Four Pillars Gin
Mike Gerrard of Travel Distilled talks to Head Distiller Cameron McKenzie of Australia’s Four Pillars Gin about barrel aging, from Mike’s book Cask Strength.
Four Pillars Gin in Australia has been called the best gin distillery in the world. Having tasted several of their gins, including their amazing Bloody Shiraz Gin, I wouldn’t argue with that. They’re based in Healesville in Victoria, though recently opened a gin laboratory in Sydney. I spoke to Head Distiller Cameron McKenzie.
The first Four Pillars experiment in barrel-aging was back in 2013 when they aged some of their signature Rare Dry Gin in chardonnay barrels. I asked
McKenzie why they chose that gin and those barrels.
‘Truthfully, at the time Rare Dry Gin was the only gin we were making!’ he says. ‘Twelve months earlier we had travelled through the US visiting distillers and researching craft distillation. We lobbed into Irving Street Kitchen in Portland, Oregon, straight off the plane from Australia. We asked the bartender to surprise us with a gin that we might never have seen before. He served us Ransom Old Tom. It really knocked us over – complex, interesting and balanced. We tasted a heap of barrel-aged gin on that trip – some good and some just too oaky.
‘When we started distilling and fine tuning the Rare Dry Gin recipe, I accumulated some gin that I decided to put into seasoned French oak chardonnay barrels. One thing we noticed in the US was that new oak and strong American oak was probably not for us. We have tried it but I don’t love it with our gin. I reckon it gets very planky, and is like sticking your head in a pencil sharpener!’
Four Pillars’ First Barrel-Aged Gin
Their first barrel-aged gin wasn’t an immediate success, though.
‘No!!’ McKenzie admits. ‘One journalist described the gin as tasting like bad retsina. I’ve since challenged him to find me a good retsina! In hindsight, I think we released it too early and the botanicals hadn’t really developed. We didn’t release many bottles and the feedback was good but we decided future releases would be allowed to develop longer via a “master stock” system of barrels. Kind of like a solera but a much simpler version.
‘That first release was in barrel for less than a year. There’s no doubt that every release since then has been much better. The addition of fresh gin into each barrel seems to balance nicely with the oxidised oils from the aged gin. I think we just found a system that worked for us.’
The solera system is used in the making of sherry, but not in gin… until Four Pillars came along and tried it.
‘We managed to buy fifty old sherry and apera casks from McWilliam’s Winery,’ McKenzie tells me. ‘Most had held sweet sherry or apera for about thirty years. The residual character was much stronger than in the chardy barrels so we set up a three-tier proper solera system. It was a pain to set up but once in place it doesn’t require too much maintenance. I love the consistency from year to year and the complexity just keeps building.’
Apera is the Australian version of sherry. It can’t be called sherry as it isn’t made in the Sherry Triangle area of Spain, but it’s made in the same way. Canada also later adopted the name apera for these fortified sherry-style wine aperitifs. When I asked McKenzie what his own personal favorite is from their various barrel-aged gin releases, he immediately singles out the sherry barrels.
‘For some reason there are six sherry casks that have aged very differently to the others,’ he says, ‘and I have kept them out of the solera system. We’re releasing one each year. The most recent is S36 which is 56.8% ABV [113.6 proof] and just the most delicious sipping gin. One ice cube and it just unravels into a beautiful, sweet, intensely complex gin. It spent five-and-a-half years in barrel, which is pretty unusual in Australia. Next year we will release the next one and it will be a year older.’
Don’t Miss my Four Pillars Gin Reviews!
Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin
Bloody Shiraz Gin Review
Four Pillars Australian Christmas Gin
Four Pillars Navy Strength Gin
Spiced Negroni Gin Review
Don’t Miss my Four Pillars Gin Reviews!
Four Pillars Rare Dry Gin
Bloody Shiraz Gin Review
Four Pillars Australian Christmas Gin
Four Pillars Navy Strength Gin
Spiced Negroni Gin Review
Four Pillars Christmas Gin
The distillery has also aged gin in muscat barrels, to produce their annual Christmas Gin. Where did those barrels come from?
‘That’s an interesting story,’ McKenzie tells me. ‘We managed to buy – or, rather, swap a LOT of gin – with some winemakers around Rutherglen in north-east Victoria, a famous fortified wine region. The barrels are all over a hundred years old and held muscat for around eighty years. They are extraordinary, and a lesson in Australian wine history! Unfortunately, they are hard to get so Christmas Gin is always limited.’
McKenzie emphasizes that their barrel-aged gins are sipping gins, and not for mixing with tonic. At the most, an ice cube or drop of water will help enhance the flavor. However, they can work brilliantly in cocktails like a Negroni or a Gin Old-Fashioned. In fact Four Pillars has put out a ready-made Negroni whose recipe includes two of their barrel-aged gins. It shows there’s still a lot of fun to be had from barrel-aged spirits.
‘For sure!’ McKenzie says. ‘These barrel-aged gins are an interesting story, but the bartenders are the actors. I love watching bartenders play with these gins. I’m not precious about them being sipped neat. Jimmy Irvine is our drinks director and a real genius with combining the complexity of these gins with amazing other flavors like roasted wattleseed – genius!’
Next Up: Seaweed-Flavoured Gin?
Wattleseeds are the edible seeds from Australian acacia plants, said to have a taste that combines chocolate, coffee, and hazelnuts. So what else has Four Pillars been doing in their barrel-aged gin experiments?
‘We’re always tinkering away with new projects,’ says McKenzie. ‘I’m playing with some cumquat and bergamot this year, so watch this space! I’d also like to try some of the amazing coastal botanicals. There are some seaweeds that I reckon would be amazing.’
A barrel-aged gin flavored with seaweed? Now that would be something to taste, and typical of the Four Pillars modern approach to gin-making.
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