Whanganui Spirit

Once the preserve of hippies and people who wore walk shorts and socks with sandals, craft beer has now been firmly established as mainstream, and let’s face it, Kiwis are bloody good at it. But a few adventurous souls just had to take it to the next level and embrace distilling - as in making spiritswhich is a whole other art form with a whole lot more complexities. And just to make it interesting, these two Whanganui distilleries have added some pretty unique twists!

Papaiti Gin

When life gives you lemons, so the saying goes, you make lemonade. But what do you do when life gives you 400 pear trees? That’s the question that Nikki Oesterle and her partner Adrian faced having just moved from the capital to Whanganui in 2021. And for them the answer was clear: you make gin.

The couple had fallen in love with an old house while visiting family, and before they knew it had sold up in Wellington and moved in, in just four weeks. While they knew the house came with land, everything had been such a whirlwind that they had not fully comprehended what that really meant. “About a week before we moved in,” Nikki says, “we saw what the land actually consisted of. There was a massive orchard on each side - plus eighteen sheep and a pig! The orchard had kind of reached the end of its economic life, but it still produced a lot of pears! We just didn’t want them to go to waste, and gin seemed like a great idea.”

Around the same time, Nikki completed an entrepreneurial bootcamp, and suddenly the couple - who had always hankered after being their own bosses - saw that the stars were aligning. “It was like there was a sudden sparkwe just felt it was time to do something, not wait another year for everything to be perfect. We had absolutely no experience in distilling - so, yes, we went to YouTube! We bought a small copper still, rented an old village store for super cheap and registered the business - and a year later we were making gin!”

And they still are. For their signature Orchard Gin, the pears are dried and botanicals like kawakawa, grapefruit and mandarin or lime peel add subtle flavours over the traditional juniper base. Papaiti Gin also produces the Whanganui Dry, which is a contemporary London Dry gin but uses botanicals such as pink peppercorn, mint and - for added smoothness - almonds. And newbies they may be, but across their four core range gins they’ve picked up 24 medals at international and national competitions, among them one gold and one double gold.

“It’s been a pretty wild journey! And we couldn’t have done it without Whanganui - the people have been so supportive - there is so much happening here and we wanted to be a part of that dynamic.”

Good Bones Distilling

Not seeing something go to waste was also the focus of Whanganui local Vaughan Campbell. Vaughan became interested in distilling quite early - he had his first still at the tender age of 18 - and has been perfecting his skills ever since. “It turned into a hobby,” Vaughan says, “and then it became an obsession. It’s the love of the process, perfecting the process, that attracts me I guess.”

Vaughan’s love of the process nearly had a very fortuitous turn in his other job of building performance engines at Pulse Performance. “We ship our engines all over the world, but some run on ethanol and during COVID all the ethanol was being turned into hand sanitiser!

My boss knew I could home brew and asked me if I could make ethanol - and I said yeah, I’ll look into it! Unfortunately, it just wasn’t viable in the quantities needed, but it was fun trying!”

Something else was viable. “I came across a news article about how much food goes to waste, and started thinking about how I could use unused food to make alcohol, and started trialling the process. Then one night I was phone scrolling and came across Innovate Whanganui (a Dragon’s Den style, Whanganui and Partners initiative to support local entrepreneurs) and it was an absolute lightbulb moment. I actually woke my partner up to tell her - and got told not to wake her up again!”

Vaughan went on to win Innovate Whanganui and the $10,000 prize kickstarted Good Bones Vodka. “We source all the unused food locally, for example offcuts from a local cake maker that would otherwise end up in the bin. And the yeast for the fermentation of the food is a wild New Zealand yeast from the Rangitikei region that our yeast supplier found.

It’s not the normal kind of yeast you’d use for vodka, it has a subtle spice from phenols, fruity banana, pear and apple esters, but the idea of it being wild - and 100% New Zealand - was too good to miss.”

The company now makes batch-based runs of vodka and liqueurs, each centred around a specific unused baked treat like bagels, bread or cake, as well as beer.

“I came across a news article about how much food goes to waste, and started thinking about how I could use unused food to make alcohol, and started trialling the process.”

“We don’t use carbon filters,” says Vaughan. “Instead we make careful cuts during the distillation process. So what you are tasting is what has come out of the still.”

But for Vaughan, it’s about more than just taste. “Every bottle we produce highlights the unique character of locally sourced ingredients and the care we take in crafting each batch, but also represents our commitment to reducing food waste and creating something meaningful from what would otherwise be discarded.”

With a growing range of spirits and a dedication to sustainability, Good Bones Distilling is proving that with the right approach, even what’s leftover can become extraordinary.

And we can all drink to that.