It's winter, but only just . . . in fact, it's still relatively warm here on the Central Coast, as we take a turn around Philip Moore's fragrant garden in Erina. It's where the herbs and other botanicals grow that he uses to make gin and other distilled spirits.
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"A lot of these are natives (plants) that we use in our gin; we have lemon myrtle, which gives a lovely lemony, sherbet aromatic, and Illawarra plum, which are a bit like blueberries . . . more savoury," says Moore, a distiller, as he picks a leaf from each plant and smells it, before handing it over to me.
"This is aniseed myrtle, which we used to use to make a lovely absinthe with, but nobody buys absinthe these days."
Moore gives me a few leaves and tells me to squeeze them gently in my palm.
"Ah . . . smells sweet, like liquorice . . . that's intoxicating," I exclaim after taking a big whiff of the crushed shrub in my hands.
"One of the marvellous things about spirits, particularly gins and so on, is that you only need infinitesimally small amounts of the botanical in order to have a big effect on the flavour," Moore says. "In one of my gins, I've literally got an ingredient in parts per billion."
In 2005, Moore bought a nursery, the Fragrant Garden, in Erina. A nursery that, for almost 50 years, was as revered by gardeners and green thumbs as it was resented by bored boyfriends, husbands, and older children still having to go shopping with Mum. In a previous life, Moore was a grower of high quality herbs, which he used to supply to the Fragrant Garden nursery. It took him two years to set up his distillery and start selling his spirits.
"I started with an Australian native range of liqueurs, and received a few medals at the International Wine and Spirit Competition [IWSC] in London. Unfortunately, there was no real interest in Australian native drinks," Moore says.
So, as any sensible distiller would do, Phillip turned his mind to gin.
"Gin distillation suits me, in a way," he says, "because my background is in growing herbs. I wrote a small book on the various flavours of herbs, where I would categorise them into their flavour groupings . . .
"I had no intention of having a distillery when I was growing herbs, but in a way, it was valuable training on the palate for me, because now I know how to think about how each botanical could be combined in a drink, like gin," Moore says.
Moore's Dry Gin is the current incarnation of over a decade's worth of distillation experimentation. It is delicious; aromatic, like the morning; fresh citrusy and grassy; scents of zesty lemon and orange peel wet with herbaceous sage and a few sprigs of fennel, some floral sweet elderflower notes; bright lemon myrtle perfumes too.
The spirit has a slippery texture that feels playful and round in the mouth. Warming, sweet earthy flavours of herbal pepperberries, coriander and aniseed stretch out into a smouldering swirl of citrus and juniper.
Mix it with a decent tonic, add a thin slice of lemon, and dare I say it . . . this is one super "mooreish" gin.
"I think citrusy flavoured gins always work so much better in a G&T," Moore says. "The citrus bitters gives you that nice lingering aftertaste that makes you think, 'mmm . . . that's a really nice gin'."
Moore's Dry Gin was the first of his gins to receive a gold medal at the 2017 IWSC. Moore says, it took around 400 different blends (since 2009) to get right.
"Basically, I use the structure of a typical London Dry Gin, which is juniper and coriander [these are called the 'fixitives'; they hold the various flavours of the botanicals together] and then add whatever native botanicals I think will work well together," Moore says.
You can visit Distillery Botanica to take a turn around the fragrant garden yourself and taste Moore's gins and other spirits. If you go, you might discover Moore's other most popular distillation, yet . . . Mr. Black; a cold brew coffee liquor. But, that's a story for another time . . .