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.”

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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.

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.

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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

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