Four Pillars is best known for its orange-inspired Rare Dry gin, bold red Bloody Shiraz gin and multi-award winning Navy Strength gin — but over the years, the distillery has moved beyond conventional flavours to create imaginative and unusual products.
This move is not by accident, as it looks to capture the imagination and pique the adventurousness of today’s gin drinker.
“It has become clear that our consumers today are excited by new and exciting flavours, and we deliver that alongside continued quality and consistency,” Four Pillars Gin Chief Distiller Sarah Prowse said during the recent Tax Free World Association (TFWA) APAC event in Singapore.
“We have seen this with our Fresh Yuzu which is one of the best performers internationally due to the presence of yuzu, genmaicha and ginger in it; and the Olive Leaf gin is very big in the United States.”
Taking inspiration from these successes, Four Pillars is launching several more very unique gin innovations.
“We already have a new El Cuatro Mexican-inspired product that is essentially a replacement for tequila — It has habanero and Mexican oregano in it, which gives a hint of heat and makes it perfect for margaritas,” she said.
“Our other upcoming launch is the Three Peach gin, made with an Australian native peach as well as the macerate of yellow and white peaches, so not just distillate, giving this more sweetness than normal and making it very suitable for a breakfast gin.”
But out of all these creations, the most unique item Four Pillars has made came out of a collaboration with a bakery — specifically Luxe croissants, which has recently gone viral across Australia.
“We used the clarified butter from Luxe croissants to make the one-of-a-kind Croissant Gin, along with vanilla pods and roasted almonds to round it all together,” Prowse said.
“This has given the limited edition gin buttery notes akin to caramel, as well as the scent of vanilla and almonds that made it all the more compelling.”
All in all, Four Pillars used 80 kilogrammes of croissant clarified butter to make some eight thousand bottles of Croissant Gin, and the colder temperature this gin is enjoyed at, the silkier it is, according to Prowse.
Still must be a gin
Amid all this out-of-the-box innovation, one major thing she stressed is that there still needs to be a focus on consistency and branding.
“Consumers love the different gins, but the fact is that ultimately they still want a gin they can trust, one that they know and love for its stable quality,” she said.
“Any deviation from this would defeat the purpose, and Four Pillars also stands for making the most of Australian ingredients so that is an added dimension we consider for every one of our innovations.”
The other focus for the firm is to ensure that its products remain ‘gins’, which means made with juniper berries and not focused on sweetness.
“Our upcoming new product will be coffee-based, but we are being careful with it as we want to ensure it is a gin and not mistaken in any way as a liqueur,” Prowse said.
“This means it must be juniper-forward, at least 35% ABV and not a sweet product as gin is what we do.”
This has been a critical point of focus for all of Four Pillars’ creations so far — another of its more unique items even went briny instead of sweet, notably its collaboration with New Zealand’s Island Gin where Prowse used Barrier Island manuka honey as well as Australian ocean coastal flora such as seaweed and saltbush to make a briny gin, touted as a ‘great fit’ for martinis.
