Distillery Botanica

Overview

Some people are just born with a penchant for spirits. The Australian genius of a distiller behind Mr Black cold drip coffee liqueur has come up with a perfect gin — one he's calling 'garden grown' gin. It's called Distillery Botanica and, to be honest, drinking it feels like strolling merrily through a summer garden.

There's a good reason for that. Philip Moore, the brains behind Distillery Botanica, sources all the botanicals from his very own garden in Erina on the Central Coast. To get the most out of the plants, he uses a 1000-year-old technique known as 'enfleurage'. It involves placing the flowers on a layer of coconut oil, into which their fragrance diffuses over two or three days, creating the purest possible perfume.

The heady scent hits you as soon as the glass reaches your hand. "The hero botanical is marraya," says Will Miles, Distillery Botanica partner and brand director. "It looks a bit like jasmine, but it's got slightly wider petals and grows on tall, lush hedges. All the flowers are handpicked at the distillery, in the garden, so the gin really has the essence of the place where it's made." In addition to murraya, there's jasmine, honeysuckle, orange blossom, rose, chamomile, coriander, orris root, sage, angelica and juniper.

You can order a bottle of Distillery Botanica online. (The actual bottle, by the way, is one you'll want to keep for aesthetics alone — five years went into its design.)