Sean Baxter from Never Never Distilling Co takes Steve through a masterclass gin tasting that becomes a palate revelation, while sharing how three non-mates turned a 300-litre still named Wendy in a shed with no running water into one of Australia’s most celebrated gin brands now eyeing global domination.
From the moment Sean Baxter arrives with glassware and botanicals for a proper gin education, this episode becomes something special. The co-owner of Never Never Distilling Co doesn’t just pour drinks, he crafts an experience that transforms how we think about gin, taking us from Triple Juniper through the coastal complexity of Oyster Shell to the life-changing intensity of Juniper Freak Navy Strength.
Beyond the tasting lies a remarkable South Australian success story. Three acquaintances pooled resources for a broken still from a brewery equipment manufacturer, set up shop in a dusty grinding shed with no running water, and built a brand that caught the attention of global beverage giant Asahi. Their secret wasn’t chasing novelty natives but perfecting the London Dry style with an Australian soul.
The musical pilgrimage celebrates The Violets’ upcoming 30th anniversary reunion show at The Gov, featuring their raw 1996 live recording “Somewhere” from the Lion Arts Bar during Adelaide’s vibrant mid-nineties music scene.
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Running Sheet: Never Never Underestimate Sean Baxter
00:00:00 Intro
Introduction
00:02:52 SA Drink Of The Week
This week’s SA Drink becomes an extended Never Never Distilling Co masterclass as Sean Baxter guides Steve through three distinct gin expressions, each revealing layers of complexity that challenge preconceptions about the spirit category.
Triple Juniper Neat Tasting
Sean begins with Triple Juniper, explaining the three-stage juniper manipulation: steeping for deeper, earthier flavours, pot distillation for additional layers, and vapour basket treatment for the lightest citrus and pine resin notes. “The vapour touches is kind of the first thing you taste,” Sean explains as Steve immediately identifies the citrus peel lifting from the glass.
The neat tasting reveals gin’s textural potential. “Some of the flavours you’ll find immediately at the front are root driven,” Sean notes, describing how angelica root, liquorice root, and orris root land along the palate’s sides, while spices create warmth sensations in the middle. Steve’s poetic response captures the experience: “It’s like tire tracks leaving warmth on the road, and little critters looking up after it’s passed.”
Triple Juniper With Coastal Tonic
Adding Strange Love’s coastal tonic with lemon and lemon thyme transforms the experience entirely. The salinity in the tonic connects with multiple citrus compounds, creating what Sean calls “a thing of beauty.” Steve describes the dilution effect as moving from aggressive light show to “Aurora across the horizon,” softer but bigger.
The garnish selection proves crucial. Lemon thyme adds familiar yet unexpected notes, while the lemon provides what Steve characterises as an “echo chamber effect.” The finish reveals angelica root’s savoury qualities, part of the celery family and used worldwide in stocks and soups.
Oyster Shell Gin Experience
The second gin immediately establishes its distinctive character. “Oyster shell gin makes everything taste like seafood for a significant amount of time,” Sean warns, explaining why distillation schedules matter. The neat tasting surprises Steve, who expected fishiness but discovers instead a coastal complexity featuring wakame seaweed and native Australian botanicals.
“It’s whacked up a quick sandcastle across my palate,” Steve observes, finding nothing fishy but something entirely different from Triple Juniper. Sean’s botanical selection includes Elysia coastal daisy bush, native rosemary-like Florio, saltbush, and Geraldton Wax from Western Australia, which creates “almost like a lemongrass, lime leaf note.”
With coastal tonic, lime, and lime leaf, the gin becomes what Steve describes as “icy poles at swimming carnivals.” The lime performs like a beach rake, cleaning the palate fresh. Sean emphasises this as “salted coastal citrus style,” designed to pair perfectly with Society restaurant’s raw bar in Melbourne.
Juniper Freak Navy Strength
The final gin represents Sean’s philosophy of amplification over innovation. At 58% ABV with no different ingredients from Triple Juniper, Juniper Freak concentrates every flavour element. “There’s so much juniper oil in it,” Sean explains, demonstrating how the spirit louches when diluted, releasing visible oils.
Steve’s reaction proves transformative: “I think this is my spiritual home of gin.” The viscosity, evident in the glass’s legs, promises intensity that delivers. “That was one plus one equals 77,” Steve declares, referencing the oyster shell martini experience while finding his gin revelation.
With pink grapefruit and rosemary garnish, the navy strength gin maintains its prominence while allowing other flavours to complement rather than compete. “You are probably the first person on the planet that’s been able to make rosemary a team player,” Steve observes, noting how the herb plays wingman rather than overwhelming the juniper.
The tasting concludes with Steve’s pledge: “Juniper Freak gin will be a mainstay of my small bar from this day until the day I pass.” Sean’s response captures the distiller’s satisfaction: “Well, turns out you’re a freak, Steve, so there you are. You’re in the freak club.”
00:53:38 Sean Baxter
What begins as Steve expecting “two little jug glasses” for a simple tasting quickly escalates when Sean arrives with proper glassware, botanicals, and the confidence of someone who knows their craft inside out. His Sunday morning setup includes everything needed for a proper gin education, because as Sean puts it, “This is a regular Sunday morning to me.”
The conversation starts with World Gin Day celebrations at Hains & Co, where Sean’s oyster shell martini served in actual oyster shells created what Steve describes as “one plus one equals 77” rather than simple addition. The technique involves grinding actual oyster shells into the distillation process, adding minerality and salinity that recreates “the fresh rock pool that’s almost just been born, not the dodgy one at midday.”
Sean’s background reveals the hospitality industry’s hidden career potential. Despite his mother’s investment in “eight years of tertiary education,” Sean chose bartending, eventually becoming a Johnny Walker brand ambassador. “I always felt so connected to the idea of hospitality and service,” he explains, emphasising that memorable experiences come from people who understand their value in making others feel welcome.
The Never Never origin story defies conventional startup wisdom. Three men who weren’t close friends pooled money for a broken 300-litre still that was actually a shop floor model from Spark Brew. “It didn’t actually work. It wasn’t made to work. It was made to measure,” Sean recalls. Located in Big Shed Brewing’s grinding shed without running water, Tim Boast had to carry 20-litre containers of filtered water 20 metres for every distillation run.
Their decision to focus on London Dry style rather than native botanicals proved prescient. “What didn’t exist was a gin that celebrated London style, but was Australian,” Sean explains. While others explored native ingredients, Never Never perfected juniper-forward gins that bartenders understood instinctively. The strategy worked: in 2019, they won World’s Best Classic Gin, and in 2022, World’s Best London Dry for their Triple Juniper.
The recent acquisition by Asahi represents validation of a decade-long vision. “The year before, we had to go through redundancies. We were struggling to keep the lights on,” Sean admits. The transformation from near-closure to global expansion opportunities makes him emotional: “We built a brand in the back of a shed in a western suburb of Adelaide for nothing.”
Their label evolution from angular, colour-based designs to cleaner, more readable bottles reflects practical lessons learned. The original 500ml bottles and low-light illegible labels worked for small-scale operations but hindered growth. The new tall bottles with clear branding support their global ambitions while maintaining the “horizon line” concept that embodies Never Never’s philosophy.
Sean’s passion for blended whiskey reveals industry prejudices worth questioning. His father’s collection of unopened Johnny Walker bottles, hidden because he “didn’t think he was good enough to drink it,” illustrates how perceptions of premium products can create unnecessary barriers. “Johnny Red is someone’s premium whiskey,” an elderly gentleman once reminded Sean during a seminar, a lesson that shaped his inclusive approach to spirits.
01:26:13 Musical Pilgrimage
In the Musical Pilgrimate, The Violets return to mark 30 years since their debut album “Leased Regret” with a reunion show at The Gov on Friday 29th August. The original supporters Batteries Not Included and The Jaynes share the bill, creating what promises to be “nostalgia with driving guitars.”
The featured track “Somewhere” captures The Violets live at Lion Arts Bar in 1996, during the venue’s peak as a showcase for Adelaide’s most promising acts. The raw energy and guitar-driven sound defined much of Adelaide’s music scene through the nineties and early 2000s, when venues like Lion Arts Bar provided crucial platforms for emerging talent.
Batteries Not Included’s inclusion adds perfect symmetry, as they gave The Violets their first gig at Limbo Nightclub in 1992. The reunion represents one of those full-circle moments that happen regularly in Adelaide’s tight-knit music community, where relationships forged decades ago continue to shape current events.
The tenuous gin connection acknowledges the Navy Strength Juniper Freak’s influence on Steve’s commentary, though the real connection lies in how both The Violets and Never Never represent South Australian creativity finding its voice and reaching beyond local boundaries.
Here’s this week’s preview video
There is no featured video this week – yet – it is coming.
SFX: Throughout the podcast we use free SFX from freesfx.co.uk for the harp, the visa stamp, the silent movie music, the stylus, the radio signal SFX, the wine pouring and cork pulling SFX, and the swooshes around Siri.
An AI generated transcript – there will be errors. Check quotes against the actual audio (if you would like to volunteer as an editor, let Steve know)
416-The Adelaide Show
Steve Davis: [00:00:00] Hello, Steve Davis here. Welcome to episode 416 of the Adelaide Show. There is a warning that I need to share here. A lot of gin is about to be consumed during the making of this podcast. So if you have a vicarious bone in your body, perhaps don’t drive while you’re listening to this. We are honored to have Sean Baxter joining us very shortly.
He is one of the co-owners of, uh, never, never Distilling Company or distilling Co for Your hip. And he is gonna take us through a masterclass of tasting, uh, gin. They’ve got some very special stuff happening there. They’re also ready to take the world on. After that, we’re gonna dive into more of his story ’cause he’s taken quite an interesting way there.
And then a lot of little insights about life and being humans and the art of hospitality that rise to the surface. And then in the musical pilgrimage, we are looking [00:01:00] at another, uh, classic iconic South Australian, the Violets, uh, that band really, I think they, they dominated much of our airwaves and the, the clubs and pubs, especially during the, the nineties and the early naughties.
It’s 30 years shortly since the release of their debut album least Regret. And they’ve got a big showcase coming up at the gov at the end of August. And we’re gonna have a taste of that, uh, before the show is out. But right now I have cleansed my palette. I’m ready to IBI
TAS Theme: Wave
refugees and Lady,[00:02:00]
lady
Caitlin Davis: in the spirit of reconciliation. The LH Show podcast acknowledges. The traditional custodians of country throughout South Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.
TAS Theme: Lady Who? Lady. Lady. Lady. Other lady. Other lady who
Steve Davis: This is a very special essay drink of the week this week because we actually have Sean Baxter from Never, never [00:03:00] Distilling right here with us. Sean, welcome. Thanks for having me, Steve. Well, you know, you invite a distiller over and we’ll just have a little tasting.
Well look at this. We’ve got your range or part of it. You’ve brought glassware, you’ve brought all the acc mo mm-hmm. Mixes. Is this just how, this is just normally how you roll on a Sunday?
Sean Baxter: This is a regular Sunday morning to me. Really? Uh, it’s, it’s when you go to the distillery, there’s a, there’s quite a lot of, uh, exciting things on the table, so I didn’t want to, um, miss out on any of those particular things.
Steve Davis: Well, I was worried. You see, I just had my two little jut glasses thinking, you know, we might do a little neat tasting. That’s what we’ve got up in. No, you’ve got the whole box and dice. Um, just to set to get our appetite. We, um, last Sunday, the time of recording was World Gym Day. Correct. And you were. Uh, releasing your beautiful new bottle to the world and gin.
It was magnificent. But one of the things that we enjoyed at Hanes and [00:04:00] Co, which is a fantastic establishment in Adelaide, uh, you, you had a whole, we’re going into a lot of what you had, but one of the options were these oysters that you could, uh, shuck and then get topped up with the special oyster.
Shell martini and drink that at the same time, and I just want to insert that right here. Let’s have a listen to this. It’s about 45 seconds worth. Amazing. The Shelly. Let’s do it. Alright. Fresh oyster, uh, uh, coffin, bay. Coffin, bayit. Okay, here we go. Oops. I think it’s gonna come out easily. Perfect.
Delicious. Now a little oyster. Shell martini in your shell doing the shelly.
Oh, that’s how you do it. That was not one plus one equals two. That was one plus one equals 77. Got to 77. I love it. Unbelievable. [00:05:00] And, and the tide is keeping on coming in. Oh, beautiful. I love it. I love it. Wow. Okay. Excellent. That’s the experience. Have another Shelley. Beautiful. Thank you. Being such a.
There it is. My goodness, Cody, I was in master hand. He’s good, isn’t it?
Sean Baxter: He’s fabulous. He is. He’s an institution in Adelaide. He’s an ex Haynes and co, uh, employee and now a full-time Never, never ambassador. So he was built for this role. Oh,
Steve Davis: fantastic. Now I got, you had me under a spell because I’m not a big oyster person.
I got attracted to this and I loved it, and I loved the way that the ocean washed back with that second taste. It was just. What was going on? It’s,
Sean Baxter: oh, I, I love, I love the way that you’re able to manipulate flavor in gin in such an exciting way and many other spirit categories. You’re really restricted, um, not only by legislation, but by raw material.
In, in gin. You can act actively, [00:06:00] try to encourage those sorts of flavors by using, um, coastal ingredients, by using salinity, by using things that inspire that level of sort of flavor connectivity in your mind. So I love the idea of like the fresh rock pool. That, that one that’s almost just been born, not the dodgy one, midday, you know, we are talking about the one where it’s full of those wonderful sort of algal blooms, these wonderful little pops of, uh, pops of different seaweeds, uh, a a a, an oyster shell here and there.
I love that idea in a, in a gin. Um, and we recreated that using coastal ingredients and actual oyster shell.
Steve Davis: I was gonna ask,
Sean Baxter: why, how does that, you just. Grind them up. How do you get the flavor out of the
Steve Davis: oyster shell?
Sean Baxter: Well, the, interestingly, we weren’t the first to do it. It’s the Japanese did it first and then the Scots, um, and we followed suit.
Uh, the idea of the shell, um, in the distillation process actively is about the addition of a lot of the different minerality and salinity that you’ll [00:07:00] get from the shell, but more importantly, often a lot of the, the different types of vegetation that grow on the shell as well. So you’re actually encouraging a whole level of different, um, uh, flavors and connections, I guess, to the ocean through that process.
Steve Davis: It was, and because ocean can go too far, this was all in balance. And just that idea of having the, the shell there coaxing us to have them, I believe the germ of the idea. Wasn’t it a client who wanted you to craft a gin of this ilk and you made some comments about how you love it when a client. Asked very specific things in a, well, I guess a, a custom order
Sean Baxter: that was correct.
So we, we we’re well known for our collaborations. This was a collaboration with a wonderful restaurant in Melbourne called Society. They were just about to open and they had this incredible raw bar so you could approach the bar and indulge in many different types of fish, sashimi, uh, cappaccio, [00:08:00] lots of different styles.
Um, and then one of their most, um, prominent, I guess features was a range of different oysters, um, natural. And they didn’t specifically ask for a oyster shell gin, but they asked for something that would be well dressed in a martini in that environment. And my mind immediately went to the, to, um, some of these incredible gins that I tried in Japan, which were driven by that coastal ingredient.
Um, here in South Australia, we have a very unique coastline. Um, and the flavors of the furio are, uh, absolutely, uh, outrageous when it comes to. Beautiful, bright, um, uh, zesty styles of, of, of coastal ingredients. And when you put all of those things into a gin, uh, you get this wonderful demonstration, this wonderful composition of, um, of location.
I won’t say ua. UA is very specific to um, uh, I guess the raw material production of spirits, which this isn’t. But we certainly are able to take a lot of the flavors that we can find locally to, to create really incredible [00:09:00] products. And that’s what we’ve done with the oyster shell. Maybe Siir. See, I like that.
I’m, I’m gonna pinch that one, Steve. That’s great. Siir is definitely,
Steve Davis: and I can imagine some Riesling, uh, makers being a bit envious of how much minerality you’re able to get, though. I reckon some of them might be tipping some oyster shells into a va.
Sean Baxter: Oh, it’s, it’s there. It’s such a fun thing. Even the idea of actually using Shell was, was obnoxious.
It was so hard to, like, the very first batch we made, we had, uh, we only had to make a pallet, so about 800 bottles. Um, and that’s pretty easy. That was about four dozen oysters, five dozen oysters. So we, that was just a great day at the distillery, really. That was myself and Tim, the distiller, just eating oysters and then popping them in the still.
Um, that was fun. That was fun. Um, uh, as I said earlier, like the idea of creating a very specific gin for a specific purpose is a, is a great thing to be able to be given. Um, and the idea of being given that, um, I guess that brief, um, by the, by society, it, it allowed us to kind of be very honed in on what [00:10:00] we wanted.
Yeah.
Steve Davis: I hope it was date night.
Sean Baxter: Uh, well, it, it was date night that the, about three weeks after that when they ordered three more pallets and we were like, geez. A dozen, dozens, quite a lot. Um, and, and from there it started to spiral outta control. We quickly realized that we didn’t have something that was particularly scalable because having to eat a dozen, a dozen, dozen oysters every single time he needed to make a couple of PA couple of pallets was problematic.
So, uh, we, we created an oyster festival, which is actually on, in a couple of weeks time. Oyster palooza. We do it every year. Um, we thought that was a great idea, uh, to collect. Empty shells. ’cause we don’t need the flesh. We just need the shells. Yeah. Um, what we didn’t, um, take into account for was the collection vessels, uh, were, I guess, shall we say, um, uh, they, they weren’t, customers are, are wonder, I love customers.
They don’t follow instruction very well at the best of times. And our collection vessels ended up with pizza slices and, and napkins and all sorts of things in them. So they were sullied, we couldn’t use them. [00:11:00] Um, but it actually gave light to one of the best parts of the whole experience, which was the shockers out the back, were keeping the lids.
Um, and we started to use the lids instead, which turned out to be far better. They’re flatter. Um, they have a, uh, a, a, a better surface area for contact with the liquid, but they, but they also are a byproduct. So. We don’t have to do a festival anymore. We work with our local, um, seafood retailer, um, wholesaler down in McLaren Vale.
Whenever he’s shucking, he retains the lids, gives them to us, and we give him gin. He thinks it’s the greatest transaction in the history of, of, uh, of seafood.
Steve Davis: Isn’t that magnificent? And I do think though, the, the pizza going in the mix, you could have put out a, a gin marinara.
Sean Baxter: It, it definitely had a little bit more of a Mediterranean feel.
Yeah. But, uh, well, we, we didn’t experiment with it, unfortunately.
Steve Davis: Okay. Now I have stolen the show. This is like the pre essay drink of the week. Now let’s move into it proper. What, what sort of, um, journey do you wanna take us on?
Sean Baxter: Well, at the distillery [00:12:00] door, we like to do, uh, something called a guided tasting.
You don’t have to do the guided tasting when you come there. You can just have. Uh, for half gin and tonics and enjoy the, the, the, the, the, the beautiful horizon that’s up there. Um, but I also like to do the, uh, I guess the guided, uh, tour and, and that’s where we taste the, the gin. Neat. And then you try it with, um, with garnish and then you try it with tonic.
And the whole purpose of that is so that you can really see. What flavors come through at each of those stages because, um, it’s a great gin and tonic is a thing of beauty, and you want to understand the best way to create a g and t in the way that you would like to do, uh, to consume it.
Steve Davis: I’m fascinated because I love my palette.
I love exploring things. I find so much more complexity in whiskey than I do in gin, and I think it’s just I’m a novice and perhaps the one, the way they’ve been served to me, I, I haven’t, it’s like, you know, an an accordion, a piano accordion that you. Whiskey, it seems to be out wide for [00:13:00] my palate and gin seems to be a narrower spectrum of, of flavor variables, but that could just be me, super novice.
Sean Baxter: I I, I came from a whiskey background. I was a, a brand ambassador for, for Johnny Walker and the classic malts and, and spent a lot of time in Scotland. And in fact, the first time I was really discovering gin was through Scottish distilleries. And I enjoyed the nuance between, I guess, flavors that you’re finding in peat, in, in yeast strains, in raw material in wood, and then understanding how to replicate texture that you find in whiskey.
And gin was probably the most fun part of this journey for us. ’cause for me, the thing that makes whiskey so spectacular is texture. It’s the contact with the oak. It’s, it’s the, it’s the maturation, it’s the extension of flavor across your palate. Not all neutral spirit, uh, gins where there’s a, a, a prominent level of ethanol, um, in that product can create that because you don’t have those.
Those additives. Gotcha. But you can create texture through your ingredients and we’ll get to see that [00:14:00] today. Alright.
Steve Davis: Where do we start? All, let’s start the start.
Sean Baxter: Let’s start at triple juniper.
Steve Davis: And I love this. Um, we, you did give us a little triple of the triple, uh, juniper, uh, at the World Gym Day.
Sean Baxter: Yes.
Steve Davis: And I commented at the time that I’m actually tasting Juniper proper this time around.
I more so than ever before
Sean Baxter: the, the idea of triple juniper came, um, came about actually through a. Uh, funnily enough, a conversation with a friend of mine who was a Laro ambassador, and he, he, one of my favorite whiskeys, uh, I, I can see. And, uh, the triple wood, um, laro, which is again, a, uh, a reference to the three different types of maturation.
Um, for, for us the idea of triple juniper is three different types of juniper manipulation. So three different types of juniper infusion, uh, that came about because we wanted to actually get the most out of the relatively expensive juniper that we were purchasing. So the idea of steeping at first was giving it an [00:15:00] opportunity to really absorb a lot of the, uh, I guess the deeper, uh, sort of, uh, richer earthier flavors of the juniper.
We then would pot distill fresh juniper on top of that steeped juniper, and that would, again, add layers to that flavor. And then we also have a vapor basket on our still, and that would only be the lightest of touches. So it’s, it almost picks up just the citrus and pine resin on the actual. Skins of the juniper itself.
And when you combine all of those in the same run, you get this wonderful expression of, I guess the, the beauty that that Juniper really is. And it is the beating heart of the London dry category. The, the, the style of gin that a lot of people are familiar with. And that’s was very much the, what we wanted to do with Triple General.
We wanted to create something that everybody who loves gin would be familiar with.
Steve Davis: When you mentioned the basket, I got the waft from the glass of the, the, the notes
Sean Baxter: very much. And the last thing, the, the vapor touches is, is kind of the first thing [00:16:00] it taste. You don’t really need a roll it out, I just do it all the time now ’cause I can’t help myself.
But as soon as you pop your nose in there, you’re gonna get. The citrus peel and the juniper, that is the very last thing. The vapor touches in that vapor basket. Wow. It’s the lightest thing that will come out of that glass. And as you sort of proceed into the liquid, you’re gonna find more and more of those classic, um, sort of song notes that you’ll find in traditional London dry style.
This is the style of gin that, um, again, is synonymous with the category. It makes the best gin and tonics for a reason because the, the, the, uh, the flavor profiles, the, the alpha PanIN, which is one of the, the compounds found in juniper, connects beautifully with quinine in a, in a way, which is quite magical.
Uh, and that is again, one of the reasons why G and tonic is so popular.
Steve Davis: Yes. Um, interestingly, the citrus, um, has lifted. Away after a little while. Mm-hmm. And now I, it’s like I’m going into a magic cave of juniper. Like [00:17:00] that’s, that’s where I am. And we should just say, ’cause this is the essay drink of the week, we should start by toasting our late patron at Queen Adelaide.
To the Queen. To the Queen.
Sean Baxter: So some of the flavors you’ll find immediately at the front are root driven. So Angelica root, licorice, root or root, they all land down the sides of your palette. And then in the middle of your palette, you’ll get the spice profile. And that’s why spices used in gin. It’s to create this wonderful sensation before you feel the texture of the, of the alcohol itself.
At 43%, there’s a, there’s a little lift in there as well. So ta uh, we’ve got, uh, Tasmanian, pepper, berry, and also cinnamon that is used to create the sensation of warmth, not necessarily the. Taste of warmth. Mm-hmm. When you combine all of those ingredients in one composition, you should get something where you have a lot of structure at the front.
It carries through to the back, and then you get the wonderful sensation of that [00:18:00] little, um, uh, warmth towards the back of the throat. I
Steve Davis: know my road has been driven over, like, you tires leave a little bit of warmth on the road as they go past, and I’ve got that on my pallet now and I noticed it’s almost like the little critters that like to go across the road have looked up now that it’s passed and those little spicy notes are just like.
Tinkering across. That’s what I’m getting right here. That’s wonderful.
Sean Baxter: And that what that, what that is is because there’s a significant amount of textural oils that are left in the, the spirit itself. Once the ethanol evaporates off your palate, once that spirit disappears, those compounds are left. So you are picking up those citrus oils, you’re picking up those juniper, um, alpha PanIN notes, the laine that you’ll find in some of the other citrus components.
There’s lime, uh, lime oil in there as well. All of those heavier flavors are gonna sit on your palate, and that’s what you’ll get interacting when you’re having a great gin and tonic wall. As we were the other night, [00:19:00] um, it was world martini night last night. I was, I was stretching out the hamstring on a few of those.
Um, when you’re having a martini, that’s what you’re really looking for, that interaction of flavor.
Steve Davis: And just then I, I ran this keeping the road thing going through the car wash, but it’s a special one. The, the guys were manually, there was a lime, um, brush deter. Yeah. On the side of my windows with that second sip.
It was really dominant on, on the side before it then just did Its normal seeping.
Sean Baxter: It’s a very familiar flavor, very familiar flavor to anyone who enjoys London Dry. And that was very particular, we wanted to make the very best example of a locally made Australian representation of, of, of, of London style.
Yeah.
Steve Davis: No, beautiful. Alright. So that’s the neat tasting. And I think more people should drink neat gin at least once in the evening because I feel like if I had just started with a mixed gin, um, there’s so much [00:20:00] nuance that would’ve just. Evaporated.
Sean Baxter: You wouldn’t have got it. You wouldn’t have got those textual flavors.
And that’s, and that’s very much the reason behind the way that we sort of create the, the tastings at the, at the, at the venue where you taste it neat. So you understand the way that those flavors play. And then what we’ll do now, Steve, is we’ll taste it with just a splash of tonic. Yep. And then I’ll add some ice and I’ll also add some garnish and you’ll see how those layered flavors really change.
Steve Davis: I just note for the record that Sean did not finish his neat tasting glass, whereas I did,
Sean Baxter: I know what’s to come, Steve. That’s, I’m just, I’m, I’m pacing myself here.
Steve Davis: Alright, so there was a little bit of, uh, any particular gin that you decided to choose there?
Sean Baxter: Uh, I’ve, we’ve used the, the, the, the triple juniper gin and I’ve just, I’ve used the, uh, the coastal tonic water by strange though.
Okay. Um, I quite like the, the coastal tonic. It, it’s quite bright and it’s quite fun. Okay. It has a lot of different, uh, has a little bit of salinity in it as well, which is wonderful when [00:21:00] you’re, uh, you’re searching for flavor. Oh, salinity. Little bit of salt. Yeah. Oh,
The Violets: okay.
Sean Baxter: And now we’ll pop in our garnishes.
So we’ve got a little slice of lemon going
Steve Davis: in
Sean Baxter: and a little pop of lemon thyme.
Steve Davis: Was that also there last week? It was the lemon time. It was because, uh, I found that really fetching. In fact, I couldn’t pick it. I couldn’t work out what it was I was thinking was this, uh, oregano for a bit. I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t able to, there was something I just couldn’t nail it.
Sean Baxter: It’s like a master chef challenge sometimes. It was these things when you’re drinking gin and tonics, you’re like, what is in my glass? Exactly.
Steve Davis: Alright. Chin, chin, chin, chin. Never, never.
Sean Baxter: So I love the way that that bright citrus, you, you’ve got, you’ve got ine, which is a, a citrus component. Oh, citrus compound in the juniper.
You’ve got ine in the tonic water. You’ve got ine in the, in the lemon thyme. You’ve got ine in the lemon. When you combine all those things together in a gin and tonic, it’s a thing of beauty
Steve Davis: and really a lot more subtle right across. It’s [00:22:00] like the, um. The Aurora across the horizon, rather than a light show being shone right into your face.
It’s, it’s filling out the, the horizon, which is actually linked to your never, never storytelling, which we’ll come to later. Um, that’s really. It’s a, it’s softer but bigger. That, that, that taste experience for me?
Sean Baxter: Yes. Well, it’s the, the, the thing about the process of making triple juniper is because we’re, we’re using such a volume of botanical weight.
So that’s adding a lot of texture. It’s adding a lot of flavor to the final spirit. So imagine it like a big ball of, of spirit, um, of flavor. When you add dilution to it, just like when you add dilution to whiskey, I add a couple of drops of water, it opens it up. It does exactly the same thing with this.
So soon as you’re adding dilution to your spirit, you are unlocking a lot of the different flavors that you can find within there. And that’s really what’s happening in a, a great gin and tonic. And that’s why we, we made such a [00:23:00] concentrated version because when you are having a gin and tonic, you wanna be able to taste the gin.
You want to be able to explore those different flavors that you can find. And, and you, you really can get that with the triple gin of them.
Steve Davis: Yep. And the, the lemon is really just giving an echo. It’s, it’s an echo chamber effect that it’s giving the rest of the flavors. Just then I got the, you know how you sometimes go the Adelaide Zoo?
I’m not even sure they do have the limes there anymore, where they’ve moved all No, they
Sean Baxter: do. I’ve got two kids under five. They’re, they’re definitely there
Steve Davis: often. You go there though, and they, they’re hidden.
Sean Baxter: Mm,
Steve Davis: they, they’ve, they’ve gone to the back of their cage. That’s what it was like when I first came in.
It was, Ooh, that a roar. And then, oh no, here it comes. Yeah, here it comes. I can see it walking down and a very guttural roar. But that lemon was like the echo of that off the side of the cage. It was, uh, it was beautiful. Just really gentle. This is, this is, you know, you drive with someone who’s not in a manual car and they’re a terrible driver.
Everything jumps and jumps. This is like beautiful. The [00:24:00] one continuous gear sort of cars. It just. Beautifully moved forward hums?
The Violets: Mm,
Sean Baxter: yes. It’s, it’s a, it’s, we always wanted to create a representation of a gin and tonic that was, um, uh, very approachable. And this was definitely that. Often we’ll have guests that will come to the distillery door and, and suggest that they’re, they, they despise gin because it’s too bitter.
Um, and I, I always like to, uh, give them a little bit of a, of, of a, I guess, advice suggesting It’s probably the tonic That’s the bitter bit. Yeah. Um, the gin itself doesn’t have any, any real bitterness. It’s the, usually the tonic water that you’re adding. Yeah. This one’s not bringing that. It’s quite soft.
Yes. It’s definitely has a, a much more of a softer, um, middle ground when it comes to that bitterness and it allows the gin to really stand up and speak.
Steve Davis: Wow. That’s beautiful. Alright. Thank you. So that was a really simple gin and tonic with some lemon and some lemon thyme with some lemon thy, that’s correct.
Mm. Wow. What, [00:25:00] and okay. Is there lemon thyme also in the, in the distilling process as well? Or this is purely a at garnish and purely garnish in this instance? Yes. We
Sean Baxter: do use a lot of different, um, uh, vegetal herbs, especially with the, the next gin we’re gonna try, which is a oyster she gin that has a lot of different, um, coastal vegetation, um, that, that we find locally around the distillery.
Um, and that creates that wonderful connection to, uh, to the juniper berry that’s using that as well.
Steve Davis: And also, just to finish, it’s, it’s like it’s closed nicely with a savory node, not aggressively savory. Savory with a lowercase s Oh, it’s just finished just gently. It’s almost like it’s excused itself and left the room slowly.
I love that.
Sean Baxter: I, I would, I dare say it’s probably the angel. Like there, there’s a lot of those sort of savory notes you attach to things like, uh, angelica root. Okay. It’s used a lot in stock. It’s used a lot in soup. It’s used a lot in, for moth. It’s used a lot. It’s Angelica root’s used readily all around the world in multiple different world cuisines.
And it [00:26:00] does add, it’s a part of the celery family. So when you think about the addition of celery in, in a stock base, of course, um, or a risotto, it’s using, um, it’s, it’s about amplifying that savory flavor and it’s used in a similar way in gin.
Steve Davis: Beautiful. Oh, thanks for identifying that. I’ll have my eyes open for Angelica root.
Um, moving forward. So you just said, um, oyster shell is next.
Sean Baxter: Oyster shell is next. I’ll pour a little bit into your glass, into a big glass. Right. It should overwhelm anything that’s in there. That’s the easy thing about oyster shell gin. It’s a, uh, it’s a relatively large style of, of yes. Savory flavor.
Steve Davis: So not dissimilar.
Um, golden North are lovely clients and great friends with the Adelaide Show, and they were telling me we did a tour there. When they make the rare run of their licorice ice cream, for example, it goes at the end of the run. I would imagine it dominates everything. Chocolate is almost second to last ’cause you, there’s no more coming back from chocolate, but you can move up from vanilla and work your way through.
So this is the. The [00:27:00] licorice, um, ice cream equivalent.
Sean Baxter: Yes. Oysters in a still make everything taste like seafood for a significant amount of time. You do have to be very mindful about what you’re putting in next. Yeah, I’m
Steve Davis: very keen to go fishing with this one because I only had it in the martini, right.
Sean Baxter: Oh, this is fun. So, so the, the, the, the, the, the. The joy of oyster she g is when you have people taste it for the first time who don’t like oysters, there there’s this expectation that it’s gonna be taste like oysters. But the thing that’s actually very confronting about oysters actually isn’t the flavor, it’s the texture.
It’s the, it’s the way that you consume it. It can, it can be an overwhelming tsunami of coastal, um, character and, and, and, and texture sliminess. Yeah. Yeah. It can be really, really overwhelming, but when you distill it down into something that is purely aromatic and then, um, something that you’re very familiar with, which a lot of people are, which is neat spirit, you, you’re able to really have a lot more fun with that, with that, with that character.
Steve Davis: Are [00:28:00] you, do you suck or do you chew?
Sean Baxter: Well see it. Swallow or chew? Yeah. I’m, I’m not opposed to either like a little Sydney rock, which is just a little pop of flavor. That one’s almost down in one. I mean, I had some, uh, some oysters at the, the Seafood Shack outside of Open Distillery in Scotland. That was the size of my hand, and if I didn’t chew that thing would’ve absolutely suffocated me.
So, yeah, it
Steve Davis: it, well, for the record, I choose,
Sean Baxter: it depends on the, depends on the size.
Steve Davis: Oh, now different already across the nose. Yes. I dunno what I’m getting. Hang on. It’s, I don’t know how much the, the text has been suggesting to me, but it’s a summer night where I’ve pulled up at the beach and just got out the car.
You’re still not in the water yet, but you’ve, you know that there is some sort of proximity to the ocean. Just a little bit is right.
Sean Baxter: Absolutely. And like, again, I, I keep on going back to coastal, coastal whiskeys, but this idea of seaweed is so connected to coastal whiskeys in so many ways. We’ve actually got wakame in this gin, and that is [00:29:00] the magical funk that is the little transportative device that we use to trick you into thinking that you are, you are smelling an oyster, but natural fact what you’re getting is the coastal connection to the seaweed itself.
The oyster is doing more on your palate than it is actually on the nose.
Steve Davis: How about that? ’cause I have got onto the palate now. Nothing like a real oyster to me. This is very palatable. ’cause I struggle with the oyster. There’s a, there’s a, a, a low, it’s like, it’s, it’s whacked up a quick sandcastle across my palate that wasn’t there a moment before, but is solid and it is just waiting for the tide to come in and.
I’m a actually having trouble nailing how to describe what I’m getting ’cause there’s nothing fishy about this. No, at all. Uh, and not deliberate. And as you point out, not deliberately ocean, but it is different to the, the triple juniper. It’s nothing like that. [00:30:00] It. It’s crafted its own. Mm. It’s got the, the spade out and the bucket and it’s whacked up a quick castle across my palate.
Sand. There’s, there is something I’ve, I haven’t tasted much beach sand in my life, but if I imagined what that would be like.
Sean Baxter: That’s in the mix. Well, if you walk down to the beach down at Willunga, you’ll walk past a lot of the vegetation that’s in here. There’s Elyria, a, a very famous, um, uh, coastal daisy bush that grows down here along the c along the coast.
And the Florio, it’s almost like a native Rosemary. It has a similar kind of note, but a, but a, it’s a wonderful adjunct between traditional Juniper flavor and some of the other Australian natives that we use. Uh, saltbush also, uh, again, very readily available around the coast here, Geraldton Wax, um, which is from wa The Geraldton Wax actually creates almost like a lemon grass, uh, lime leaf note on the palette.
And that is just one, it’s one of the prettiest and most beautiful examples I think of, of a native Australian flavor because it’s, [00:31:00] it absolutely transports you into so many different. Familiar flavors. And that’s, that’s what I love about, like, it’s very hard with Australian native ingredients. ’cause I could just say those things.
People go, I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. Yeah. ’cause they’re, they’re very unfamiliar to our audience. But when you actually get something like yes, uh, gelatin wax, you can, you can really find similarity in flavor.
Steve Davis: I was getting like low level fruit tingle without the tingle. Ah, that’s great. I was, I was getting the, you know, those tones, which I guess are, are very, they’re citrusy, but pearl like citrusy across the palate.
And I was imagining finding those that vegetation on, on a nice sort of soft bit of sand by the beach and just throwing myself into them just to lay down and do a bit of sun baking, you know, to keep my bikini line up. And, um, then that emerged. Beautiful.
Sean Baxter: It’s like a fruit tinkle, uh, breeze. It’s, it’s, it’s truly one of the more contemporary gins that we make.
And, and we quickly realized that early on when we started, um, we made triple [00:32:00] juniper gin, southern strength gin, and juniper fruit gin. And they were all very similar, driven by classic almost London style. And then we really wanted to wait until we, we not only relocated to our location, McLaren Vale, but also.
Got to understand contemporary gin better. Um, and I think this is one of the best examples that we make of that.
Steve Davis: It is, it just took me to a sides show by the beach. That’s what I, I can hear the heard go. The merry-go-round. I can hear that. Carnival music playing in the background again. I just note dear listener, um, Sean did not finish his glass like I did.
Sean Baxter: Steve, you do this a lot and this, I have to make sure that I’m on top of my game here. There’s a lot of interesting and exciting stories that we need to talk through. Yes, you have. I don’t wanna slur my way through it. Okay. Now, would you like me to make you a representation of the gin and tonic that we make with the oyster shell gin?
Steve Davis: I, I, I would, I would always say yes. Excellent. When I’m in such capable hands. Um, and for the record, yeah, I actually had finished the other one as well.
Sean Baxter: They’re very small [00:33:00] measures there. I’m looking after everybody
Steve Davis: involved. You are, and I think that’s an important thing to note, um, because it is. Well, well, I think we’ll say the time of recording is late Sunday morning.
Remember?
Sean Baxter: I drove here and this is your house. Yes. So I, I, I must make my way from this establishment at some stage before, uh, midnight tonight.
Steve Davis: Whereas, uh, I’ve just got editing after this and I hope you are hearing this coherently. Um, so I love these ice cubes, by the way. I love, actually, I think there’s like a copper base to these glasses just underneath them.
That’s, um,
Sean Baxter: these are some wedding glasses that my wife, um, watched me package up for this particular experience and suggested that if I break them, I, I shunt to be returning to the house. So, well, in that case, you can have another measure
Steve Davis: in a moment. ’cause our tradition is to throw glasses into the green screen.
Sean Baxter: Right. Okay. Well, I’ve got a few of those, which could work quite well for us. Okay.
Steve Davis: Now Sean is reaching over. He’s got a plate of. Goodies. Now, the couple of leaves have made it in, are they some sort of citrus plant?
Sean Baxter: This is a, a little lime leaf. Lime leaf, [00:34:00] and I’ve got a little slice of lime as well. So this really, uh, I love this particular serve.
It really pretties up the, um, the nose. It works so cleanly with the, um, the, the marsh grapefruit that’s used predominantly in the gin as well. That’s all from the riverland. So when you’ve got this wonderful sort of dance of citrus going on, you’ve got different types of citrus in the actual gin itself.
It still has a base note of triple juniper. Triple juniper is in all of our gins. So the idea of that is it’s sort of like the stock base Yep. That you build flavor from. Yep. Um, so when, whenever we are making gin, we start with those same nine ingredients, those same nine botanicals that go into the triple juniper, and then we add on these other wonderful expressions.
Steve Davis: So before when I said I wasn’t getting the triple Juni juniper as such, is it that it’s just not a. Primadonna and it was actually able to stay off stage a little bit while those other flavors came to the fore. Is that what was
Sean Baxter: happening? Absolutely. It’s the foundation and like when I was talking about the way that those [00:35:00] other flavors that are in the triple juniper, you know, set the tone across the palette mm-hmm.
We wanted to make sure that that still is there. Mm-hmm. We just lay ’em all flavors on, on top of it. So it’s a little bit more of that impasto kind of level of, you know, bigger, richer, more textual flavors that sit on top of it. But that canvas is still the same.
Steve Davis: Okay. And we’ve got the coastal tonic in here again, correct.
With a slice of lime and and lime leaf. That’s it. Did you crush the lime leaf at all or it’s just
Sean Baxter: I gave it a little bend. Mine’s actually sliced. I thought I had a sliced one, but you got a whole one, so it might not be coming across as much.
Steve Davis: Oh, oh, hang on. I didn’t expect that. You know when you, you are at the beach and you happen to find a hammock.
Um, it doesn’t happen to me often, but it has happened once. And you think, I’m going to relax in this and you lean yourself back in next bit. Wom you are down. This is what happened on my palette. I just, I dropped, there was gravity at work. I, I sunk and, but I was, I was [00:36:00] encased. Mm. I didn’t hit the ground.
It just was a very different flavor. I think this is the lime that we are talking about here. It’s like those sideshows where you sit on a little storm, people throw balls and to make you fall into the tank. It was a moment like that.
Sean Baxter: This is icy poles at swimming carnivals. For me, this is, this is this wonderful kind of like there’s a stickiness in a.
And a, and a, and a zestiness to it. Um, but there’s also this integration of citrus, which is really delicious. It’s a salted coastal citrus style is what what we try and communicate about our oyster shell gin. It can feel a bit confronting when people read the name, but it’s a, it’s, it’s effectively a coastal citrus gin, and that’s what you really get when you, um, you partner it with like-minded garnishes and, and, and tonic.
Steve Davis: I really hope that there are people like me who aren’t great fans of oyster, that we can do a small bit to say, people don’t let that deter you at all, because that’s not really where we are going with this. That’s, its DNA, but this, [00:37:00] the lime has just, it’s almost like. You know, there’s a little bit of beach at Glen where they, they section off during summer for VIPs to have fun, someone must rake that beach.
Every morning the lime has raked clean my palate. That’s, that was that experience I had. It swept my palate afresh, which is what Lime does of course. ’cause it doesn’t have the sweetness that, um, oranges do. Doesn’t have that really attacking lemon astringency. It’s, it’s the United
Sean Baxter: Nations of citrus. I like that.
The United Nations and it, it’s very approachable as well. And we wanted to make sure that yes, we’ve got oyster shell gin on the label. That was important because we were. Although what we’ve discovered, um, through, through many trial and error and also through science, now that we’ve got a, a little bit more behind us, but the, uh, there, there isn’t any allergens that carry through.
Um, it’s a bit similar to gluten, other things like that, that are left behind in the, in the distillation process. Of course, it’s not all about allergens. [00:38:00] The oysters are an animal product. So we, we did wanna proudly suggest that if there were any, um, uh, happy vegan consumers of our genes, that we’d quite loudly, uh, ensure that they understood what was actually in the bottle.
Yeah, yeah. Um, but yeah, thankfully no anaphylactic experiences to date.
Steve Davis: No. Can’t wait till your nut gym comes out. Um, this though, seriously, this, the way you’ve built, and this is your bartending background, I’m sure the way you constructed this has paid homage to everything in that glass. Mm. And I’m in that sling in that little, going back and forth in that hammock beautifully on my palette with this.
This is. This is changing my thoughts about gin is deepening my appreciation.
Sean Baxter: Well, it’s very easy for someone with my background to step in and tell people what I want, but to actually create it is, is another thing entirely. And that, that’s very much, uh, Tim, a master distiller on master distiller, he is not a master distiller, but he’s a head distiller.
You, I [00:39:00] don’t think you could be a master distiller until you’re about 90 and you haven’t left the industry. But, um, I I, it’s very much his creativity that’s brought that forward.
Steve Davis: Well, I, I, he’s turned my head and just that, that lime was also, you know, upfront, it, it at the end too by back palette. It’s just saying thanks very much.
Thanks for being here. And it’s just sweeping its way off the pallet afterwards.
Sean Baxter: Delicious. Oh, have you got, have you got time for another one?
Steve Davis: I have actually, we’ve got all the time and
Sean Baxter: well like this next one is, um, this next one is definitely close to my heart and this is why I’ve been tipping liquid into glassware because it’s a, it’s a brute, uh, it’s a beast of a gin.
Yes, it is a, uh, oiled up freak. Uh, this is a juniper freak. So, uh, a navy strength gin. I,
Steve Davis: I love it. And can I just say I’m one of those rare people? There was someone at your gin day I was talking to, I think it might have been Gin Jim from in Daily. I’m, I’m not sure who. We [00:40:00] were both comparing notes about the Chardonnays we used to love.
Ah, yes. And we are both of the big oily chardonnay and we are,
Sean Baxter: yes. Are you in that? I am indeed. And I am indeed. And the thing that I enjoy about. Uh, I guess Chardonnay, is that it? It’s, I always understand the type of Chardonnay that I like. I, I enjoy, uh, something that’s full bodied and creamy and rich and intense and goes with all my favorite foods because all my favorite foods are somehow connected to Chardonnay.
So like, I just, I, I have such a celebration of those flavors and when I find one, I really dig my talons into it. And what I’m, I’m not a massive fan of, and I understand why is the, I guess the, the reinterpretations of, of, of Chardonnay through a modern landscape or a modern lens, skin to skin contact or the removal of oak or, you know, the exploration of fruit in different ways.
And therefore they, they deserve to exist. ’cause there’s lots of people that love them. But for me personally, I like what I like. [00:41:00] And in this instance, gin, I like what I like and I wanted to amplify that in the biggest possible way in this style of gin.
Steve Davis: I think I’ve fallen in love before I’ve even got it into my mouth because I love a big, hearty red.
Mm. And I love the legs on the side of the glass. Uh, once you’ve spin it around and it sort of, the viscosity just exposes itself as it as everything sort of makes its way back, like a very slow tide. And the oil in this.
Sean Baxter: It’s significant. It’s significant. It’s the, the, the, the thing about this is that there’s so much juniper oil in it.
It will loose when I add a little bit of tonic water to it. We’ll see that in a second. Um, be mindful of, its a BV, it sits at a traditional A BV for, for navy strength, Gnet 58%. So it, it, it is a, it contains so much more flavor because there is less water in the bottle. Yeah, and that’s the thing people get a little [00:42:00] bit sort of concerned about drinking over proof gin.
If you love gin, you should definitely explore over proof gin because you are getting a heavier concentration of the things that you love. Where, where you’ve gotta be disciplined is measuring your serves and not doing what my mom does, which is pour three fingers into a wine glass, top it up with tonic, and then falls over an hour later because she’s had eight standard drinks in the space of 20 minutes.
Steve Davis: I think even before it’s hit my lips, this is going to be my favorite. I feel like a spiritual connection here. Just on the nose, there’s an old musical, which has the lead song, 76 Trombones led the big parade. You know, you imagine this, the most noisiest John Martin’s Christmas pageant from back in the day.
I think now it’s national pharmacies. Um, just the big brass hitting everything. And of course a bit of naval. Probably a naval band. Yes. That’s marching down the street. Doing that hasn’t even made my eye has is [00:43:00] anticipating from just watching how those lines on the glass of just viscous delight. Yes.
Awaiting there as little bits of evidence. Alright, here we go. Onto the pallet. Oh wow. So much happened all at once.
Sean Baxter: It’s super oily. You’ll find so much flavor behind your lips, behind your teeth. It, it continues to envelop at my palate. It’s warmth and it’s elevated in many, many different ways. It’s the, the thing, as I said, that 58%, it’s not just the juniper that’s, that’s being carried through.
It’s all of those other supporting botanicals. It’s the spice profile. It’s the root botanicals. There’s so much more connected to it. There’s no different ingredients from this than the triple juniper. They’re all the same ingredients. It’s just an amplification of all those flavors. Right? And that’s what you’ll see on the palette that, that, that amplification of oil, that amplification of Juniper character and citrus as well.
Steve Davis: I’m hearing [00:44:00] the angels of the Angelus route just singing on high as this. Just, the only thing that came to mind is I used to be quite an avid vegetable gardener in, uh, my backyard. And if there’s been a good soaking rain and you go out there and the spade just goes straight into soft soil that wants to be dug, it wants to be made ready.
That’s what happened on my palette. This is this. Uh, can I just say, can I just cheer? This is masterful. I think this is my spiritual home of gin. Well,
Sean Baxter: cheers to that, Steve. It has had the, the pleasure. Of winning best, uh, Navy strength gin, not only in Australia, but um, it has won trophies around the world because it is that celebration of style.
It is a big reflection of something that used to exist many, many, [00:45:00] many years ago, um, you know, on the wooden ships that sailed the seas effectively.
Steve Davis: Mm-hmm. And I’ve stood on one of those wooden ships that England had in the very early days when I was at Southampton many, many years ago. There’s one that’s maed and I was shocked at how big those wooden Navy ships were well beyond.
What I could have imagined. That’s what I’ve just had. I mean, Royal Britannia Britannia rules the waves. I mean, I think Queen Adelaide would be mightily impressed, uh, at, at being our sa drink of the week.
Sean Baxter: Oh, I, I I patron, I think so. The, the idea of the, uh, the Navy, the navy strength has been connected to not only gin but rum.
It was obviously connected to having to be at a certain alcohol to be stored in those ships so that if a. Cannonball went through, through the side of your, uh, boat and wet all of your barrels. You could still fire your gunpowder. Well,
Steve Davis: which is important. I still want fire, my gunpowder. Um, so what have [00:46:00] we got here?
So
Sean Baxter: now you’ll be able to see, I’ve added a little bit of, of, of, uh, of the juniper freak to a glass and added the tonic water. And that loosing that is actually the oils that are coming out of the, of the gin itself. That’s not the tonic what you way to the plant. So that’s just, that’s just tonic water.
And that tonic water is, is creating that loose. So that didn’t happen with the other two. It’s gone cloudy. And that’s sort of the same way that you think about the citrus oils that are prominent in, in contra. It goes cloudy. When you add dilution in, in anise products like Uzo or absent, that’s actually green anise and different types of anise becoming visible.
This is actually really quite prominent amounts of juniper.
Steve Davis: Those spices are like, um, uh, they’re poking their head over the side of the ship to look outside. They’re, they’re approaching out of nowhere. But interestingly with what you’ve just added, which was what the, just a little bit of the tonic, was it just a splash of the tow, the the coastal tonic?
Yeah, the coastal tonic. It changed the dynamic of this gin very quickly and [00:47:00] I, it went actually from big wooden ship to massive steel ship in, in one splash. Right. It’s still majestic. It’s still gonna crash through those waves. It’ll probably seek the waves to crash through. But there was
Sean Baxter: it, there was shift, I don’t know.
Did well this is actually interestingly, one of our most popular styles of gin and tonic at the venue where you’ve got this base note of triple of, of juniper freak, but then you’ve got these wonderful waves of those different tonic waters that you can add to it. In this instance, we’ve used the coastal, I’ve added a garnish of pink grapefruit and rosemary to it as well.
And that combination is spectacular. It’s very hard when you’re having anything with rosemary in it to taste anything but rosemary. I know I had to travel with it in a separate container. ’cause otherwise every herb in that container, everything would taste like rosemary. But the juniper fruit, because it’s so prominent in Juniper character, um, it’s a, it’s, it’s, it plays the Rosemary’s only a bit player.
It doesn’t overwhelm. It’s still a really prominent part. And of [00:48:00] course, Rosemary and Juniper are best mates.
Steve Davis: Well, Rosemary’s method, its match here. It you are probably the first person on the planet that’s been able to make Rosemary a team player. Um, because that was only very subtle in the background then.
Mm-hmm. That was like someone who played on the wing in NL.
Sean Baxter: Yes. Just a, just a slight touch of it. And it just again, lifts that freshness of the juniper outta the glass. It’s a stunning, stunning gin. It will be part of our next, uh, so these three labels that you see before is our, um, our current, our current sort of refresh of our labels.
Uh, the Juniper freak will be in that same packaging later in the year.
Steve Davis: Yes.
Sean Baxter: Which is why I brought it along.
Steve Davis: I think. Juniper freak gin will be a mainstay of my small bar from this day until the day I pass.
Sean Baxter: Well, I’ll let you, I’ll let you can, you can, I’ll leave that one with you. ’cause it’s, it’s dangerous in my house.
Otherwise, uh, otherwise a juniper freak martini happens and then, and then nothing happens [00:49:00] for the rest of the night.
Steve Davis: And you guarantee my gun powder will still be fireable. Absolutely. Okay. Well that’s good to know. Um, and, and it’s, it’s working. I just want one more sip of this before we, before we shift on, because I wanted to give the, the roseberry and the grapefruit a chance to interact and that’s changed again.
So we’ve gone from big wooden ship to metallic. Um, uh, super cruiser and now it’s a bit more like, you know, an h and o, a p and o cruise. Oh,
Sean Baxter: great. I I was hoping you weren’t gonna say it’s a rowboat, but there’s is no, I like the HI like the cruise. This is the
Steve Davis: p and o cruise. I, I think this is, uh, it’s got a little bit of fun happening there, you know, people in bikinis and bars and, and it’s a bit more party in the glass with this concoction.
Although, I will say the purest in me, I think for my life I will be drinking a little nip. Neat. And I’ll be the most satisfied Imber in [00:50:00] order of Christendom as they say,
Sean Baxter: well, you like a whiskey and, and juniper freak is as close to the textural experience you’re gonna get in a barrel proof, um, uh, single malt whiskey.
It has that, that that unc anxiousness that you associate with maturation. And it’s, it’s because of the volume of juniper oil that’s left in the glass, less left in the bottle.
Steve Davis: So if you’re going to put anything with the juniper freak, I think this, um, grapefruit and rosemary is the way to go. A little bit of the coastal tonic.
That’s fine. They don’t get in its way. Um, they add the party. Mm-hmm. But if you’re like me, the solitary wanderer, uh, of the palette, uh, I seriously, I if, if the world had a calamity tomorrow. And I had one bottle of this, I could find a little cave somewhere and be very happy.
Sean Baxter: Well, turns out you’re a freak, Steve, so there you are.
You’re a freak. You’re in the freak club.
Steve Davis: Well, I’m going on the essay Variety Bash later [00:51:00] this year. Uh, and we go out into the remote South Australia for, I don’t know, way too long. And I think I was gonna pack, I’ll tell you right now, I was gonna pack two bottles of my own special whiskey just to keep myself comfortable.
Um, one of them is going to be this instead.
Sean Baxter: Oh, fantastic. Thank you very much.
Steve Davis: Where can we buy the Juniper free, because you’ve mentioned it’s coming. It’s,
Sean Baxter: well, the Juniper Free’s been out for a little while, but it’s, you’ll find it in, in, in, in, in major retailers and you’ll find it in some of your local indies as well.
So seek it out. It’s still on shelf in some locations, but it will be refreshing with the rest of the, and it’s got a
Steve Davis: striking purple. So the is it is, it is keeping the purple on the new bottle.
Sean Baxter: The purple will beyond the new bottle. Okay. It’s because, uh, uh, prince is one of Tim’s favorite, uh, musical acts.
So he wanted to be, so he, it’s a weird connection between the, the Prince and also, uh, our gin. But for whatever reason, Tim liked purple, so we put it on the label. And does it guarantee purple rain later? Yeah. I, I, I, I, I think it absolutely [00:52:00] does. I think this, that’s the entire reason for it.
Steve Davis: Alright. What an amazing tasting.
Long may never, never sail. Uh, because seriously, I, I was expecting this would be a really helpful, informative tasting. I would learn a thing or two about gin. You just changed my life, that last gin. And I know we probably shouldn’t put too much spotlight on that over the others, but my goodness, that is the absolute game changer.
That’s the one. If I had to take one bottle with me, I think before whiskey, it’s gotta be that. I’ve, I’ve had a road to Damascus experience here, Sean, seriously,
Sean Baxter: I’m I, I’m glad to be the donkey to carry you, Steve.
Steve Davis: Yes. Alright, well I think we should prepare ourselves for a bit of a chat ’cause there’s a bit of your history I want to just tease out.
Um, thank you very much for giving us this guided tour, um, for, [00:53:00] for us in a very visceral way for our dear listeners in a vicarious way. Um, but I hope that you can pick some of these up. They’re available everywhere and I. You know the, what’s it called again? The juniper. The juniper freak. The juniper freak.
Don’t buy too many of them if you’re in the eastern suburbs. Adelaide. ’cause I’ll be hog tying any supply that I can find. Sean Baxter. Thank you.
Sean Baxter: Thank you so much, Steve. It’s been a pleasure.
Steve Davis: Let’s make ourselves comfortable and settle in for a bit of a chat.
Sean Baxter: Wonderful.
Kym Purling: Hi, it’s Kim Pearling on the Adelaide Show with Steve Davis and I just want to, uh, remind you all to make sure that the arts is alive and well, not only where you live, but also in your life.[00:54:00]
Steve Davis: What is it with Adelaide and Johnny Walker connections. In episode 295, we met Mike Collings, the man who created Blue Label Whiskey. And now we have Sean Baxter, former Diego Whiskey Ambassador turned gin entrepreneur. Sean probably never imagined that moving from Brisbane bartending to Adelaide for acquired a family life would lead to creating one of Australia’s most celebrated gin brands.
And what started as three blokes who weren’t mates, uh, pooling money for a 300 liter steel named Wendy in a shed with no running water has become, never, never distilling co. Now owned by Ashi Beverages and eyeing global. Domination and it’s that angle, dear listener, that hooked me in when I met Sean yet again last week.
And the reason why we are talking today. Um, and [00:55:00] he’s with us, as you would’ve heard just in the essay drink of the week. Um, we are diving into how a background and whiskey brand ambassadorship a chance encountered between co-founders, George Giardi and Tim Boast and Adelaide’s Craft distilling scene created something extraordinary and as you just heard, life changing for my palate.
Sean, welcome officially to Adelaide Show. Thank you so much. I have every me, Steve, what a pleasure. This the pleasure is all mine more than ever before. Now you’ve said the, the three never, never co-founders weren’t mates when you started. Oh, not initially, no. How does. Um, not being friends actually become an advantage when you are risking everything on a gin business.
Sean Baxter: Mm. It’s, it’s a, it’s a great, and like when I, when I should, I should sort of suggest we were mates, but we weren’t like best friends. We weren’t, we weren’t, we didn’t grow up together. Yeah. Um, all three of us had a different connection to each other. And my connection to Tim was, was actually through [00:56:00] my wife.
My wife Cassie is from Adelaide as you mentioned. I met Cassie when I was in Melbourne bartending and living in, I was, I moved from Brisbane to Melbourne to Sydney. I was all over the place. And that’s the joy of what bartending allows you to do. Um, I met her there, fell in love, um, and then quickly realized that a relocation to South Australia was on the cards.
’cause she’s got an Italian family and I wanted to be around that. Uh, one of her friends, Tim Boast, um, whom she was, uh, school colleagues with, wanted to start a distillery, and she introduced us through their c through our circle of friends. So, um, it was, it was a joy to be honest, because, and then George was actually, um, an acquaintance to Tim through university.
So they’ve all, we all sort of came together with loose acquaintances and an understanding that we, we got on. Um, but the beauty of that was that we were so invested in, in the end result that we were very happy to, to, uh, tell, tell each other what we thought of certain decisions and, and were [00:57:00] very blunt in the way that we, um, no one was sort of stepping on eggshells, let’s put it that way.
We were, we knew what we needed to get to do, and we all got there in the end,
Steve Davis: which is what we would kind of do if we were with best mates. You wouldn’t wanna put someone offside because your friendships at stake.
Sean Baxter: Yes. And like, that’s, and that’s like we, we all, um. Right now. Obviously right now we’re, you know, as thick as thieves and have been together for, for almost 10 years.
But, uh, back then it was that they were probably thinking the same of me. It was like, who’s this guy who’s come along? He’s got seemingly mates all around the country and different bars. And I was like, who’s this ex finance guy that thinks he knows what’s going on with flavor? And that was George, of course.
And then Tim, who was making the stuff, I was like, you used to work at a bank mate. Like, what’s, where did this come from? And like, again, unbeknownst to me was his connection to, uh, distilling royalty through the Gilby line. The Gilby family, uh, had, had been tinkering away in his back shed for, for many, many a year on multiple different [00:58:00] types of spirits.
So yeah, it was a, it was a joy when it all actually sort of came together.
Steve Davis: Doesn’t the banking background mean. He’s experienced it, taking a little bit off as it goes in and a little bit off as it comes out.
Sean Baxter: Well, I think, I think if anything, it actually made him quite allergic to wanting to work with numbers.
Tim, Tim was, uh, had, had, was done with the, uh, the, the suit jacket sort of career. He, he wanted to spend the rest of his time in, uh, in cutoff sleeves working on a still, so,
Steve Davis: fair enough. And I have to, before we leave bartending in the dust, Australia has an awkward relationship with service-based jobs and roles AI’s coming in.
A lot of white collar jobs are under pressure. I’ve got two teenage daughters who are trying to work out what to do with them, li with their lives and they’re getting some ideas. How valid is bartending as a career opportunity today and what sort of mindset allows someone to make the most [00:59:00] of it?
Sean Baxter: I, I, I all, for, for whatever reason, my poor mother who put me through, you know, eight years of tertiary education in all, all manner of different private school, and I decided I would be a bartender at the end of it.
I, um, I. I always felt, felt so connected to the idea of hospitality and service. Maybe it’s my Irish and Scottish sort of roots coming through. Um, and funnily enough, George and Tim all both felt that same way. One of our main values, it never, never is celebrate hospitality. Uh, and that’s not just celebrating those in hospitality, but it’s celebrating the notion of it, the idea of welcoming people across your earth as you’ve done today, Steve, it’s this idea of, of.
I, I putting others before yourself and, and ensuring that the happiness of others is your priority. And I think there’s so much value in the way that you make people feel these days when, when you walk into venues, you could have such amazing food, such incredible wine. [01:00:00] We are, we are, we are blessed with so many opportunities here in South Australia to do that.
But the things that are truly memorable are the people that deliver that experience, because you can’t, you can’t actually manufacture that. That has to be something that is learned is and felt. Um, and I still believe that whether it’s weight staff or whether it’s familiars, or whether it’s bartenders, or whether it’s, you know, hosts, there’s so many people that have got the gift to be able to do that.
And those that truly lean into it, those that understand their value make such a success of their career because it’s joyous and they, they truly turn up to work and love the way that they make other people feel.
Steve Davis: In some of the many books that we consume for my day job. Talked about marketing. David Oldie, my colleague, is, is a task master.
Um, the psychology we’ve been exposed to says we are hardwired to seek relevance if we can feel we are relevant to the world or to people’s [01:01:00] lives. And when you are in hospitality, you’ve got a chance to put the cream on the cake, the cherry on top to say you are relevant. ’cause I’m remembering someone in one of my workshops, she said to me, she was in Melbourne, went to some bar, hotel, restaurant, uh, restaurant place, dim lighting.
The, the, the, the, the, uh, menus were there with the menu written in probably eight point font. Really tiny. And she couldn’t read it. And she called the, the waiter over and said, excuse me. And the waiter said to her. Well, you’re not really our target market and walked away.
Sean Baxter: Not, not everyone’s joyous.
Steve Davis: No. But it is, it’s the enduring thing.
Yeah. That I think is one of the last things that AI probably will struggle to take away from us. Yeah. Um, now I, I’m really keen ’cause the other thing that really iced it for me to, to want to get you on the Adelaide show is where you mentioned your, uh, whiskey ambassador work back in the, you know, Diego, the Johnny [01:02:00] Walker.
Correct. Uh, days of course we got the Mike Collings connection to Yeah. Whom I met at Hans and County. Wonderful. Dare I say, um, what is it though? ’cause I remember you saying whiskey was on one of the things you were considering actually crafting. Why not? Yeah, what were you planning and what made it go to gin?
Sean Baxter: Well, that’s, that was Tim and George pulling the wool over my eyes. Realistically, I’ll be the first to say it on this show. When, when we first started, um, I was working in whiskey and I still love whiskey. To be honest though, I don’t really discriminate. I like nearly all spiritist formats. Um, but the, the, the, I had a Scottish, I’ve still got a Scottish mother and it’s a lot of Scottish family.
And, uh, was, was very connected to that spirit at an early age. Johnny Walker Black was my dad’s favorite drink, still my desert island whiskey. Um, and I, I, I just enjoyed the stories and the connection to it. Um, when Tim and George started, there was this ambition and I still think it’s a very relevant ambition, if any [01:03:00] budding, um, whiskey makers out there would like to sort of, uh, continue on that, that, that drive.
But I think the Australian market needs a blended whiskey. I think it needs something that is a vehicle to bring more people towards it at the moment. Australian single malt is, is largely out-priced. There’s a few on the market and they, they know who they are that are under a hundred bucks, but nearly everything is north of that for just the sheer reasons that it’s, it’s costs so much to make.
Mm. And there’s so much tax in this country. Um, the idea of, I wanted to create a blend, uh, not, uh, something that was sort of run of the mill, something unique and fun. And, and we, we decided early on that we would purchase some spirit, um, and purchase some whiskey from local South Australian, um, whi whiskey makers.
And we put some whiskey down with the idea of being a J and whiskey distillery that was always on the cards, even on our first cartons. Uh, someone, someone pulled one out of the cupboard the other day when we were moving, and it still got the barley on the side as along with the juniper. [01:04:00] So it was always this duality of flavor and style that we were, we were chasing.
But truly what happened was that the Triple Juniper gin, um. It took off it, you know, it, it became a very, very popular product. It, it suddenly was the main driver of all revenue that was coming into our business, and we had to sit up and take note. We were like, do we continue to invest into this wildfire of flavor that’s currently sort of sweeping across, uh, lots of bars and restaurants in the country?
Or, or do we, um, do we, do we decide to split that stream into two and, and, and start chasing whiskey as well? This was in like 2019. We had just won World’s Best Classic Gin, um, at the, at the World Gin Awards. It was a huge moment for us. It shifted. Um, I still remember not having an, not having to cold call anyone the day after, so having to answer the phone and that was, wow.
That was a big c cha as anyone who’s in small business knows the second that you have a viral thing or something that suddenly shifts the balance of power. It’s a hugely [01:05:00] emotional and momentous thing that, that was when we realized, okay, we need to, we need to build a, a home so people can actually come and visit us and, and sample these gins.
So it was either build our distillery door or make whiskey and I’m, I’m quietly very glad that we decided to build our distillery door.
Steve Davis: We are going to leave whiskey behind with one last question, though. This snobbishness we have against blended whiskeys, I don’t think it really holds its own because blended doesn’t mean automatically crap.
And yet I think a lot of consumers, I. Think it’s gotta be single malt or it’s just not good enough. Do you agree?
Sean Baxter: Oh, it, yes, but like, I I, I, I also understand why single molt lovers poo poh it. And, and I also understand why, you know, my dad drank Johnny Black. Yeah. And he wouldn’t drink single mot whiskey ’cause he, he didn’t think that he was good enough to drink single Mott whiskey.
He, [01:06:00] he didn’t think that that was his style to the point where I worked for Johnny Walker. I, I used to come home at Christmas time and I’d bring him a bottle of blue label, a bit of gold label, even gave him a bottle of King George, the v really Spanish stuff as I was starting to get into the career. And, and, um, I, I just remember after he passed away, going and going through his stuff with mom and, and packing down the house and getting behind his sock drawer, and there was like a dozen bottles of Johnny Walker that he, uh, that he hadn’t opened and hadn’t drunk because he didn’t think.
He was, he was good enough to drink it. It wasn’t his whiskey. So I, I, I always appreciate when people are passionate and connected to their flavor, because their flavor is what makes, um, the category so special. Every category so special. Um, so yeah, I, I, I understand it. I don’t necessarily agree with it, but I get why people are passionate about the things that they like.
Steve Davis: Fair enough, there’s a lot in our life that becomes a mirror to ourselves. I mean, even my colleagues, when he was on, he said, [01:07:00] I dismissively made a poo-pooing joke about Johnny Red. And he said, no, no, no. Wait for a really hot day. Tall glass of ice, pour it over. Try. I still haven’t done it to this day ’cause there’s so I am as hypocritical.
Oh,
Sean Baxter: Johnny Ray’s a spectacular, I love Johnny Re Really? And I, I, I, and I got to know, yeah. I got to know Johnny Red and fresh apple juice, the red and apple, or like fresh apple juice really crisp. It’s the backbone to it. I think the thing that I, I got taught very early on, and I know we’re not talking about gin, but yeah.
I got, uh, in a whiskey seminar. I, I was a young, I was a young ambassador. I had a very similar moment on stage where I talked about, I sort of di was a little dismissive of Johnny Red not being in the lineup. And um, I had a very elderly gentleman come up to me and he grabbed my hand and I thought he was, he was gonna say something about some, one of the established whiskeys I talked about.
And he. He said, just remember that Johnny Red is, is someone’s premium whiskey. Johnny Red is someone’s, you know, luxury. Yeah. It’s, it’s something that only they can pick on [01:08:00] special occasions.
Steve Davis: Okay. Um, Julie noted, and I think, and I think also honestly, Julie noted I, yeah. That, that should give us all pause.
I wanna go to your first still, uh, affectionately named Wendy, uh, apparently and quite famously, the cheapest still that you could afford, um, that happened to have a vapor basket. Mm-hmm. Of course. Very, uh, important. How did necessity end up creating your signature? Triple Juniper process.
Sean Baxter: It’s ’cause we had no cash, Steve.
So that was, that was, that was ultimately, it’s really easy to pick, to pick your, your, your equipment. When you can’t afford anything. You, you, you just, you choose the thing that, it’s like your first car. You’re like, well, I would like to drive a Mercedes, but it’s gonna be the Corolla. You know, like you have to sort of, you have to give up a few of the things.
And we, you know, like the still that we, we actually selected was from Spark Brew in Melbourne. That was one of the first stills they’d ever made. They usually made brewery equipment. Um. The, it was a shop floor [01:09:00] special, so it didn’t actually have, um, it wasn’t, it would, it wouldn’t work. Like it didn’t, it wasn’t made to work.
It was made to measure. So you were supposed to walk into the shop, measure it up, and then, you know, work out if you get it through the doors, you know, like that, that was its entire reason to exist. Um, but the wait list on a, on a still at that stage was, was, was, was almost a year, and we didn’t have time, uh, to, to wait like the, the, the gin market was booming.
The quicker that we could get into the market, the better chance we had of that, of success. Um, and all of your interesting, innovative ideas being the first ones to market. Um, and that’s was, that was largely what we decided to do. We bought that still. We had to put another, God knows how. I don’t wanna even think about how much more money we put into actually making it work.
All the welds need to be redone. Anyone who understands boiler making, when you, when you have to re-weld everything, it’s kind of a lot of the cost. Um, yes, but it, we got it, we got it working about three months later, and our first gin followed another three months after that. So, [01:10:00] you know, by the mid or by mid 2017, um, or we, we had, we were ready to go.
And if, if that wasn’t the case, we would’ve, we wouldn’t be the successful brand that we are today.
Steve Davis: Yeah. So timing. Just everything.
Sean Baxter: Absolutely. And like, that’s, that’s it with ev with all these things, you know, like the, the, the, the, the, the gin market today is, is, is very saturated. I, I, I’d hate to be starting a brand now and trying to get, uh, some sort of relevance or innovation in the category.
’cause it’s, there’s so much there, it’s so tough. And the, the quicker that we could get in every month that we were, we were, we were only the new kids on the block for a number of weeks before another, uh, south Australian gin distillery popped up. Um, so it was very important that we started, when we did
Steve Davis: well, I had a, a very soft spot for a kiss.
Kangaroo island, uh, spirits. They flew us to Kangaroo Island, uh, to take in their very early days, which was magnificent and eyeopening. Um, a lot of native [01:11:00] botanicals. But what you guys have done, you’re classically juniper forward. Why? What gave you the boldness? ’cause that is a very. Bold decision when the market thinks it’s got to hit native, native, native all the time to be relevant.
Sean Baxter: Well, there’s a few things working for us. Like if, if it maybe been a couple of years beforehand, we, we might’ve explored native ingredients because there wasn’t as much on the market. But we, we came in when there was a significant amount of Australian gins that were playing in that category. And to, to make noise and bang a drum about lemon myrtle or pepperberry or, or, or any of the numerous amazing sort of ingredients that are in the Australian category is, is far more challenging.
What didn’t exist was a, a gin that celebrated London style, um, but was Australian. You know, we, we had a lot of expressions that we’re trying to, I guess, be ultra contemporary in the way that they’re expressing [01:12:00] flavor and those ultra contemporary gins are fine. If you’ve got, um. Uh, you know, great ambassadors or the ability to sort of educate around the way to work with those flavors, but the wider market isn’t familiar with them.
No one really could tell you the difference between a, a nice Myrtle or 11 Myrtle other than one might be a bit more citrusy. Like the, the, the, the education wasn’t there to support the volume of, of, of really contemporary gins. Whereas like, everyone kind of knows how to work with Gordon’s. Everyone kind of knows how to work with Tank Ray, you know, beef feeder.
These are the styles of gin that have been around, you know, for, for centuries and will continue for centuries to come. 1769 was when Gordon’s launched. We weren’t even a colony at that stage. So like when you think about the history behind these flavors, we, we wanted to create something that was an Australian and a contemporary Australian reflection of that, but just do it better than them.
And in 2022, we got world’s best London Drive for our triple juniper and. I think we did it. I think we absolutely could [01:13:00] say that we created a, a, an Australian representation of London dry style that could take on the world. And, um, you know, bartenders agreed and that was the most important part. They, they came on that ride with us, um, and continued to, and continued to pour us, you know, across the bars to this day.
Yeah.
Steve Davis: I think being able to hit the, hit the road, stay in the middle of the lane and just do it well, has validity. You not chasing novelty often the, the fringes, although it buys you capability to do that later.
Sean Baxter: Yes, and while we did absolutely do that with our oyster shell jet, as I said, I said earlier in our earlier chats, like, you want to be able to encourage your audience and grow your audience.
A again, I I, I hate going back to Johnny Walker all the time, but you know, the thing about Johnny Walker is that there is a whiskey within that family fe. A a anyone and everyone, you know, it’s not suppo. You’re not supposed to like it all. You’re supposed to find yours. And the same could be said with what we’ve tried to create at never, never.
You’re not supposed to like [01:14:00] all of our gins, but I’m sure you love one.
Steve Davis: Yes. Well, I do. Uh, now you started 16 square meter space. You had, uh, no running water at Big Shed Brewing. Uh, Jason and Craig, did they just not give you access to the water or was there actually no running water? Um, can you take us inside those early days?
Yeah, absolutely. Of setting up And what was the day like?
Sean Baxter: Well, let me preface it with the fact it was very cheap. All right, so that was a, whenever your financial footprint is small and starting a business, it’s, it’s, it, you, you can go through the extra, uh, rigmarole. Uh, it was in their Gring shed, which is out in the back.
So it was out with their. Excess bottles and their, their, their keg bar and, and like obviously their gring machine, if anyone knows what gring is, it’s where you actually turn your molt into a fine dust. So every single time we had to bottle or, or, or distill, there was always a thin layer of dust over everything, which we had to clean.
Uh, there was no running water in there because. It [01:15:00] wasn’t needed. There was a dunning in one back corner, which reminded me something at a train spotting. It was absolutely horrifying. Uh, if you ever just wake up and just sort of saw yourself in that space, you’re like, what? Where has my life taken me to this particular point?
Um, so Tim, like there was running, there was running water next door. So we had to run hoses, um, from the actual brewery space to, uh, to run the still, uh, sorry to run the condenser, but the, the, um, the filtered water, the, the three stage osmosis filtered water that big shed used for their beers that couldn’t reach the still.
So Tim had to sort of farmers walk the 20 liter HCPs of water, um, from the brewery, the 20 meters across to the, to the gring shed, um, every time we wanted to run. And then, which in those days was significant because of the fact that the gin was actually one of the more. The popular things that we were doing.
So because it was only a 260 liters still, it was on every day. So he was getting a workout, that’s for sure.
Steve Davis: That’s fantastic. Would you go back and do those days all over again? Or is there apprenticeship [01:16:00] served and that’s enough place? I don’t
Sean Baxter: think legally you can, but I like, I, yeah, I, I think, I think, um, yeah, I, I’m not sure.
I mean, it was romantic, right? Like, it, like, the thing about it is that you, when you start there, you, you start to celebrate every square. Inch that, that you grow. And we, we shifted from there into a distillery shared with, um, Imperial Measures, distilling David Danby, Chris Jones, that their little gin brand.
We shared half of their warehouse. That’s how tight the industry is here. They were, we were quite happy to share resources and grow. And then when we moved to McLaren Vale in 2020, like even though people walk in and go, is this it? Is this where it all comes from? We’re like, this is a palace compared to where we came from.
Um, so it does make you appreciate every, uh, every sort of small gain that you make in the, in the business
Steve Davis: and what a journey it’s been since. Um, as you’ve mentioned, I think you having a hospitality background, understanding what bartenders understand was part of the crucial part of your [01:17:00] success, but.
Bottles label design, et cetera. You’ve had some experiments along the way. Tell us about the invisible one.
Sean Baxter: Oh, well, I mean, like, I love, don’t be wrong. I love our, I loved our old labels, and I still do, they’re still a really important part of our, of our journey. They were very creative, you know, angular color based, again, Johnny Walker.
Oh my God. Um, so we tried to create something that would stand out on shelf, especially, um, you know, on a retail shelf. Um, but what we ended up doing was creating something that, you know, under low light, um, became harder and harder to read. And it, it. It was still celebrated by bartenders and still picked up the 500 mils.
Was was because we needed, we only made a small amount of gin. So when you’re only making a tiny volume, to be able to split it up as much as you can, will help your business grow quicker. Um, you know, think about, you know, your sampling opportunities that you can do. So that, that was a no [01:18:00] brainer for us early on.
But as we became more established, it, the, the, the. The, the, the extra 200 mils that weren’t in the bottle became actually a bit more of a, a problem because it, it didn’t allow us to be as competitive as we could be. So, you know, just this year we, well, we, we transitioned this year. It’s been on the cards for the better part of four years, really.
Like we’ve been working with our designers to kinda get to this particular stage and, you know, we’re really, really happy with finally having a bottle that could be red, uh, in low light in many bars around the country.
Steve Davis: And it’s nice and tall and a proud bottle.
Sean Baxter: Yes. Like I, I don’t know who wrote the rule book, even back when we started, I liked the idea of being a, a tall bottle.
Um, there’s lots and lots of examples of short fat squat bottles, especially in 2016. There’s not as much, not not as many now, but even when I was bartending, the tall bottles had a second life. They’d often get used for lemon or lime juices or syrups or cocktails. And, um, you know, we, we always had a selection of different bottles that weren’t allowed to be chucked out [01:19:00] because they were really, really good at, um, fitting in the, the well space and ah, and.
You know, like that was a really important part. Like, it, it does endear you even even to bartenders who might not really pick up your liquid that much. The fact that you’re not allowed to throw out the never, never bottle was, um, was something that I really wanted to, to permeate because it, it does create that connection to brand.
Steve Davis: And I love the fact that you are lifting your gaze to the world. This is not, never, never preparing to cannibalize other. Um, craft distillers run the place you, you’ve lifted, you can see there’s a way for this little Australian entity to just fight on the major global stage. How amazing is that and what, what’s the mechanics, what’s going on on that front?
Sean Baxter: Well, that was, that was always the plan. You know, when we started creating a London dry, like we, we never built the distillery to be small. Everything had a, an opportunity to [01:20:00] scale. Um, we knew that if there was ever the opportunity to, to transact to, in order to, I guess, grow the business and also create the opportunity for us to, to, to make it a, a massive Australian brand.
That’s where our, our, our sort of focus was always was to create something that was, was truly a. A spectacular representation of, of South Australian, Australian flavor. The idea of never, never was connected to that, you know, like this, the, the idea that never, never belongs to everyone. It’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s this idea of the space beyond the horizon and beneath the stars.
It’s something that you, um, that you head towards. It’s something that you, that you aspire to travel towards. And for, for us, this idea is connected to every, every sort of Australian entity, every Australian state, not just South Australia. Um, we think it’s the most, uh, incredible sort of reference point to, uh, uh, to, to, to export around the world.
[01:21:00] Um, the, the change up of the label was to simplify, simplify that storytelling mechanic. The idea of the horizon line, the idea of, um, the colorways. It draws you in. It, it, it, it’s an easier way to, to, to communicate who we are and what we aspire to be.
Steve Davis: Is the acquisition by Ashi really the, the straw that made the camel’s back, that gives you the resources to fulfill this vision now?
Sean Baxter: Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, like it was such a. I get emotional talking about it because, um, we built a brand in the back of a shed in a western suburb of Adelaide for nothing. You know, for like genuinely it was, it was the smell of an oily rag stuff and we were delivering gin out of a Buddha. Tim’s busted up Magna for years until we got a distribution deal with another Australian distributor.
That slowly built us into a, a bit more of a household name in certain parts of the country. When it comes to bartenders to [01:22:00] think that you make enough noise with, with the resources we have to, to, to get the attention of a global entity like that, uh, to like, it’s, it’s such an incredible part of, of the start of our story.
Like the, the way that I see it, it, we just, we, we are truly only getting the opportunity to start our story. Now we, we are gonna continue to grow this. This brand into something that will become, uh, a huge player on the global market and, and, and, and really, um, celebrate the, the, uh, the South Australian gin industry in its entirety.
Like, to put it into perspective, like the year before we, we were like, like we, we had to go through redundancies. Like we were, we were, we were restricting our business. We were, we were, um, feeling the pinch like everybody else. We were struggling to keep the lights on. Like, like it’s a, it’s a, it’s a brutal thing, which I don’t, I don’t invite into anyone’s life to have to go through that sort of, uh, that, that, [01:23:00] that fear and then to.
Spend 12 months later on the o the on the other end of that where you’re suddenly, um, employing more people, you’re actually growing your business, you are expanding upon your footprint is just such a, an amazing moment in our, in our brand’s history. And something that is, yeah, as I said, it makes me emotional.
’cause it’s a, it’s an incredible thing
Steve Davis: as it should because it is, it’s just a crux for the human condition to gather, to drink together, to have something that warms us, loosens things we shouldn’t need it necessarily, but there is just something celebratory about being able to have, in your case, bloody amazing, uh, spirits just to help set the human spirits free.
I think there’s something you’ve tapped into that’s enduring and. I’m curious, before you just react to that, did any of you consider saying no to Ashi when the, uh, approach was made? No.
Sean Baxter: And, and, and, and I can tell you [01:24:00] why. ’cause when we started, we had made a decision, the three of us back when we were just starting out.
We, we had our, we knew what we wanted out of, uh, out of the process. We knew the steps that had to be taken. We understood how, like to be a huge Australian brand in our lifetime would, would probably not happen off the capital that we were able to grow. And it just, it would never, it would just never happen.
Right. We would, we would’ve had to have sacrificed some level of equity, um, to be able to, to take on investment. To be able to compete, not with Australian gin, but with global powerhouses that have been centuries in the making. Um, so we as three, you know. Mates now, um, you know, early doors, we, we, we knew the steps that needed to be taken and, and we, we quickly made sure that we weren’t gonna continue to progress this if one of us or two of us really wanted to, you know, like retire with this [01:25:00] idea of, you know, handing our, handing our distillery down to our children, which was certainly not on, on, um, on, on the cards.
For me, this was something that was definitely about turning this business into the biggest, uh, distilling business that we could, and ensuring that it was left in the safe hands of someone that had done it before and can continue to do it. Many, many, you know, decades into the future.
Steve Davis: Sean, seriously, hats off to all three of you.
You’re just genuine humans. I love what you’re doing. I think. There’s a little bit in the human psyche that sometimes begrudges people’s success. I don’t think there’d be many people who would be in that in relation to you guys. ’cause every interaction I’ve had with you along the past, just being genuine and warm.
I know this is sounding a bit gushy towards the end of a podcast, but. I mean, it, I, you’re just decent humans and thank God that, you know, success has found the right place to sit. [01:26:00] And it’s not sit, you’ve actively crafted the foundations for it, but I want to just cheer you to every future as you take South Australia’s name into the never, never on behalf of Australia.
Sean Baxter: Thank you so much, Steve. It was a pleasure.
TAS Theme: And now it’s time for the musical pilgrimage
Steve Davis: time. Now for the musical pilgrimage. And we’re heading back to 1996 and the Lion’s Arts Bar. Now, before you ask, yes, there is a gin connection coming up here. I’ll get to that in just a moment. Uh, the Violets, they’re marking 30 years since their debut album with a special reunion show at the gov on Friday the 29th of August.
It’s one of those full circle moments that does happen here quite a bit in Adelaide, the original supporters, uh, batteries not included. [01:27:00] There’s a name for you and the Janes, they’re going to be sharing the bill. This is going to be nostalgia with driving guitars. It really is. Batteries not included, by the way, gave the Violets their very first gig at Limbo Nightclub back in 1992.
I reckon, uh, Don Oli, the hairdresser at large, would’ve been a major part of that scene just saying. So, having them to reform to open the show. I mean, I, I think hats off to the mall. It’s going to be a genuine evening of pretty raunchy nostalgia. The track we’re going to hear somewhere was recorded live at the Lion Arts Bar during that mid nineties period where the venue was hosting or some of the city’s most promising acts, really.
And here’s my tenuous link to gin. If never, never, distilling co. Had have been around back in the day, I bet that spirit would’ve flowed freely among the hip crowd. Yeah. Okay. That is the really slim link. [01:28:00] And personally, I blame the Navy strength juniper, freak gin. John, that’s on you. This is somewhere.
However, while I work this off and just bask in the warm glow, let’s have a different warm glow. The Violets, this is somewhere live, 1996 at the Lion Arch Bar.
The Violets: I,
I.[01:29:00]
The back.[01:30:00]
Somewhere in the back of my life.[01:31:00]
The back of.[01:32:00]
Sean Baxter: Thank you.
Steve Davis: That’s the Violets and somewhere I’ll put a link in the show notes if you want to get tickets to that gig on the 29th of August at the gov. Hope it’s gonna be a fantastic night. Also, if you’d like a couple of tickets, uh, just be one of the first people to email me to podcast at the Adelaide show.com au.
Just tell me you’d like to listen to the Violets live on the 29th of August and I’ll make that happen. Alright. Talking of Violets. We had some violets in the wine, uh, last episode with Chester. I reckon I’m getting a hint of violet from some the, the gin somehow, or maybe it’s again, that navy strength gin that is a ripper.
[01:33:00] Do not buy any juniper freak gin just yet. Let me clear the shelves first, then you can go at it. Thank you very much to everyone who’s been involved. Until next time, it’s goodnight for me, Steve Davis. Goodnight Dawn.
AJ Davis: The Adelaide Show Podcast is produced by my dad, Steve Davis. If you want to start a podcast or get some help producing creative content, talk to him.
Visit steve davis.com au. Thanks, aj. I’m Caitlin Davis, and I agree with everything my sister said, but there’s one more thing to say. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please leave a rating or a review ’cause that will make my dad really happy. Oh, and one more thing. If you really, really liked it, please help a friend put the Adelaide Show on their phone.
Thanks for listening. Listening.
[01:34:00] Buzz buzz.
TAS Theme: Bad lady.