Page 12 - Gin Journal - The Hobart Edition

LESS REFINED, MORE RUSTIC
“We like doing things the old- fashioned way, so we imagined how gin would’ve been made in colonial Hobart,” says Heather.
During that time, barley was a major crop and a lot of small- scale, farmhouse distilling was taking place. Because it would have been incredibly expensive to import herbs and spices traditionally used to flavour gin, the team assumed the amateur distillers of that era would have relied on the botanicals they could find growing in the bush around their farms, like pepperberry.
Fittingly, Heather cites traditional gin as the inspiration behind Hobart No.4’s well- balanced blend of flavours – selecting anise myrtle for its
bright aromatics, lemon myrtle for a hint of citrus, wattleseed for an earthy base note and then the spicy pepperberry, alongside plenty of juniper, of course.
Perhaps most importantly, embracing age-old Tasmanian distilling traditions meant leaving behind any notion of creating a London Dry gin. With that style, distillers infuse a neutral spirit, which is most commonly wheat-based, with a range of botanicals.
“That’s how you get a clean, crisp style. Ours is big and rustic, not clean and crisp. It’s the polar opposite to a London Dry and it’s anything but neutral! It’s big, textural, robust and packed with natural barley flavour. It’s basically pre-industrial gin.”
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