Rowland Short is a South Australian gin hero in our books. He’s the mastermind behind Settlers Spirits Pink Gin and the Breakfast G & Tea Gin along with a range of other incredible blends. There’s no doubt that Rowland’s a flavour genius and now he wants to show you how to make your own crazy blends in a Gin Masterclass.
Oh! And we can confirm there are two really cool new flavours on the horizon ahead of World Gin Day on June 10th. While one’s a surprise – we’ve got the go ahead to spill the beans on Settlers Spiced Fig Gin, a gin infused with Adelaide figs, ginger, cinnamon and cloves. Just let that sink in.
We felt it imperative to check out the gin masterclass and share our experience plus some handy tips.
First, you’ll want to line the belly with some good food before you head to the masterclass. We started out by having a big breakfast at Luigi’s Deli which helped us to a degree as we sampled our way through some gin sampling. We’d suggest also planning on spending some time locally after the class too – Rowland and Shelley put out a lovely cheese platter otherwise Pizzatecca is just down the road.
For the class, you’re placed along a long bench in the Settlers Spirit cellar door that overlooks their vineyards – which by the way are beautiful at this time of year – with a group of fellow gin enthusiasts and what looks like your year 10 science set up.
Rowland briefly introduces the history of gin and how gin is made. Interestingly, for a spirit to be called gin, it MUST contain juniper berry. This can be of any percentage but if it doesn’t contain at least 1% juniper, it’s vodka. Gin is also made one of two ways – by distilling grapes or grains. At Settlers Spirits they use grapes from their vineyard, Maximus Wines, which makes perfect sense. Rowland tells us that the grapes give the gin a far brighter, crisp flavour compared to grain-based gins.
On the bench in front of you are about 10-12 botanicals infused in straight alcohol. There are some really intriguing flavours lined up for example, native pepper, lemon myrtle and coriander/devil’s weed (depending on whatever side of the coriander debate you’re on). I’m on the latter.
We were going to eventually make a 200mm bottle to take home so we had three cups, measuring tools and a pen and paper so we could start making by making small test gin blends using the juniper and botanicals any way we wanted before we bottled our favourite mix. We found somethings combos that we thought might have worked together but in fact didn’t… at all. So we adjusted measurements down to the millimetre and/or swapped botanicals until we were satisfied.
Every change you make, you taste which is why we recommend having something to eat beforehand. Although we like to think ourselves gin aficionados, the straight gin blends were like a punch to the mouth. Of course, adding tonic changes the flavour and makes it way more palatable. Which Rowland acknowledges – no one (in their right mind) drinks gin straight. It’s all about the G&T.
Rowland and his wife Shelley are walking around during the class asking us how we felt about our mixes and pointing out warm notes such as star anise and cardamon that perfect for winter versus fresher notes such as lemon and cucumber. He highlights the difference between lemon and lemon myrtle and explains why the orange botanical was the only cloudy spirit (make sure you ask Rowland why this happens, it’s simple but fascinating).
It seems like the sort of class where the more the merrier, so be sure to round up your gin loving mates and get on it.
This is all for only $60 (which is well below what you’d pay for a boutique gin at the bottle shop). So basically it’s a steal, and we wanted you to know, because us gin folks, we need to stick together.
To book please call 8323 8777. Settlers Spirits is located at 197 Foggo Rd, McLaren Vale, South Australia.
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