Arrowtown builders turn shed into award-winning gin distillery

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from Otago News

Looking down from the top of Queenstown’s Cecil Peak, drinking gin infused with thyme plucked from bushes in Arrowtown, Stu Clark admits to feeling proud of his award-winning drink.

Clark and his mate Hamish Bourke were working as builders in Arrowtown when they one day got “yarning” about how good it’d be to own their own gin distillery, a dream not uncommon for the Kiwi bloke.

In 2018, the mates had been doing some building work on Clark’s shed, which wasinitially intended to be a workshop, but became a distillery where the friends now make their Rifters Gin.

By 2020, the pair had bagged a gold medal at the San Fran Spirit Awards, followed by a silver the year after.

They have also won medals at the London and New Zealand Spirits competitions.

“We just got on really well and both love gin and wanted to try this thing. We haven’t balanced [the books] out yet, but it is about going for it. We are proud of what we’ve done so far,” Clark says.

Rifters are makers of small-batch premium gin, which uses botanicals and local herbs like thyme, mānuka honey, coriander and mint.

They started trialling recipes for their mates and after loads of good feedback, Clark says they “gave it a crack”.

The men are passionate about bringing people back to their region after a tough couple of years for hospitality during the pandemic.

Clark says lockdowns and low visitor numbers to the region affected sales, but numbers are on the way back up with the help of local tourism.

On Saturday, the company took two competition winners from Mt Maunganui up to Cecil Peak in a helicopter to taste their gin at height.

They wanted to showcase the area that initially inspired them to make gin.

Clark says the dream is to one day open up a public distillery allowing people to visit and have a taste of what their region has to offer, and perhaps link up more with tourism operators like they did over the weekend.

The inspiration behind the name “Rifters” and their bottles, comes from Arrowtown’s gold mining history, he says.

A visit to the local museum showed a connection between Arrowtown's gold mining history and gin, a drop the foragers made for themselves while panning for gold 150 years ago.

“Our bottle is a representation of this Arrowtown history and the land that surrounds us, coloured to match the lakes and rivers that flow through Central Otago,” Clark says.

"The mountains, lakes and rivers that surround us have captured our imagination for years. They provide the purest ingredients used to make our gin.”