Mt Fyffe Distillery: Small batch artisan gin distillery at Kaikōura
Mt Fyffe Distillery – our story
Hello, my name is Justine and welcome to my small batch artisan distillery. I have always loved gin and a few years back discovered the wonderful world of botanical gin. I live on a sheep farm on the slopes of Mt Fyffe in Kaikōura, one of the most stunning places in New Zealand where the mountains meet the sea. I realised how many interesting botanics surrounded me and the potential for creating my own unique botanical gins.
Mid 2019 I took a gin making course and the journey began. I started foraging for botanics and playing with blends and flavours with my shiny new 2.5 litre Portuguese copper still. The learning curve was steep, and despite a few hiccups along the way which only made me more determined, I’m very proud to have developed two unique Kaikōura gin’s.
My gin blends have been influenced by the stories that surround them. I’m completely absorbed by the entire process from foraging for the botanics, creating each small batch gin with its own bespoke uniqueness through to hand bottling, labelling and creating each gift box. You can be assured of my personal attention to detail at every stage.
I spend my time juggling being a farmer’s wife, a mother of two young boys, creating gin in my wee distillery and running or biking around the hills looking for potential botanics!
Life is full of challenges, I thrive on them and after having my children I started looking at ways to diversify and utilise my time on the family farm so I set myself a goal of following a dream I’d had for a long time… to make good, really good gin.
With a midwifery background and married to a sheep farmer with two young boys, I knew nothing about what distillation required so happily booked into a gin course in Auckland. I went thinking I’d quite like it. I didn’t like it, I LOVED it. I found I had a passion and a talent for working with botanics. That was in mid 2019 and since then I’ve been busy creating, absorbing information to learn the trade and negotiating all the obstacles of setting up a new business.
To create a really good gin, you have to start with using a high ethanol percentage, the higher the ABV (alcohol by volume) you start with the smoother the gin. I opted to import my ethanol, using a grain based ethanol from Southern grain spirits in Kaiapoi at 96.5% ABV. This ensures I start with a fabulous foundation on which to distill and infuse my botanics with.