LIQUID GOLD LIFTS SPIRITS ON THE WEST COAST
Reefton Distilling Co. is bringing income, jobs and tourists to the historic West Coast town, while supporting local growers. We spoke to founder and Chief Executive Patsy Bass about the company's journey and future plans. WORDS BY NIKO KLOETEN
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ot many New Zealand towns can be accused of peaking in the 19th century, but Reefton is surely on that brief list. Located about 80km northeast of Greymouth, it boomed during the gold rush of the late 1800s, at one stage having three competing daily newspapers and more than 20 schools in the area. In 1888 Reefton became the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to receive a
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town supply of electricity, generated by the Reefton Power Station. Reefton’s fortunes ebbed with the end of the gold rush, and not much has been happening since. According to the 2018 census, the town had only 927 people, down 12 percent since 2013. It wouldn’t seem the obvious place to start a thriving business, but when Reefton-born businesswoman Patsy Bass moved back to her hometown,
she was determined to launch a new venture to help revitalise it. She just didn’t know what it would be. “We were looking at five different ideas,” she recalls. “There were things to do with gold, tourism… some of those other ideas we might even still pursue. But we went with the distillery.” After raising more than $1.3 million in a share equity offer, Patsy and her team – including her husband Shane Thrower – launched Reefton Distilling Co. in 2017. It initially focused on gin, producing a ‘Little Biddy’ brand inspired by a famous Irish gold fossicker who arrived in Reefton in the 1800s named Bridget Goodwin. The distillery also produces vodka and a range of liqueurs, using locally-sourced fruit and botanicals. The most recent step in its evolution is the launch of its whisky brand, Moonlight Creek, with the first bottles due on the shelves in 2025. “The whisky is the big part of our business, that’s a main focus for the next number of years,” Patsy says. “We’ve got other ideas in the pipeline, when we get the capacity to explore those, but at the moment we make spirits.” Reefton Distilling Co. also does contract distilling, and during the Covid pandemic it even produced an ethanol-based hand sanitiser. The company has room for growth, having moved from its initial premises to a much bigger 1.6ha site. This expansion also helps to accommodate the other side of the business: guided tours where aficionados of Reefton Distilling Co.’s products can see how they are made. Hundreds of visitors come through every month, and Patsy says they come from all over the country and overseas. “We get a lot of visitors because they love our product and they love our story; with a lot of visitors from Australia,” she says. “Last month I spoke to a woman from Auckland who had seen us at the Auckland Food Show years earlier and had decided she wanted to come down and visit us.” The visitors bring a much-needed injection of spending to Reefton, which has experienced a postpandemic visitor boom. In contrast