The spirited growth of the Australian gin industry was the main topic in the mix at last weekend’s annual Junipalooza gin festival.
The second annual ‘meet-the-maker’ event featured around 30 distillers from Australia and overseas, who presented their wares to 2,400 gin enthusiasts at Melbourne’s Meat Market.
The gin sector continues to ride a strong wave of popularity in Australia, according to UK-based festival organiser, Gin Foundry.
It launched the first Junipalooza “Meet the Maker” event in London four years ago, and then expanded into Melbourne last year, in collaboration with local partner, The Gin Queen.
“The Australian market has always been of huge interest to us as it is booming right now,” said Gin Foundry co-founder Olivier Ward.
He said it was characterised by a number of “high quality distillers and a consumer that is keen to learn more”.
“We always look to those two factors when looking for expansion and new projects,” Ward said. “To this end, Melbourne was the obvious choice for us.”
While the revival of gin’s reputation as an edgy, cosmopolitan drink has boosted its global popularity in recent years, he believes other forces are also at play in Australia.
“In my opinion, the prevailing reason is because there is a boom in craft spirits and craft distilleries, and fundamentally both are about people," Ward said.
Figures released at the show indicate there are now about 80 gin distillers in Australia, distilling an estimated 200 gins.
“A love of craft spirits is as much about the spirits that are being made as well as the spirit of those who make them. It’s about championing entrepreneurialism and supporting local. It’s about regionality and discovering something new."
He said there was no better spirit to imbue all these qualities than in gin, with the huge array of production techniques at a maker’s disposal.
“The spectrum of flavours, the ingredients and the ideas you can harness as a maker allows for you to imprint so many concepts and ideals into every drop.
“There is innovation, romance, regionality and human endeavour all captured into one place and that’s what consumers buy into. It makes it more compelling than any other spirit”.
He said native botanicals had also become a key focus in Australia, along with distillery size - with both micro and nano distilleries “popping up everywhere”.
According to Ward, it isn’t just the craft segment benefiting from the global gin craze, with over 12 per cent growth over the past four years for some of the larger brands.
“It’s true the craft sector is growing faster though. Big brands have definitely had to respond to how the smaller distillers operate and the area this is most apparent is in the fact that almost all the larger players have already or are in the process of opening a cellar door.
“The need for transparency and to have a home is much more difficult to reverse engineer into a distillery than it is to build in as you go from the ground up, and this has been something the larger producers have had to move rapidly on to keep up with the shifting consumer landscape.”
