News

In the past couple of weeks, we ran two Masterclasses at our Gin Bar in Leederville (Bill's Bar & Bites), featuring a behind-the-scenes insight into an Exclusive Gin Collaboration between Rummy Lovebeard and Jessica Arnott from Masterchef.

Guests who attended were lucky to get an in depth look into how a new Gin comes to life as Jess and Rummy walked them through their creative process and allowed them to sample the results.  

As a very special treat, each guest also received a limited release 700ml bottle of the brand new 'Tugboat' Gin to take home! 

This Gin was inspired by the Birak season in the Noongar calendar which runs from December to January and is known as the ‘hot dry time’.

As a summer style Gin, it features Australian botanicals, including young Geraldton wax leaves, Banksia Honey and Smoked Orange Peel. The piney citrus aroma of the wax compliments the juniper so beautifully. In this case, they distilled the honey instead of diffusing it.  

Overall, it has a very distinctive flavour profile which differs to the sweeter styles and is ideal for our hot climate, due to the inclusion of ingredients inspired by the ‘burning’ scrubland.

Ingredients:

• Banksia Honey
• Juniper Berries
• Geraldton wax leaves
• Coriander seeds
• Angelica and liquorice root
• Cinnamon myrtle
• Lemon Peel
• Orange Peel (smoked)

If you missed out on these masterclasses and the opportunity to sample the Tugboat Gin, please keep your eyes open as we will be running more exciting events in the near future (and we may even be bringing another limited run of the Tugboat Gin to Tiny's Liquor Emporium soon).

Learn how to make the hottest trend in gin cocktails with our top 3 gin bowl recipes incorporating Native Australian ingredients including Saltbush, Banksia flowers and Eucalyptus leaves.

Yesterday our Brand Ambassador worked alongside our creative team to bring to life his unique take on gin bowls, specifically incorporating native Australian ingredients. These were a match made in heaven when paired with our award-winning Australian gins.

Keep reading to discover our top three contemporary cocktail gin bowl recipes and the background story about what inspired these unique combinations.

Dragonfruit & Lemon Gin Bowl

Ingredients:

• The West Winds Gin - The Sabre
• 120ml Capi Dry Tonic Water
• Lemon
• Dragonfruit
• Juniper Berries
• Banksia Flower

Light, fresh and designed to bring out the subtle complexities of The Sabre, this Gin and Tonic utilises the light sweetness of the dragonfruit to create a base for the soft aromas of the banksia flowers to blend with the juniper berries and lemon zest. Inspired by our Brand Ambassador's latest trips to South East Asia and his experiments with native botanicals from home and abroad.

Kiwifruit & Bush Tomato Gin Bowl

Ingredients:

• The West Winds Gin - The Cutlass
• 120ml Capi Dry Tonic Water
• Kiwifruit
• Habanero Peppers
• Bush Tomatoes
• Eucalyptus Leaves

Ideal for the more adventurous drinker, the stronger citrus notes of the kiwifruit and the heat of the habanero peppers create a peppery blend that pairs beautifully with the aromas of native eucalyptus. For a special touch add native bush tomatoes to enhance that one in a million flavour that belongs distinctively to The Cutlass.

Grapefruit & Toasted Saltbush Gin Bowl

Ingredients:

• The West Winds Gin - The Broadside
• 120ml Capi Dry Tonic Water
• Grapefruit
• Blueberries
• Pimento
• Toasted Saltbush
• Snowpea Flowers

Bold and punchy, the salty flavours of The Broadside are complemented by roasted saltbush and fresh blueberries in this fun mix of tastes and textures. Pink grapefruit zest adds a light zing to pair with the pimento and don't be afraid to add edible snowpea flowers to fancy it up a bit.

We haven't even told you the best part about our gin bowl cocktail recipes yet... some of the key ingredients including Saltbush, Banksia Flowers and Eucalyptus Leaves can be foraged from almost any suburb!

The remaining ingredients can be found at your local growers' market (Fremantle Markets for example) or your local grocer (Fresh Provisions in this case).

The original vision for West Winds was to develop a range of gins that highlighted the amazing native botanicals we have in Australia.  To do this we set out to launch the business with  two gins, both savoury in character, one at 40% incorporating toasted Australian wattle seed and one at 50% incorporating native Australian bush tomato.

Turning the vision into a commercial reality took another year and 45 distillations using a New Zealand Amphora PDA-1 test still before we undertook the process of scaling up to our 150 litre Arnold Holstein copper pot still. During this evolutionary journey we discovered that the creation of a world-class gin involves a mix of artistic vision, science, perseverance and, frankly, a good dose of serendipity.

We firstly selected a beverage grade neutral spirit made from Australian wheat as the starting point for our development.

Most typical gins follow a simple flavor journey of citrus then spice, followed by earth and juniper notes. These flavor profiles can be achieved in an infinite number of ways. Assuming a high-grade distillate base and a pure water source, the selection and ratio of botanicals is the key to developing a world-class gin.

We decided to start by using juniper and coriander seed as a base, and then to build up the profiles of our first two gins, The Cutlass and The Sabre from there.

Using a range of ingredients traditionally used in gin as well as a number of uniquely Australian ingredients that we thought would help us build the flavor profile we were looking for, we macerated and distilled each ingredient separately so that we could identify the characters that each botanical could bring to the final product. Where possible throughout the process we looked for Australian botanicals that would be a suitable substitute for traditional botanicals. The use of locally grown and native ingredients forms a core part of our story - our ‘terroir’ so to speak.

The choice of the fresh botanicals was key to the final profile of the gins. These botanicals and ingredients really help tell our story. Local lemons and limes from Gingin in Western Australia are fresh peeled to provide the citrus component. The addition of fresh coriander root then bought the two gins to life.

The use of both lemon and lime is considered fairly nontraditional but we felt they worked much better than other typical citrus mixes as lemon and lime work beautifully with the addition of lemon myrtle and cinnamon myrtle. The myrtles form a bridging gap between the citrus and spice notes in both The Sabre and The Cutlass.

Fresh coriander root and coriander seed form the predominate spice notes. The fresh coriander is fairly unique in flavor and also provides aromatic grassy notes when used in conjunction with coriander seed.

Earthy tones are achieved using more ‘traditional’ botanicals like liquorice, angelica and allspice.

The smooth textural mouth feel is realized by the addition of Australian wattle seed to The Sabre and Australian native bush tomato to The Cutlass.

Part of the tomato family, there are over 100 species of Solanums (Wild Tomatoes) in Australia. However, only six are known to be edible. In the red, sandy deserts in central Australia the plants grow quickly after summer rains, mainly from dormant root stock which can last for many years between favourable seasons.

We completed our development phase in November 2010 and then scaled up the recipe for our Arnold Holstein still. Just weeks after our first commercial runs we received a Double Gold medal for The Cutlass and a Gold medal for The Sabre at the 2011 San Francisco International Spirits Competition.

We have since added our navy strength gin, The Broadside, to our portfolio along with a number of other small-batch gins and have installed a new 600 litre still, "Pugwash", at our distillery in Margaret River.