LAST ORDERS
Purely Elemental Elemental Distillers was marking a year in its Marlborough distillery when COVID-19 arrived and spirits gave way to sanitiser. Co-founder Ben Leggett explains how they got through and their explosive plans for a special new release... On how Elemental Distillers came about… It was a professional pipedream of mine from the time my wife and I decided to move back to New Zealand after 14 years working in the UK spirits industry. Any true realisation of this dream wouldn’t come about, however, until I was introduced to Simon through a mutual friend. We both have two kids each under five and appreciate the constant balancing act between business and family. This mutual empathy (and occasional paternal meltdown) is one of the things that makes us such great business partners.
Simon Kelly and Ben Leggett
“Standing on the balcony of your own distillery and drinking your own gin is a pretty good feeling.” On the past few months… It’s been, in a word: ‘crazy’. We were already making plans to produce sanitiser from our gin heads and tails when news of the virus came out overseas. By the time it hit New Zealand and lockdown was announced we were already ahead and became one of the first food producers in the country to convert into full-scale production. 86 DRINKSBIZ JUNE / JULY 2020
Thanks to a well-timed article on Stuff, word got out and we spent the first two weeks of lockdown converting fully into cosmetic pharmacopoeia, my wife helping to manage the hundreds of daily email enquiries while I was producing and fighting for access to further ethanol, packaging and EPA approval. We now produce “Heads & Tails Gin Scented Sanitiser” from the heads and tails (see what we did there) of our gin runs. The 30ml pocket atomizer bottles of sanitiser spray are complimentary with every bottle of Roots Dry Gin sold in store and online, while we also sell 1L refill bottles to national businesses or hospitality venues. All of our sanitiser is 80% alc/vol and conforms to the ‘WHO recommended handrub formulation’. On how the business has diversified since launch… We’ve just completed our first full year of operation and are still evolving and diversifying. Now that we have Roots Dry Gin in play and the distillery has gone through a thorough run (and survived lockdown), we’ve also begun offering boutique contracting services targeting high-end clients interested in a premium but bespoke run of gin from 150-300 bottles at a time. It’s perfect for premium lodges, department stores or hospitality groups interested in their own recipe and labelled gin. We also love working with customers where we can personalise botanical recipes from their local area. We also offer consultancy, run a number of consumer spirits workshops and work alongside the NZ School of Wines & Spirits as their Lead Spirits Tutor and WSET educator. On the reaction to their new distillery/tasting room… Since we’re a small operation we can only open our tasting room by appointment as we need to step away from production to
host, but it’s one of the most pleasurable parts of the business. Standing on the balcony of your own distillery and drinking your own gin is a pretty good feeling. Overall reaction has been amazing, also to the stories on the wall that represent a national traceability map of growers, as well as images of our local volunteer events and even the people behind the foraging of our juniper in the highlands of North Macedonia. Transparency is everything for us. On where to from here… To some degree, the ship has been righted and thanks also to an explosion in online spirit sales and the market now flooded with sanitiser products, we’re back on gin production. The Navy Strength expression of Roots Marlborough Dry Gin is definitely going to happen, and with the addition of New Zealand hemp in the recipe (Navy and hemp: long history), it promises to be special. We also have the country’s most qualified explosives expert lined up to help ‘blow up our gin’ with original black powder no less! We’re still keen to look at an Amaro built from Marlborough aromatic wine stock and have a Marlborough damson, kawakawa and allspice liqueur completing its 12 month maceration in time for Christmas. And we’re coordinating the first of a collection of regional cocktail competitions where the grand prize is a night in Marlborough and the chance to create and distil your own gin recipe at the distillery. The rest of the year will be a reveal for everyone but we’re all in it together so we’re looking at ways we can help support and collaborate our on- and off-premise partners while remaining proactive on our own growth plans. This has already been a dream realised for me, but with so much yet to prove it’s head back down and ‘keep on keeping on’.
