World Gin Day is normally a huge celebration for the team at Bass & Flinders Distillery on the Mornington Peninsula, but with COVID-restrictions meaning fewer people at the cellar door the distiller came up with a new way to celebrate.
That saw Ginspiration June born, a month-long celebration of gin that aims to support and honour those who have been an inspiration amid COVID-19, while also sparking some positivity around the country.
B&F Managing Director and second-generation Head Distiller, Holly Klintworth explained to Bars and Clubs the thinking behind the celebration.
“There are a couple of reasons why we decided to do Ginspiration June, the first one is that usually June is one of the biggest times of the year for us at our distillery door because of World Gin Day. We usually have a big celebration, we have live music, food trucks, mulled gin and lots of fun, but this year we had a 20-person limit, so it was quite different.
“We knew it would be different June this year, so we decided to take our celebrations online and make a whole month of it.
“Then the second reason was to acknowledge that it has been a tough last few months for many people; everyone has had to adjust to the new normal and we have all had to adapt to lockdown.
“So Ginspiration June is all about celebrating – celebrating our love of gin and also celebrating those who made a difference or who are deserving of a little recognition during lockdown.”
She added: “Just watching the news over the last few months has been so depressing, so anything we can do to give people a little pick-me-up, we thought would be great.”
In terms of how it all works, Klintworth told Bars and Clubs: “If you spend $60 or more on our website you’ll be asked to nominate someone who they think has been an inspiration.
“They can add a Ginspiration G&T, which zeros out on checkout and they can add a little note to say why, and that means the person receiving a G&T knows where and who it has come from.
“We’ve had some really nice messages come through from people saying ‘I want to nominate this person because they did all our shopping for us for 14 days and bought us coffees every day because we were in isolation’. So lots of stories like that.”
Klintworth added: “The other thing we are doing at the moment is donating $5 from every online order to Help Out Hospo, a fund providing financial aid to hospitality workers who have been stood down as a direct result of the pandemic.”
The G&T that the distillery sends out is a mini of one of the two new gins it has recently launched, one called Orient, the other Maritime, which are sent with a 200ml bottle of Fever-Tree.
Klintworth explained the two new gins to Bars and Clubs, saying: “I have always been thinking about creating these two gins in some way, shape or form.
“With the Maritime I had always wanted to create a product that is really reflective of our home on the Peninsula and forage some local ingredients. I wanted to draw on the three facets that make the Mornington Peninsula unique, which are the vineyards, the ocean and the bush.
“So Maritime is a real combination of those three flavours. For ocean flavours we have locally foraged saltbush, kelp and samphire, there are vine leaves that have added a tiny bit of spice and from the bush we’ve got some lemon myrtle, currant bush, wattle seed and strawberry gum.
“I’ve tried a few ‘ocean’ gins that are out there but I haven’t found one that really tastes like you are drinking the ocean, or a sea breeze. I really wanted to encapsulate that in a gin, so it’s really salty and very savoury and quite citrus.
“I really wanted to make a quintessentially Australian dry gin and also really reflect our home.”
For the Orient Gin, Klintworth told Bars and Clubs: “So Maritime is the home of the distillery and Orient is the heart; it draws on my family’s heritage. My grandmother was Chinese and I have always wanted to Szechuan Pepper in a gin and you can really get that numbing on the tip of your tongue from the Orient.
“It has the Szechuan Pepper, Chinese red dates, kaffir lime, goji berries and then it also has some Aussie accents with strawberry gum and wattle seeds. Orient is bright and bubbly and a little bit sweet with some mandarin in there too.”
And while all the Bass and Flinders gins can be enjoyed as sipping gins because they use grape-based spirit which brings a roundness, smoothness and viscosity to the gins, but Klintworth does hope to see more from these two new gins.
“These were definitely made with the intention of mixing and putting into cocktails,” she said. “Hopefully they will get out more into bars and restaurants purely because we really see these as matching great with food as well.”
The two new gins are available now through Bass and Flinders and you can find out more about cocktail suggestions and Ginspiration June on the Bass and Flinders website.
