There are few genuinely original Australian spirits. Most are copies of existing spirits of foreign origin, despite some uniquely Australian twists. But as harvest comes to a close in the vineyards of Australia, some of the millions of tonnes of gorgeous sun-ripened grapes are destined not for the vats and barrels of the country’s wineries, but instead for distilleries to be infused into local gin. These wine-infused gins represent a truly Australian invention, one that’s become a smash hit among Aussie drinkers.
Wine-infused gins are Australia’s answer to traditional English sloe gin. In Old Blighty there’s a longstanding tradition of picking sloe berries during their short season and popping them in a vat of gin for a sweet-tart tipple brimming with summery flavour. Commercial sloe gins have been available on the market for many years, often appearing in classic cocktails like the Charlie Chaplain. But sloe berries are pretty un-Australian. Not commonly grown here and only seen wild in small pockets of Tasmania, if you want to make sloe gin in Australia, your best bet will be to buy dried, imported berries, which kind of defeats the purpose.
Enter Aussie wine gins, pioneered by Victorian distillery Four Pillars with their wildly popular Bloody Shiraz Gin. Based in the beautiful cool-climate wine country of the Yarra Valley, making use of local grapes seemed obvious to Four Pillars founder Cameron Mackenzie. Back in 2015, before commissioning their purpose-built gin distillery in Healesville, Cameron was making his gin in a borrowed shed at his mate Rob Dolan’s winery. In late April that year, a parcel of shiraz grapes arrived from one of the region’s best vineyards. Somehow, potentially without Rob’s knowledge, those grapes ended up in a vat full of Four Pillars gin.
Ten years later, Four Pillars uses over 250 tonnes of shiraz grapes every vintage to produce their Bloody Shiraz gin, and it’s spawned a whole slew of wine-infused descendants among Australia’s many craft gin producers.
Among them is Naught Distilling’s Sangiovese Gin, which has consistently ranked among the highest scores for wine gins at Australian spirits competitions since its launch in 2021. Inspired by Bloody Shiraz, but wanting to take a different approach, Naught founder Chris Cameron looked to alternative grapes grown in the Yarra Valley. “Sangiovese is one of my favourite wines,” he says. “I love the cherry notes, the nice jammy profile and how easy it is to drink. It has a romanticism that really works for me.”
Naught’s Sangiovese Gin launched with 900 bottles, which sold out in two days, made with grapes from Dal Zotto in the King Valley. Four years on, Naught is doing 20,000 bottles per year. These days, their grapes are sourced from Yarra Valley vineyards Killara Estate and Billanook Estate. “They’re all handpicked, and we get them the same day,” says Chris. “The grapes get steeped for about two months in our dry gin, then very gently pressed to extract the juice without any of the astringency from the skins and seeds.”
There’s no sugar added, with all the natural sweetness and texture coming from those lovely Yarra Valley grapes. The result is a gin unlike any other, with a wonderfully silky texture and a rich, sweet-tart palate that speaks loudly to the quality of Victorian wine grapes. When I spoke to Chris, he was in Singapore spruiking his wares
after recently signing a distribution deal there.
“One of the challenges we face with wine gins is that consumers don’t know how to drink them,” he says. “I’ve spent the past three days visiting bars and showing bartenders how to use the product in cocktails.” Chris recommends using his Sangiovese Gin in a sour with lemon, sugar and egg white, in a classic Charlie Chaplain cocktail with lime juice and Marionette’s excellent local apricot brandy, or in a French 75 with lemon juice and sparkling wine. “It’s clean, crisp and you don’t even need any sugar because the sweetness of the sangiovese works so well with a brut sparkling,” he says.
At Melbourne’s Gin Palace, Australia’s longest running gin bar, wine gins find a home on their cocktail list. The Gin Zombie cocktail, a riff on the classic tropical drink usually made with three different kinds of rum, features Shiraz Gin from Ounce Distilling in South Australia, Patient Wolf Dry Gin and Antagonist Director’s Cut overproof gin along with pineapple juice and sweet vermouth. The result is a delicious, refreshing punch reminiscent of a Singapore Sling with tropical fruitiness and herbaceous gin character in perfect balance, backed up with the cherry-sweet juiciness of Aussie red wine grapes.
“For a long time, bitter drinks were the coolest thing in bars,” says Gin Palace Venue Manager Nathaniel Stove. “Then it was ‘no sugar!’ and all the drinks had to be super sour. Now our guests are gravitating to sweeter drinks, and our most popular ones are the Gin Zombie and our Passionate Lover, which is essentially a pavlova gin sour. The beautiful purple colour you get from wine gin also attracts people to those drinks. Drinkers are after cocktails that are fun, sweet and playful these days,” he says.
You can see Nathaniel’s comments play out around the room at Gin Palace, with wine gin cocktails seen on almost every table during a recent visit. My wife and drinking partner, Cara, also a career bartender, notes that wine gins like Bloody Shiraz are requested by name by guests more than any other gin these days, and when Four Pillars isn’t on hand, they’re happy to try other Aussie wine gins in their place. “In cocktails, wine gins offer the same sort of complexity that an amaro or a sherry would,” she says. “There’s fruitiness and complexity, but they don’t overpower the nuances of other cocktail components with a lot of aggressive sugar.”
Another Yarra Valley success story in which wine and gin are intimately intertwined is Melbourne Gin Company, the passion project of winemaker Andrew Marks of storied winery Gembrook Hill. A couple of years ago, Andrew wondered what would happen if he fortified unfermented sauvignon blanc juice with gin. The result is Pineau de Gembrook (PDG) Mistelle, a reference to the eau-de-vie fortified grape juices of France referred to as pineaus.
Andrew was inspired by his love of those French mistelles. “When I was 16, I spent six months in France,” he says. “My host father was a vigneron and would offer me a pineau de charentes [unfermented Charentes grape juice fortified with unaged Cognac spirit] as an aperitif before lunch. When I came back to the family farm in 2005, I made what I called ‘Pineau de Gembrook’ with our sauvignon blanc juice fortified with neutral grape spirit. After we started making gin, the idea evolved; why not fortify the juice with our gin as it comes off the still at full strength?”
The result is a wonderful aperitif-style drink that works beautifully on the rocks or as a replacement for off-dry vermouth in cocktails. PDG is made with the very same grapes Andrew uses to make the outstanding Gembrook Hill sauvignon blanc wines. “Our sav blanc has so much flavour,” says Andrew. “It’s magical in the PDG with the juniper and bergamot flavours of our gin.”
This article first appeared in issue #79 of Halliday magazine. Become a member to receive all four issues per year, digital access to over 185,000 tasting notes from more than 4000 producers, and much more.
