated local drinking cultures from Mexico to the Pacific Islands. We used alcohol as both weapon and reward in colonial expansion.

Now the power dynamic is shifting. Eastern drinks are demanding recognition not as exotic curiosities, but as equals—or in some cases, as the new dominant paradigm. The question isn’t whether we enjoy baijiu or soju or tej. The question is: are we willing to extend the same cultural respect to unfamiliar drinks that we demand for our own?

Because if we remain resistant to unfamiliar methods—like arkhi, the earthy and laborious mezcal process, or the challenging flavour of kava—what does that suggest about our cultural flexibility? When we dismiss an entire category of drinks because they don’t conform to our palate, are we simply being discerning, or are we, in effect, drinking racist?

What we drink, and more importantly, how we approach unfamiliar drinks, remains the clearest indicator of who holds political power and who we’re willing to share a sacred moment with.

The glass in your hand is a mirror. What does yours reflect?

A Note to the Industry

We pride ourselves on curiosity, education, and expanding palates. We host masterclasses on terroir, cask influence, and botanical selection. We ask consumers to lean in, to learn, to appreciate complexity. We celebrate the journey from novice to connoisseur.

Yet when confronted with unfamiliar spirits from unfamiliar cultures, we often fail to take our own advice.

When I host a spirits tasting, I only ask that my guests learn enough to appreciate the liquid. I never demand they like it. Appreciation and enjoyment are different things—one requires openness and understanding, the other is simply preference. The industry could benefit from applying this same principle to ourselves.

If we’re going to claim global expertise, we need global curiosity. That means approaching baijiu with the same intellectual rigour we bring to bourbon. It means learning kava protocols with the same attention we give to Champagne service. It means recognising that “not for me” and “not worth understanding” are vastly different positions.

The drinks world is being redrawn. The question is whether we’re going to participate in that redrawing with genuine openness, or whether we’ll cling to the familiar and call it discernment. Because the rest of the world is watching, and our resistance is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from prejudice.

Category education isn’t just for consumers—it’s for us. Greater understanding doesn’t require affection, but it does require effort. And if we’re not willing to make that effort for the spirits that are reshaping global drinking culture, we should at least be honest about why.

There’s a shift in the air when a maker moves from the consulting bench to the production line, trading the finite satisfaction of contract flavour genius for hire for the relentless, total immersion of a single distillery. For Mikey Ball, a man whose name has become shorthand for flavour precision in the New Zealand spirits landscape, that pivot isn’t just a career change—it’s the full-circle embrace of his own rigorous standards at Woodward St Distillery in the heart of Wellington.

The distillery’s founding is also a quintessential capital city story: a tale of necessity and vision—just not of the land, but of the architecture. When brothers Johnny and Robbie Thomson couldn’t find an anchor tenant worthy of their extensively refurbished Edwardian building at 97 The Terrace, they decided to anchor it themselves. What started as an “amateur interest in alcohol, i.e. drinking it,” became the foundation for The Woodward Street Distilling Company.

Ball, known ubiquitously as Mikey to the New Zealand drinks industry, joined the founding group as Head Distiller alongside hospitality veteran James Pask (Director and General Manager) to realise the goal: build a boutique city distillery that creates world-class spirits imbued with a sense of provenance, integrity but also fun.

The Woodward St team couldn’t have found anyone who more aptly fits the description. Found in iconic venues at home and abroad since his late teens, Mikey is the person most likely to wrap up closing and still run 12km in the morning. He’s worked as a drinks educator, consultant, head bartender and hand model for some of the best cocktails and brands in the business. And in Woodward St, he seems to have found a home for his exacting standards and endless pursuit of excellence in story and flavour.

After consulting and working with significant NZ brands, it’s a big call for Ball to commute between Blenheim and Wellington for this gig, but so far the commitment is worth it for the alignment of values within the team.

“We are now a family,” says Mikey of the still new-ish team. “So we are all in and you have to make those relationships work day-to-day, but you also have to cherish them,” Ball notes. This total commitment is driven by the fiercely competitive market. “We’re in this lucky position right now where we actually have to make the liquid incredible, because it’s a really, really tough market. It all has to have meaning or has to have story. Everything has to be built in. This is an experience.“

From Blueprint to Bottle: The Structural Purity of Flavour

The rigorous, almost engineering approach Ball brings to product development is an intellectual carry-over from his initial studies in architecture—a path he abandoned for hospitality, yet one that is evident in the foundation of his flavour philosophy. For Mikey, a product must be built like a building: with a strong structural framework and multiple layers of meaning. Storytelling is not marketing; it’s the load-bearing wall.

“There’s definitely an ethos, and everything is kind of built with a million facets in mind for whoever wants to know as many little details about it and any quirky little pieces that they can be, versus people who don’t want to understand any of it.” From the origin story of each ingredient, to the specific techniques and treatments used—everything with Mikey has a ‘why’, a purpose that offers integrity to the end result.

This philosophy ensures quality from the outset. As Ball states, “If you can do all the smart stuff to start with, then you can be a lot more all over the creativity of it. If you start with what your restrictions are, then you’re always going to be heading to the right place.”

Essentially, what he means is that if you jump to the end conclusion too fast and without having built a solid purpose and integrity to the plan, you’ll risk having to take shortcuts and make compromises. Shortcuts to flavour and product consistency don’t really exist, in the same way a house without a solid foundation eventually falls down. How loud of a crash it makes, depends on how closely people are listening.

This critical lesson, distilled from years of working under contract for other producers, is that flavour is an ecosystem built on culture, context, and place. To design a product with integrity, one must first deeply understand the provenance of its components: the soil that fed the botanical, the tradition that perfected the technique, or the people who held the knowledge for centuries. This foundational, respectful excavation of history—treating the knowledge and component correctly—is what elevates inspiration beyond mere surface-level borrowing. It is the only route to creating a truly authentic spirit, ensuring that the final liquid pays homage to its cultural origins and avoids the trap of cultural appropriation by integrating, rather than simply taking, the inherent value of the source tradition.

This methodology is most evident in Chchi Vodka, the first spirit to emerge from the Woodward St 300-litre still, Agnes. Chi Chi is not merely a vodka; it is a deeply considered study in texture and tradition.

“If we were going to create a vodka, we’re not just going to throw ethanol in with with a bunch of water—which is, you know, let’s (meaningful silence)….let’s just, let’s just say that’s a thing people do. So what will we do?”

The vodka’s methodology draws from a centuries-old tradition of dairy distillation. “The whole idea is that Chichi means ‘father’ in Japanese, but it can also refer to milk. “We just deep dived into everything, milk and cream. We’re making ricotta, like, all of these pieces. Try to work out how we can get the specific textures we wanted to create,” Ball explains. Chichi is also the long forgotten vodka Pina Colada recipe, created by father of Tiki cocktails, Don the Beachcomber. There’s all of these little pieces that tie into the story.” He adds: “The Chichi was the third attempt at bringing vodka into American culture in the 1970s. So many great little pieces that we can tie into the story and culture.“ Cue disco balls.

Sometimes to set the foundations right, you have to dig deep. And in more than just cultural references. Using wheat, extracting flavour and texture from coconut flesh and using Koji rice cultures to produce an elevated vodka that belongs in cocktail bars and pride of place? The flavour architect has been at work, supported with the culinary input of Wellington hospitality and culinary stalwart James Pask. Pask himself brings a reputation of commitment to origin, source and authenticity.

The sparkly disco setting, the father of Tiki and a vodka that celebrates distillation from dairy? And all of this to plug a gap? Chichi Vodka wasn’t meant to be the first cab off the rank but it grabbed the dancefloor spotlight. When you examine Chichi against the backdrop of the Woodward St values, it’s clear why it resonated so strongly with Mikey and what the people of Wellington can enjoy on their doorstep, with the bar integrated into the building and a highly recognisable figure about to join the team to support the social offering and drinks programme. (Watch this space!)

Mastery, authenticity, sustainability, innovation, society and integrity are called out on the masthead of the brand website and through the storytelling that begins to emerge, the vision of a social hub for the discerning and a place of meaningful engagement with the makers. It’s no wonder Ball has found a sense of ‘family’ amongst a group of characters equally uncompromising in the pursuit of quality.

The already highly anticipated Penguin’s Crossing gin scooped a highly commended nod from the judges at the NZ Spirits Awards for how well it matched with tonic. This should be no surprise from the mastermind behind both Scapegrace and East Imperial recipes and former Head Bartender at multiple-award winning Dandelyan (now Lyaness) in the UK. The man can make a gin and tonic, from scratch, all the pieces. Which is exactly what’s coming down the line and fast. But a business decision to rethink the gin bottle meant space and time to bring the next product to market.

When mastery, authenticity and integrity are part of your navigating compass, you can’t half-ass the landing when launching a new product, as many a distillery is learning in the current crunch and re-normalisation. Shelf impact makes a difference and is as much part of the storytelling and brand offering as the liquid. In a shift from the heady gin-boom days where everything lived in an Oslo, the better the product the better the bottle ought to be. So when the team realised they hadn’t ticked mastery, it was back to the drawing board for a new custom bottle. That opened up a gap for Chichi to dance right on into.

“The thing is the gin’s ready, it’s just waiting on the bottle to come and then the tonic will be hopefully by the end of the year. So everything’s within the next four months. So lots boiling away, but I think the way to look at it is we’ve effectively built a brand house.”

While the gin pause gave focus to the vodka, this ‘brand house’ foundation with multiple product streams allows them to expand quickly but carefully. Mikey points out the unique composition of the team skillset. “It’s all quite reliant on the whole team—my background in product development and the creative sync between me and Jimmy (Pask), which has been very cool.”

The Perfectionist’s Crucible

Ball’s dedication to structural rigour was unlocked and fused with a profound creativity during his formative years in London, particularly at Dandelyan. It was here he realised the power of going beyond the surface of a spirit.

“I thrived in that kind of creative environment,” he recalls. “I was quite good at understanding [and] researching... and then when to stop—and more importantly, when not to stop—the deep dive.” He notes that, ultimately, “I think the more you understand the ingredients, the better result you get out of them.”

This experience in the importance of integrity and mastery of the process later clarified the difference between consulting and true creative quality control, leading to his commitment at Woodward St.

“I needed more. I needed to sink my teeth into something other than producing on a pilot still, then handing them off to somebody else for them to be made with no knowledge of what’s actually happening in the process. A lot of blind stuff going on from a product development side and off the back of that, lots of mistakes, and often I would end up down the rabbit warren, trying to work out how those mistakes happened (to fix them).”

The motivation was clear: “I was looking for the chance to take on the next step in my distillation. I wanted to be a distiller. I am now.“ The commitment is to relentlessly uphold the standard: “When you want to do something properly, you have to, you have to continue to put the love in and continue to do it properly, because as soon as you try and make a shortcut, then it changes.”

Woodward St: The Full Expression

So here he is, no longer trying to fix other people’s shortcuts or creating flavour story backwards. 100% responsible for… making his own mistakes? You can be sure, on the rare occasion he may make a misstep, he’ll already know why before he starts cleaning it up.

”I’m just looking for an understanding across the board that hey, it doesn’t need to be super hard. And we don’t need to over complicate a lot of these things if we do it properly from the get-go. And even if you do over complicate it, well it doesn’t have to be the whole focus, you know, I’m always learning.”

Ball joined the team after the initial planning, but was “instrumental in the still process and what we were going to put in the space.”

He recalls: “How we can make a really small space work as effectively as possible, I mean, if you’ve walked past or you’ve seen it, it’s very small for a wee 300-litre pot still. And how we can make this space not only super cool, but incredibly beautiful. It’s been very well designed.”

Today, that vision is tangible. The corner site, designed with architect Alistair Cox, is an experience centre—a physical manifesto for Ball’s creative ethos. The full structure of the brand house is taking shape, alongside Cox’s vision for Woodward St as a social hub, even the possibility of daylighting the Kumutoto stream that still runs underneath.

Woodward St is already delivering on the promise of a maker who has finally found a space where his principles, world-class hospitality experience, and uncompromising flavour focus can fully converge, (metaphorical) sparkly disco lights and all. “I think proof of approachable quality, is probably the one of the big parts that I’m personally looking for,” he concludes.

The trophy shelf at Juno Gin has just been recalibrated. Again. Not just with silverware, but with 2025’s two most coveted national awards—the ‘Best in Show’ titles at both the Super Liquor Super Spirits Awards in July and then the NZ Spirits Awards in August. For co-founder and distiller Jo James, it’s more than just a win; it is, in her words, “a huge piece of validation,” one that “felt like a long time coming.”

But what exactly is being validated? It isn’t merely a great recipe. It is the uncompromising, long-term commitment to a radical idea: that gin, like great wine, can be an expression of terroir—that the very soil, climate, and geography of Aotearoa should not just hold the bottle, but be in it.

Self-confessed geeks

The quest to prove this gin terroir is led by an unassuming pair of distillers: husband-and-wife team, Jo and Dave James. Having met in primary school in New Plymouth, their careers were forged in science and sustainability long before they launched Juno. Jo has a background in genetics and microbiology, with a Master of Public Health in Epidemiology. Dave studied food technology, engineering, and climate change.

Yes, they’re smart. Very smart, in fact. Around the dinner table, there’s no direction or curious avenue of conversation too complex or unapproachable. These are maker’s makers—philosophers, artisans, pragmatic and casually ambitious. Progressive explorers, appreciators of culture and collectors of knowledge, they bring this to their seasonal gin collection with the Blank Canvas competition. Artists can submit their work to be selected for the bottle print, an annual competition that has been running since 2019. If you can pin them down, the James’ are less salt of the earth and more Szechuan pepper and herbaceous seasoning. Fascinating to listen to and rewarding to spend time with.

They are, by their own admission, “sustainability geeks.” This intellectual curiosity and scientific rigour informs their core value: “Make it Right.” This means running a distillery that uses less than five litres of water per litre of spirit (the global average is over 26) and pioneering botanical supply chains. It’s this dedication to traceable, sustainable, and scientifically understood flavour that ultimately separates them and allows them to achieve ‘reproducibly good gin’.

The Audacity of Angelica and the Flavour Fixer

Jo’s philosophy begins with the base. She acknowledges the “appalling” view that vodka is merely a “failed gin,” but asserts that from a distiller’s perspective, a “fabulous base spirit” is the non-negotiable canvas for flavour.

A great base spirit is the quiet, unsung hero of the whole glorious chaos. It’s not shouting, ‘Look at me! I’m grain! I’m potato!’ No, a great base spirit is the cleanest, softest white linen you can imagine—the sort you only find in the deepest, darkest linen cupboard of a grand old house. It’s the silence before the music starts, that moment of perfect, neutral calm that allows the volatile oils of the botanicals—all those juniper sharps and citrus swirls—to dance their intricate little ballet right there on your palate, without any clumsy spirit character elbowing its way onto the stage. If it’s not flawless, the whole performance is a sham.

This rigour extends to the supporting botanicals. Take angelica root, an ingredient often a quiet anchor, which for James, proved the non-intuitive nature of terroir. She found that a high-altitude version of the root, initially “bitter and intense and not all that likeable“ when distilled alone, was actually the one they needed. Its intensity was essential to creating an “incredible balance” when working alongside the other botanicals—a perfect illustration that the worst solo artist often makes for the best bandmate.

“We’ve put all this focus into building relationships with horticulturalists to grow plant ingredients here in New Zealand to then understand terroir effects for each of those ingredients. And they do have terroir effects.”

Similarly, the Orris root, the key “flavour fixer” and aroma binder in quality gin, is central to the Juno method. Their Orris, grown in the Hawke’s Bay region, is the product of long-term planning—a process secured by signing an MOU and funding research with Massey University before they even had a still. This two-year commitment to development ensures a continuous, high-quality supply that they pay over $300 a kilo for. “If you’re not tasting your ingredients before you’re using them,” James asks, “what are you making?”

The reality of much wholesale botanical supply in New Zealand is large-batch importation with customs-required fumigation, storage in inconsistent humidity and stock management before it reaches a distillery. In the same way you must taste your spice for freshness before making a curry, you must know your botanicals.

“So before we even had a still, before we even had office furniture, we had nothing. And we were meeting with a grower and sitting on the carpet in an empty warehouse saying, hey, we’re going to make gin. Do you want to be part of that journey? And this is what it might look like for you. So we signed an MOU with them, and in that MOU, we bought the plants, and we agreed to fund the research work with Massey University, and we agreed to share the research results with our grower so they could then supply to other distilleries, both nationally and internationally.”

The $25,000 Tonne Question: The Great New Zealand Juniper Hunt

The most intellectually provocative element of Juno’s philosophy is their direct confrontation with what we might call the Juniper Crisis. The price of wild-harvested juniper, the essential heart of gin, has soared from $6,000 to over $25,000 a tonne since 2016. Compounded by geopolitical risk and a widespread fungus, this is both a massive economic burden and a sustainability flaw.

“So of course, juniper is a northern hemisphere plant. Doesn’t naturally occur in the southern hemisphere. It is always wild-harvested. There are no plantations of juniper. So you know, when we think about the fact that our distillery will be using up to a tonne of juniper a year. There’s more than 100 distilleries in New Zealand making gin...”

“If we’re looking at building significant export channels for New Zealand premium spirits...and if something is going to be a gin, it has to have juniper in it. And if we’re reliant on international travel to move Juniper around... that’s an economic risk.“

Juno’s response was to launch ‘The Great New Zealand Juniper Hunt’ with Massey University. The goal: to find the sparsely planted Juniperus communis trees scattered across the country, identify male and female plants (critical for producing the berry-like cones), and establish New Zealand’s first commercial plantations. It is, in essence, drawing a meaningful, long bow of economic foresight.

The Ozone Hole and the Flavour Advantage

The findings from Massey’s research projects offer a crucial validation for the vision of New Zealand-grown botanicals. Comparing the native cones with Macedonian and Chinese supplies, they found a distinct difference in the terpenes—the volatile oils that carry flavour and aroma.

New Zealand juniper is “surprisingly floral” and significantly higher in volatile oils and terpenes than imported stock. The scientists attribute this directly to the ozone hole and its downstream effects. Plant species in New Zealand have evolved to produce more volatile oils—a protective activity—in response to the heightened UV and irradiation effects.

This principle applies beyond juniper: “New Zealand coriander seed is really high in limonene,” Jo notes. For a distiller, this means the locally grown raw material is not only more secure and traceable but also possesses a unique, concentrated, and high-impact flavour profile that is fundamentally different and, arguably, better suited for the craft of spirit-making.

All this work with Massey University and Venture Taranaki to understand the terroir, growth opportunity and feasibility of New Zealand-grown botanicals doesn’t just benefit Juno Distillery. The true economic benefit and impact is far reaching, opening up channels for farmers, cultivators and procuring greater stability in future for exporters, not to mention benefits for other New Zealand distillers in future.

This cohesive working relationship between local business, academia and regional development is a testimony to the depth of skill and experience the James’ carry.

Sustained Validation: The True Cost of Quality

The validation of Juno’s two supreme awards is therefore more than just a pat on the back. It is a powerful affirmation that the pursuit of reproducible quality works—be it horticultural, economic or in manufacturing.

“We taste every batch, and we taste before we bottle. So after every batch, each and every day that we make it, we taste it.”

This commitment to flavour consistency and quality across the portfolio was further underlined by their latest medal haul, where they took home eight medals across the Juno and Vesta range. Their flagship Juno Extra Fine Gin and Vesta Vodka each secured Gold Medals—a direct nod to the integrity of both the botanical blend and the foundational base spirit.

Crucially, all four of their 2025 seasonal gins—Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Maia—were individually recognised with Silver or Bronze Medals. “To have each of our 2025 seasonal gins recognised, alongside our other spirits is amazing,” says Jo James.

The results prove that the intellectual framework—embracing the science, investing understanding terroir as a science not just a romantic notion, and demanding excellence from the base up—is not a stroke of luck. It is a philosophy that has made Juno an enduring force in New Zealand spirits. Demonstrating that the geeks can undeniably claim their top gongs in both popularity and reproducibly, very good, excellent gin.

It’s a rare and beautiful thing when a company’s public face finally catches up to its soul. I’ll admit, when I heard Hancocks Wines, Spirits & Beer Merchants had given itself a spit-and-polish, my internal cynic took a deep breath and poured a gin. After all, the trade knows the business as Hancocks. They’re a cornerstone. Why mess with the recipe? The Jakicevich head coach surely knows better than to mess with that kind of tradition?

Then I read the new, not-so-new name: Hancocks Family Merchants.

And suddenly, that gin morphed into a cask-strength, complex single malt. Satisfying. Layered. Depth appeared in the glass.

Launched at the always highly anticipated annual tradeshow, the rebrand is more than a lick of vibrant neon green paint. Take a bit of time and you’ll see this isn’t a marketing stunt either; it’s an absolute bullseye. Embracing that Hancocks remains 100% family-owned and that the incredibly cool, highly skilled, colourful and occasionally chaotic work colleagues are actually... part of the family. And that is the fuel revving the business up for the future, when others are battening down the hatches.

From Shorthand to Strategy

Let’s not pretend for a second that anyone in the trade ever used the full, verbose previous name for anything other than official documents. For decades, they’ve simply been Hancocks. They’ve been the rep you call, the reliable warehouse that moves the stock and the home of some of the world’s most desirable brands.

Owner Joe Jakicevich is refreshingly direct about the shift: “For years, we’ve focused on being a house of brands. Now, it’s time we rebranded the house itself. The change to Hancocks Family Merchants isn’t just a nod to our family’s stewardship; it’s a promise to our staff and partners that they are part of our enduring story.”

As Paul Holmes, the marketing manager, confirmed, “Hancocks will always be shorthand in the trade.” That familiar anchor is vital. But the full new name signals something deeper. It’s a deliberate move to leverage the immense, quiet trust they’ve built and monetise their culture. This is the commercial genius of the rebrand.

The Human Element: Why Mentorship and Humour Matter

The four pillars that emerged from Hancocks’ deep dive—Family, People, Trust, and Service—are exactly what you hear when you’re talking to people in the trade. But it’s the quiet cultural threads that truly reinforce them.

There’s a legacy of mentorship that many employees speak of - being “brought through” by someone else in the business. Several staff members I spoke to reflected on being taken under the wing of an old hand, an experience shared by other family members working in the business. That’s the Hancocks DNA—it’s not a formal system; it’s organic in the way they operate.

Those sometimes chaotic and incredibly cool colleagues? It’s a celebration of individuality in a business doesn’t just tolerate difference; it embraces it, according to Paul.

That’s fed through a regular schedule of bringing people together; quarterly hui, the chook & garden roster and the yearly table tennis championship. They work together, laugh together and more importantly look out for each other. And you don’t have to spend much time with the Hancocks team to know their litany of table games, rituals and traditions are part of the strong storytelling instinct that builds trust, authenticity and a sense of connection that extends to the brands they represent, as well as the ones they are building.

As Paul confirmed, “Hancocks will always be shorthand in the trade.” That familiar anchor is vital. But the full new name, Hancocks Family Merchants, signals something deeper. It’s a deliberate move to leverage the immense, quiet trust they’ve built and monetise their culture.

This is the commercial genius of the rebrand. It takes an intangible asset—the family-run feel, the long-term relationships—and makes it the primary selling point and focus of how the business will continue to move forward and navigate complex waters.

Longevity is Built, Not Bought

The rebrand isn’t just a cosy throwback; it’s a strategic lens for the future. The Jakicevich family’s multi-generational stewardship gives them a rare 10–20 year horizon on their decisions, focusing on longevity over short-term gains, something that has been consistently present since the family purchased Hancocks in 1991 with the intention of rebuilding the company’s legacy.

And that long-term thinking is actually built into their Auckland home, Te Whare Tuuranga, which they moved into in 2021.

Hancock’s cultural pillars are also tied to a strategic investment in sustainable infrastructure. The purpose-built Te Whare Tuuranga facility is fitted with 480 solar panels—meeting 100% of the site’s energy needs in 2023 through generation and purchased RECs—and harvests 50,000 litres of rainwater. This captured water is then used to maintain the onsite 40 square metre community vegetable garden and, yes, the chicken coop housing their 96 free-range hens. When you need a boost of daily goodness, a quick glimpse at the Chicken Camera or Solar Dashboard does the job.

These unique, community-focused assets—which provide fresh eggs and produce to staff (saving them an estimated $27,000 annually)—are direct, measurable outcomes of the company’s embedded commitment to people, planet, and multi-generational stewardship.

This is not just fluffy HR. This is a distributor running on solar power and rainwater, leveraging massive operational efficiency (lowered utility costs, high insulation ratings, streamlined logistics) to provide a deeply rooted, value-driven work environment. That means staff stay longer, staff know their product better, and the service is more reliable.

Investing in the Next Generation of Brands

The true health check of a distributor is not just who they keep, but who they attract. The new ‘Family Merchants’ banner acts as a beacon for like-minded partners—brands looking for stability and genuine partnership, not just shelf space. This year alone, the portfolio has expanded to include exciting agencies like The Maker (wines exclusive to the on-premise trade, designed by Kim Crawford), the practical bar solution of Re’al Cocktail Ingredients, Teremana tequila, Asian powerhouses Hani and Bohae, and new focus on heritage European brands alongside blockbuster beers Michaelob, Modelo and Budweiser. This strategic selection confirms their agile nature—they are staying grounded while actively positioning themselves for the next growth cycles in local, premium, and bar-focused categories. They are consistently poised to deliver depth, experience and the right product at the right time to customer demand.

The Business Impact They Hope to See

The enthusiasm sparked by the rebrand is designed to drive tangible business benefits in a tough market.

1. Retention and Engagement: Internally, the uplift in staff pride is about reducing churn and maintaining that high level of service. Engaged employees who see their stories reflected in the new identity, and who get free eggs from the backyard, are better salespeople and better partners.

2. Deeper Collaboration: Externally, the shift to Family Merchants has immediately opened up deeper conversations with partners and suppliers. Paul noted it’s a “cultural signal that Hancocks is doubling down on relationships.” This means securing better long-term brand partnerships, winning exclusive distribution rights, and fostering resilient supply chains—all vital competitive advantages. The new name ‘invites trust’, ensuring customers feel part of something enduring, rather than being treated as just another transaction.

3. Agility and Resilience: They are a company that is willing to put on more staff when the market compresses, relying on their strong values to guide difficult decisions. This multi-generational lens helps them “stay grounded while remaining agile,” which translates to stability for every brand and customer they serve.

Hancocks Family Merchants is a warm, and utterly relevant rebrand. It even has a quirky and heartfelt story delivered by Joe, Jedda and Tonci Jakicevich. The ‘new, not-so-new’ logo was sitting in front of them the whole time, a stencilled design found on an old Hancocks bottle that has long sat in the company’s office. This historic mark pays homage to Hancocks’ 1859 heritage, now reimagined with a modern pop of colour, symbolising the fusion of tradition and innovation.

It proves that a deep, genuine investment in people—the staff, the partners, and the customers—is not an expense, but the most powerful asset a modern distributor can possess. It manages to honour the craft of their legacy while embracing a future built on relationships and resilience.

And Paul says the rebrand to Hancocks Family Merchants has sparked a genuine sense of pride and renewed purpose across the organisation.

”Internally, it’s created a stronger emotional connection to the company’s legacy and future — especially among long-serving team members who see their own stories reflected in the new identity. There’s a noticeable uplift in engagement, with staff leaning into the values and history that underpin the name. Externally, partners and suppliers have responded positivity. The rebrand has opened deeper conversations about shared values and long-term collaboration. It’s not just a name change — it’s a cultural signal that Hancocks is doubling down on relationships, heritage, and future-facing thinking.”

And no, I don’t work for Hancocks. But I would. Which is really saying something. Maybe it’s the family, maybe it’s the storytelling. But there’s a boldness to being so open about what a name can mean, that tells you something about how this family might have your back in times of trouble. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find out who’s responsible for the table tennis championship trophy.

What do you think is the trickiest part for a long-established company trying to honour their history while modernising their image? It’s a delicate balancing act and there are more than one or two legacy businesses going through it. Send me your thoughts.

For those of us whose lives orbit the glass—who know the true measure of a spirit lies in the conversation between flavour, texture, and intensity—the low-alcohol category has often felt like a conversation conducted through a closed door. The spirit is there, the intent is pure, but the voice is muted.

Now, Elemental Distillers Co., the Marlborough outfit that’s already proved its mettle on the global stage, appears to have found the key to unlock the room. And it’s loud in there.

Their new Roots ‘Light’ Marlborough Spirit is not just another lower-proof offering; it’s a masterclass in technological subversion, a $55 bottle of liquid R&D that directly confronts the greatest challenge in the category: how do you deliver a classic gin experience when your core solvent is 86% water?

The answer, as co-founder Ben Leggett explains, isn’t simple, but it’s elegant: multi-vacuum distillation.

This isn’t the single, ‘cold-distilled’ novelty we’ve seen dabbled with by others and played with by on-trend bartenders. This is a double-barreled technological assault—a deconstruction and reconcentration of flavour molecules so precise it fundamentally changes perception of traditionally made spirit.

The Boiling Point

In traditional spirits distillation, heat is the engine. It boils the alcohol-water wash, carrying volatile flavour compounds up and over the still. The problem is, that same heat is a blunt instrument. As Leggett puts it, it’s the difference between an espresso and a cold brew—same bean, wildly different flavour expression. Hot distillation destroys the more delicate, complex flavour chemicals.

And when pursuing full strength spirit, the heat is essential in creating the alcohol that carries flavour. Reducing the alcohol content requires a different way of layering flavour and complexity into the spirit - water must carry the weight and texture of botanicals instead of diluting it.

Leggett says they have invested in pioneering technology with the backing of Callaghan Innovation to create a spirit that is low in alcohol without compromising on taste, available on the shelf exclusively at Liquorland from today (1 October 2025) at just 14% abv.

This ‘cold distillation’ process can now coax out the aromatic profile of coriander, angelica, and Macedonian juniper without subjecting them to a flavour-altering heat-stress. In short, they are capturing the fuller botanical character, not just the hardiest survivors.

But the breakthrough here is simultaneously captured in both the alcohol and the water components. Without this double-tap flavour-loading, any spirit at a mere 14% ABV is doomed to taste precisely what it is: dilute.

Polishing the Mouthfeel

The team believe they are the first distillery in Aotearoa to use this multi-vacuum distillation technique, and it’s set to disrupt the low-alcoholic spirit industry as it addresses a common criticism of no and low-alcoholic spirit alternatives – ‘it just doesn’t taste like gin’. The technical victory of capturing flavour is only half the battle. As veteran drinkers know, a spirit isn’t just a taste; it’s a texture.

Leggett revealed that a full third of their R&D budget and time was spent on what they termed “polishing.” Low-proof spirits are notoriously “flat” and “washed out.” The absence of high-proof ethanol—the backbone of a great G&T—leaves a gaping hole in the mouthfeel.

Elemental’s solution is a subtle, yet crucial, rebalancing act: a natural adjustment of acid, salinity, and sweetness. This isn’t a mask; it’s structural engineering of the spirit. It gives the spirit a necessary grip and weight on the palate, allowing it to stand up not just in a soda, but in a more challenging format like their hero serve, the Midday Martini.

This isn’t a product built on compromise. This is a product built on obsessive refinement. It aims to eliminate the classic critique of the low-no sector by leveraging technology to serve the classic flavour profile, not sacrifice it. Roots ‘Light’ is a clear benchmark for what the next generation of conscious drinking should taste like: full flavour, less buzz, no compromise.

The flavour profile comes from seasonally grown New Zealand botanicals where possible, with juniper berries wild-harvested from the highlands of North Macedonia because they aren’t naturally grown in Aotearoa. In the case of the Roots Light, the botanicals lean on the classic gin ingredients of coriander, angelica, orange, cardamom and a unique Douglas Fir hydrosol from Otago-grown spruce.

Leggett says compromising on flavour simply wasn’t an option for the distillery that has been recognised on the global stage for its London Dry gin. He also correctly assesses consumers are returning to classic gin profiles in their preferred choice, a step away from the contemporary and flavoured boom of the early 2020s. And when you’ve already been recognised as World’s Best, there is no reason to step away from the much-admired and awarded distillery character.

Not only is Roots ‘Light’ lower in alcohol, at 23 calories per serve, the kilojoule component is substantiallly reduced—which is perhaps the real breakthrough in an industry about to require energy content to be included on every spirits label. Lower alcohol spirit drinks haven’t always meant lower in calorie as sugars and additional ingredients used to rebalance flavour profiles often replace the alcohol calories.

It comes at an interesting time for the liquor industry; where both at home and abroad people are spending less on alcoholic beverages and drinking out for both health and economic reasons. The number of no- and low-alcoholic options available is increasing both in liquor retail and behind the bar, but it still remain a conversation of compromise.

A Sustainable Cut?

In an era of sustainability and rising energy costs, the introduction and disruption of new technology isn’t always an all-round solution. We asked Ben about the impacts of the tech and what possibilities it opens.

”The applications for more products in the low alcohol sector are arguably endless, and in order to deliver on the taste expectations of consumers, new technologies and techniques are essential. For our own process, we have less by-products than the traditional hot distillation process, as there is almost no heads and tails cuts, and cold distillation requires less energy to run.

Vacuum distillation also means we don’t need to make cuts during our run and the stillage left behind after a vacuum run can contain some of the best flavour components.”

Is Lower ABV the Answer to Lower Cost on Shelf?

Is it possible to move a mountain? Or must we move to the mountain? That is the question facing many NZ distillers (and our neighbours across the Tasman, to the North and even farther North-East) as excise taxes continue to rise, consuming an enormous portion of what consumers pay at point of sale.

Less alcohol means less tax written into the cost of putting each bottle on the shelf. Up til now, that has come with a compromise on texture if not flavour too. Seedlip, Ecology & Co and Terps & Co sit on the shelf between $49.99 and $59.99RRP with 0% alcohol.

With a retail price of $55 on shelf, Roots Light Marlborough Spirit is offering full flavour at a significantly competitive price point. Mid-strength spirits are still an emerging market here in NZ but Roots Light has the potential to set a benchmark for quality and affordability in a new generation of conscious drinkers.

And that’s important - because less alcohol is arguably, less than. You can’t simply remove the alcohol, intensify flavour and then clap your hands, saying ‘Okay lad, job done.” And distillers generally like making spirits, full strength and full-flavoured. So to go to the effort of making something with less alcohol, to essentially step outside of your primary skillset as a distiller and to get it to a point where you can happily release it to the market—it’s not just a statement on the Elemental team’s skill and perseverance, but on their character. A changing skillset for a changing market. Because it’s necessary. We have to go to the mountain, in more ways than one.

One Sunny Saturday

As for what I think, it does the job. It’s an incredibly credible lower alcohol spirit that carries oodles of flavour and a softer, but present mouthfeel. There’s botanical backbone that lingers, even after a glass of Montepulciano rosé. With soda it still stands tall, without dissipating or starting to waft too wide. You want the juniper to stay sharp and tall, not withering in the current. Roots Light does that and does it well.

Roots ’Light’ Marlborough Spirit is available online from the distillery now, exclusively in Liquorland from today and in all good liquor stores from 1 November, making it the perfect drop for a lighter summer.

This week, bartenders around the world will pour hundreds of thousands of Negronis and while Campari will probably make millions from those sales, the descendants of Count Negroni won’t make a cent—unless they are working for someone in the supply chain. Why? Because their ancestor invented a drink so famous, no one can own it and no royalties apply. Not even for Campari, the only proprietary ingredient in the recipe.

The Law of the Drink: Your Cocktail, Your Rules (and Someone Else’s)

Every now and then, I’ll be at a bar and something incredible lands in front of me. Maybe it’s a really clever twist on a classic, or a name so sharp it makes me smile before I even take a sip. Usually, it’s something so unique and delicious, I’m intrigued. You fall in love with it, you ask for the spec and the next thing you know, you’ve got the ingredients list scribbled on a napkin or shorthanded in the Notes app on your phone. Then you’re in your own prep kitchen, wrangling the measures and you wonder if you’ve nailed it or failed completely. Maybe a little tweak or two, maybe the perfect representation and then you wonder… Can I just put someone else’s recipe on the menu? What are the ethics and legalities of using other people’s recipes or cocktail names?

The short answer is: you probably shouldn’t. And the reason for that little hiccup lies in a bizarre legal dance between copyright and trademark law. While the global principles are similar, here in Aotearoa—some things are fair game, and others are very much off-limits.

Let’s start with the easy one: the recipe itself.

The Recipe: A Love Letter, Not a Law

When you’re reading a recipe in a book, on a menu, or a website, that specific text—the flow, the phrasing, the little story about how the creator came up with it—is protected by copyright under the Copyright Act 1994. It’s an original creative work, just like a poem or a song. This is why the head notes of a recipe are so important, including the way you express your original idea conceptions and how you arrived at the variations.

But here’s the key part: copyright protects the expression, not the idea. You can absolutely learn the ingredients and the proportions of that drink and make it for yourself. You can even write your own version of the recipe in your own words. Copyright has no problem with you stirring up a storm in your own living room; it only cares if you steal the love letter itself, not the technique behind it. Think of it like this: anyone can write a song about lost love, but you can’t use the exact lyrics to “Yesterday.”

The Name: Where Things Get Personal

The real power play in the spirits world is with the name. This is where trademark law steps in. A trademark is a word, phrase, or logo that identifies the source of a product or service. When it comes to a cocktail, it’s all about protecting that unique name and the reputation it carries.

Goslings vs. Pernod Ricard
One of the most famous examples is the Dark ‘n Stormy^®. Yes, you read that ^® right. You might think it’s just a combination of dark rum and ginger beer. And it is. But the name “Dark ‘n Stormy” is a registered trademark of Goslings Rum in many countries, including the US.

When Pernod Ricard released their “Dark N’ Stormy” and “Black Stormy” cocktails on the Malibu Rum website, they were considered just too close for comfort for Goslings. Goslings won a trademark infringement lawsuit in the US, meaning any drink marketed as a “Dark ‘n Stormy” must use the authentic recipe featuring Gosling’s Black Seal Rum.

Most importantly, the ruling meant bars serving a “Dark ‘n Stormy” with any other rum could face legal action from Goslings.The dispute highlighted just how seriously Goslings takes its legacy—and its recipes. They argued that using similar names would confuse customers and dilute the brand’s reputation.

While the general principle applies, for that name to be legally protected in New Zealand, it would need to be registered with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ). And guess what - it is. So think carefully about what you name that ginger beer and rum concoction.

Another lesser known example is the Pusser’s Painkiller. Pusser’s Rum trademarked the name for its creamy, tropical concoction of rum, cream of coconut, pineapple, and orange juice. Just like the Dark ‘n Stormy, if a bar isn’t using Pusser’s Rum, it can’t sell a drink by that name in countries where the trademark is registered. (Yep, it’s also registered here, but Pusser’s Rum is hard to get hold of and I’m yet to see this drink on a menu).

The Most Powerful Storm
The reason trademarks are so powerful is that they prevent consumer confusion. They tell you that when you order a Dark ‘n Stormy, you’re getting the genuine article from the people who created it. It protects both the brand and, ultimately, you. This is why a name like “Vodka Soda” is not trademarkable—it’s merely descriptive. It’s not distinct enough to be a brand identity.

So should you rush to trademark every new creation you think will take the drinks world by storm? Probably not. Just because it’s trademarked, doesn’t make it famous.

So Famous, No One Can Own It

How do you know you’ve really created a iconic recipe? It’s so famous, no one can own it. Which is why the descendants of Count Negroni don’t earn a cent from the millions of Negronis served this week or will earn a cut from every bottle of Campari sold. It’s because the cocktail and its name have entered the public domain. When Count Camillo Negroni requested a stronger Americano with gin in 1919, he wasn’t creating a product to be sold on a shelf, but rather a modification of an existing recipe. He never trademarked the name “Negroni” or filed for any legal protection, and it soon became a generic term for a widely accepted recipe without proprietary ingredients.

Because the recipe and its name were never legally protected, they are now considered part of the public lexicon, free for anyone to use, create, and sell without owing royalties to the Negroni family. This is why Campari does not have a legal entitlement to the Negroni or Americano cocktails; they are simply classic recipes where Campari is a key ingredient, but not a proprietary element of the drink. While Campari actively promotes its role in these drinks to boost its brand and works with organisations like the International Bartenders Association (IBA) to solidify its status as the official ingredient, the recipes themselves remain in the public domain. This highlights the crucial distinction between a brand’s promotional partnership with a cocktail and actual legal ownership of the drink.

The Secret Ingredient: The Final Boss

What if you’ve got a recipe that’s so unique, so special, you want to protect it entirely? In New Zealand, the protection for this sort of thing falls under trade secrets, which are primarily protected by common law and contracts, rather than a specific Act. Think of the Coca-Cola formula—it’s a secret held in a vault.

For a cocktail, a trade secret might be a proprietary blend of bitters, a unique house-made syrup with a secret ingredient, or a specific process that no one else knows. As long as you keep it under lock and key and have agreements in place like an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), the law protects you from someone trying to steal that confidential information.

And these days, it’s every recipe creators dream — to create something so unique it becomes iconic. A new classic.

The Bartender’s Legacy: Your Name on a Glass

For bartenders and consultants creating a drink for a bar or a brand, the legal situation is often a matter of contract law. As with any intellectual property created during employment, unless a specific agreement states otherwise, the rights to the creation often belong to the employer. This means the bar or brand would likely own the trademark for the cocktail’s name, and the “expression” of the recipe (if it’s ever written down by them). This is the kind of small print clause you want to review your contract for or if you’re consulting — be extremely clear with your client as to exactly what they are purchasing from you and the license to use the recipe and/or technical specs exclusively.

However, a creator’s legacy is rarely just about legal ownership. Take Dick Bradsell, for example, the legendary British bartender credited with inventing the Espresso Martini and the Bramble. While he created the Espresso Martini for a customer in the 1980s, the name itself was never legally trademarked by him. His enduring association with the drink comes from his reputation and the widespread public acknowledgment of his role in its creation, not from a specific legal document. This “moral ownership” is often the most powerful form of recognition a bartender can have in the industry, even without a formal trademark. So too with the Cosmopolitan, credited to Toby Cecchini, who developed his modern recipe at The Odeon in New York City, 1988.

Think Naked & Famous, developed by Joaquin Simo at Death & Co in 2011, making it a relatively recent addition to the cocktail world, notes Difford’s Guide. It joins a collection of what the IBA calls “new era cocktails”, recipes so pervasive and widespread in the last 25-30 years, they form the new lexicon of modern classics. And let’s be honest - some of those drinks are older than the bartenders serving them which begs the question what comes after the new era?

The Paper Plane is a harmonious blend of bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, and fresh lemon juice, created in the 2000s by Sam Ross. Sam was actually working at Milk & Honey in New York at the time, but created the drink for another venue. He also penned the Penicillin, another drink that feels like it’s been around forever but is only about 20 years old.

The major difference? While the history and authorship of many classics that fueled the cocktail renaissance of the early 2000s are lost to the ether of time, modern technology has enabled the authorship of these new drinks to be retained and recorded by writers and historians like Simon Difford, Gary Regan, Dave Wondrich, Jim Meehan, Sasha Petraske and Jeffrey Morgenthaler to name just a few. You can even still grab a drink in some of the bars these great drinks were created.

Yet, we still neglect to list spirits by name on our cocktail menus, let alone the recipe creators and we rarely take the time to credit the luscious, rich history by which these precious recipes and techniques came to us.

Surely No One Would Prosecute Me?

Employment and contract law in New Zealand is pretty clear cut about Intellectual Property and Confidential Information. You’re most at risk if you walk out of one job and into another with a notebook full of proprietary specs and processes if you’ve signed a contract that says any work you created while under employment belongs to the bar or the brand. Just the same as confidential information like budgeting forecasts, contracts and competitive pricelists. And similarly, most of the time your creative knowledge travels with you but you have to leave the recipes behind.

Creating Legacy

The chasing of new ‘classics’ is far from over. Bartenders are actively creating drinks that transcend menus and enter the public consciousness, particularly through hospitality networks. Bacardi Legacy is based on the premise.

Unlike trademark law, which protects a name for a company, competitions are all about building a bartender’s legacy. And brand/bartender partnerships can create iconic recipes that transcend culture (although I’m still not sure anyone immediately thinks Goslings when they read Dark ‘n Stormy on a menu). A Legacy Drink is simple, reproducible, and has a compelling story—a drink that can be made anywhere, by anyone, and will be remembered long after the competition is over. A drink’s legacy is built on deliciousness, reputation and public adoption rather than legal protection.

So, in the end, the law of the drink is pretty simple: you can copy the recipe, you can even copy a name but you can’t copy the trademarks (at least, not in the countries where it’s trademarked). What we can do a better job of is narrating history and the story of how that drink you loved made it’s way from a napkin spec to your menu in your bar.

And now you have a good story to tell the next time you’re at a bar and spot a “Stormy Night” on the menu that looks an awful lot like a classic Dark ‘n Stormy.

Negroni Week is back, and New Zealand is celebrating with a nationwide tribute to the classic cocktail. From September 22 to 28, bars and restaurants will showcase the Negroni in all its forms, from new twists to one-night-only experiences.

“Whether you’re a die-hard Negroni lover or trying one for the first time, there’s an event or serve to spark your curiosity, says Phil Restall, Managing Director of Campari NZ.

In Auckland, the events range from bar takeovers to unique degustations.

Soul Bar is dedicating a "Soul Goes Red" Campari takeover to the week, while Bar Albert will become a "Negroni Lounge" with a special window installation. Non Solo Pizza is extending its celebration over two months, including a dedicated Weekend Feast.

deadshot_nz

A post shared by @deadshot_nz

On opening night, Deadshot (Ponsonby) and Dee’s Place (Cuba St, Wellington) will join forces for a guest shift you won't want to miss. For something different, QT Hotel will offer a tarot-inspired cocktail experience, and SkyBar invites guests to sip the Negroni family among the clouds.

Panacea is keeping things playful with a Negroni-themed bingo night. Phew - and that’s just Auckland.

Check out the full map of activations in your town here:

The iconic nature of the Negroni is captured in its balanced simplicity: three ingredients—Campari, gin, and sweet vermouth—combined in equal measure. This simple ratio allows for endless creativity. "Negroni Week is our invitation to see what happens when some of the most creative people in the hospitality business put their own spin on a classic," says Phil.

Why You Shouldn’t Miss This Iconic Celebration

The Negroni's place in cocktail history is written on the piazza stones of Italy, where its origins can be traced to Florence. In 1919, Count Camillo Negroni requested his bartender to strengthen his usual Americano (Campari, sweet vermouth and soda water) by replacing the soda water with gin. This simple change would go on to become a new classic, popular as an aperitivo and gaining fame amongst the artists, writers and cinema icons embracing all things Italiano at the time. Strikingly red, like Campari itself, bittersweet and full of botanical character, the Negroni is inherently sophisticated, like only a drink (or a drinker) so bold can be considered.

According to Bon Appetit magazine, until recently, ordering a Negroni was “a secret handshake, a sign to bartenders that you knew what you liked, and how to order it.” In the same way James Bond catapulted the Martini into pop culture, the institutionalisation of the Negroni was helped by the rise of Italian-American culture and cuisine in the US. As the craft cocktail movement of the early 2000s emerged, the Negroni went meteoric amongst bartenders and barflys with a reputation for elegance and balance—when done right.

In the lockdown-inspired craze of at-home cocktails, Stanley Tucci elevated and added controversy with his shaken variation while this editor traipsed through 18 different variations to find the perfect New Zealand version of the drink using NZ gins and sweet vermouth.

And this is why the creativity and playfulness of Negroni Week is an annual opportunity to celebrate and recreate with your own splash of red, defining the Negroni your way.

While Campari leads the official celebration, the success of Negroni Week is a testament to the wider hospitality industry. The week is owned by bartenders, bar owners, and cocktail enthusiasts, so even if you’re drinking your first ever Negroni, you won’t be alone. This year, Napier venues have championed their own media campaign with events like guest shifts and special menus.

Now in its twelfth year, Negroni Week is celebrated in over 80 countries and continues its partnership with the global Slow Food movement. This means every Negroni you order does some good for the world. As Restall explains, "Every sip makes a difference."

So gather your friends, wear a touch of red, and raise a glass to a drink that never goes out of style.

A landmark collaboration between a global gin giant and a small, off-grid island producer, united by a shared spirit of creativity and craftsmanship. This is the story of Australia’s Four Pillars and New Zealand’s Island Gin, the sixth instalment in the Four Pillars Distiller Series and the first to feature two female distillers and a New Zealand brand. The partnership is led by two trailblazers: Andi Ross, founder of Island Gin on Great Barrier Island (Aotea), and Sarah Prowse, head distiller for Four Pillars.

Where Ideals Meet Integrity

The partnership marks two significant milestones: the first time a New Zealand distillery has been included in the Four Pillars Distiller Series, and the first time two female distillers have led the collaboration. For Andi Ross, this collaboration is more than a creative exchange—it's a powerful testament to a journey built on uncompromising ideals.

The Distiller Series is a showcase of Four Pillars' collaborative spirit, having previously teamed up with celebrated distilleries in Sweden, the UK, and Spain. These partnerships are reserved for brands that share a similar passion for innovation and quality. For Four Pillars, a globally recognised distillery that has been crowned International Gin Producer of the Year three times, to choose a small, off-grid producer like Island Gin is a profound endorsement of the New Zealand brand's integrity and unique, handcrafted approach.

This shared ethos was the foundation of the partnership. As Andi Ross noted, "Four Pillars has done an extraordinary job weaving sustainability into a much larger operation. Their work has been recognised globally and it’s not just awards talk... there’s an integrity to how they operate that really resonated with me. It made collaborating feel like more than a creative exchange, it was an alignment of values." For Ross, this commitment is deeply personal. "I still believe that you should be able to have your ideals," she said, reflecting on her own journey, which included taking three years to create a bottle made locally from recycled glass. "Do people care that the bottle’s recycled in New Zealand? Maybe they don't. But I thought, well, it's important to me."

These ideals are a well-known foundation for the distillery, that runs completely off-grid on Aotea (Great Barrier Island) with a commitment to making and keeping as much of the business close to home as possible, from island botanicals to New Zealand-made glass to their soon-to-be first employee on the island.

The Art of Playful Distilling

The collaboration began earlier this year when Sarah Prowse travelled to Great Barrier Island. There, the two distillers worked side by side, immersing themselves in the island’s unique environment. They visited the local beekeeper whose wild Manuka honey has become Island Gin’s signature ingredient, foraged for kelp on the beaches, and experimented with seawater in the distillery.

The process was anything but linear. It was an exercise in creative flexibility and mutual respect. Four Pillars is known for its signature dryness and martini-ability, a genuine component of their house style. So when the two began the process, Andi had a clear vision. "I thought, I really want to make a fantastic martini gin that I don't have in my stable of products," she explained. However, Andi has never been one for pushing square pegs into round holes, and starting with a fixed endpoint was leading in circles.

"You can't go in with a set idea and always get what you want," she reflects. "You’ve just got to go, okay, that's not what I thought it might be, it's not at all. Eventually I realised it wasn’t working and we'll just have to leave it to one side and start again. So then we just completely did a U turn and looked at other things."

The final product was born from an open-ended process of discovery. This creative freedom was a return to Andi’s traditional style of making on the island. "My usual process is seeing what's around, gathering what's around, and something will spark something. It could be a front cover of a book. It could be anything," Ross said.

This hands-on, exploratory approach led them to truly unique ingredients, as they were "riffing on a whole lot of stuff, really. Let's explore the island and work from what’s on the island. Let's look at macadamia trees. Let's go down and see what sort of kelp is here." For Andi, this included working with oranges for the first time, knowing how magically they would work with Manuka honey.

The Makers and the Tastemakers

There’s a sense of play at work here, a throwback to art and advertising masterclasses on creativity and making — which is the essence of what’s happening when you bring two makers together.

“We're all makers, really, I think a lot of distillers are makers, they’re hands on. So, I think when you bring someone into your space, someone like Sarah, you have an opportunity to see how someone else makes and what their process is. You just explore and absorb from each other. And we got along really well in that, I think there were no preconceived ideas.”

Where some recipes might start from the flavour wheel and work outwards, the two distillers leaned into the creative process, immersion in the island and their super-tasting powers. The women had left an impact and effect on one another - Sarah Prowse went harvesting for kelp herself, a kind of hands-on integrity that stands out to Andi, long after their time together. Elements of both women’s experiences have influenced the end result, from Sarah’s winemaking background and palate to the salty, coastal setting of Aotea itself.

“Sarah had thought she wanted to do something different too. But then we worked with the kelp. We worked with seawater, and who knew seawater could be quite interesting in a gin? I had kina, dried and in my fridge. I've got kina that are sitting in spirit. I've got all this stuff. We put that in the pot. We just kept mucking around and playing around with it, so yeah, that’s the creativity–it’s creating and making and learning to be open to whatever happens.”

Two Gins, One Story

The collaboration resulted in two distinct gins, each a reflection of the collaboration. In essence, the Distillers Series is a melting pot of ideas and influence, where each distiller creates a gin back home from those ideas and experiences they’ve gathered.

Wild Isle Gin, Sarah Prowse’s expression, takes the wild, coastal character of Great Barrier Island and reimagines it through an Australian lens. "For Wild Isle Gin, I wanted to create something coastal and savoury, a reflection of Andi’s home," Prowse said. "The brininess of the kelp, the salt, the native botanicals, and always that subtle line of Manuka honey. It’s layered, textured, and deeply connected to place." The gin includes kelp hand-harvested at Kennett River in Victoria, seawater, native botanicals, and Manuka honey from Great Barrier Island. The Australian-distilled gin is packaged in a bottle with unique glow-in-the-dark artwork.

Orange and Manuka Honey Island Gin, Andi Ross’s new release, builds on her globally awarded Island Gin Original. It brings together the softness of Manuka honey with the brightness of New Zealand-grown oranges, inspired by Four Pillars’ famous citrus profile. As Ross explains, "I knew that orange would be the perfect pairing. It adds lift and light but lets the honey shine." This gin is distilled off-grid and bottled in Island Gin's signature Kina shell-inspired vessel, the first spirits bottle made locally from recycled glass.

The Broader Impact: Punching Above Their Weight

For Island Gin, the collaboration is a powerful form of recognition that turns the volume up on their values-led storytelling. Our conversation returns to the bespoke glass bottle that is a significant touchstone in the journey of sustainability, and a point of influence. Island Gin were the first, but Dancing Sands have also followed that path. Ross is frequently fending off enquiries from offshore glass manufacturers offering deeply discounted pricing to win the business but it remains a moot point.

There’s an easy assumption for consumers and industry commentators to make; that when smaller local brands like Four Pillars are purchased by a ‘Big Alcohol’ player such as Lion, their values-driven sustainability models and family style are all vulnerable to the sacrificial altar of commerce. Ross maintains a close friendship with former Four Pillars co-founder Cameron Mackenzie and is quick to offer her experience of working with the team. “They really are still just like a family and in fact, it’s enabled them to do more and invest more in deeply sustainable methods.”

As for how she hopes New Zealanders respond to the Orange & Manuka Honey Gin, it’s a moment for Ross to reflect on the importance of their relationship with their customers, many of whom have a direct relationship with the distillery who still self-distribute to the retailers who seek them out.

"I'd love New Zealand just to go, oh, this is cool," Ross said. "It gives our supporters and our customers a nice kind of halo effect to say that, you know, they've always followed us, and that we have been able to punch above our weight on the world stage, and it affirms their choice to love our brand." The partnership is also a testament to the brand's resilience and community focus. “We’re still here because a lot of our revenue comes directly from our consumers. We've got a very strong relationship with our consumers.”

Availability

Four Pillars Wild Isle Gin: Available only in Australia via Four Pillars venues, online, and selected airports. We say it would be worth the flight to just to try it.

Orange and Manuka Honey Island Gin: Available in New Zealand exclusively via islandgin.com and the Rocks bottle store on Great Barrier Island. In Australia, it is available at Four Pillars’ Healesville Distillery, Surry Hills Lab, and online.

Awards & Accolades

Island Gin

• Best London Dry, NZ - World Gin Awards 2025

• Best Navy Strength, NZ - World Gin Awards 2024

• Platinum - SIP Awards USA 2024

• Double Gold - San Francisco World Spirits Competition 2022

• Innovation Award - NZ Spirits Awards 2020

Four Pillars Gin

• International Gin Producer of the Year (2019, 2020, 2023) - IWSC

• Green Spirit Initiative Award (2022) - IWSC