Lighthouse Gin – Craft Gin Lighthouse Gin - Craft Gin

Head distiller at Lighthouse Gin, Rachel Hall waves our way and welcomes us into the distillery where all the gin magic happens. Rachel does everything (really, everything) by herself inside the distillery, handling everything from mixture making to bottling gin and carefully applying labels to each and every bottle.

As nature is close no matter where you are in New Zealand, going out and foresting is for many people a part of their everyday lives. Just a short drive from the distillery lies Rachel’s favorite spot for picking botanicals. As we go for a small walk around the area, Rachel picks some wild fennel, manuka, and kawakawa and puts them in her basket.

Interview “Finding perfection in simplicity”

Rachel waves at us from afar, smiling.
“Welcome, come along inside!” she shouts over the wind. Although the sun is out, the wind is gusting, as one would expect of Wellington weather. The white wisteria in front of the house swoons and glistens as streams of sun-shine shine through.

Born in Greytown, just a short drive from Martinborough where Lighthouse Gin is located today, Rachel’s connection with the gin distillery was made a long time ago, when she was a teenager working part-time at the driver’s range of a local apple orchard. After working some time in Australia, she met her husband when visiting home, and had two lovely kids.

“When my youngest son Josef started going to school, I felt that I wanted to do something for myself,” she says. She asked Andrew, the owner of the apple orchard, if they had any available jobs at the apple juice factory and before she knew it, she was working as a receptionist and doing sales for them. Back then they hadn’t started making gin officially yet.

“It was just Neil, the original distiller, in the back shed making some gin,” she says with a smile. As she started working more with Neil, gin started to pique her interest. Eventually, she left work in sales and went over to work solely on the gin. Knowing that someday he would want to retire completely, Neil took Rachel under his wing and started teaching her the unique craft of distilling gin.

In 2014, the owners sold the distillery to Foley Winery. Neil wanted Rachel to become the next head distiller and the new owners agreed. After strenuous training and numerous blind tastings, Rachel knew exactly what the gin should taste like and could manage everything from distilling to labeling by herself.

Rachel shows us around the distillery. Inside, the red wooden barn reveals a meticulously clean and bright space with high ceilings and cement flooring. Large, tall silver tanks occupy most of the space, leaving some room for the gin bottling dispenser as well as the manual labeler. As Rachel bottles some freshly distilled gin there is an air of belonging around her. Like fish to the sea, or jam to toast, Rachel was destined to be a gin distiller. Through warm summers and cold winters, Rachel does everything all on her own, while also being a mother and a wife. Quite an extraordinary feat.

“It took five years to develop the recipe for the gin. Getting the right water, the perfect ratio of botanicals down. Even though the process is quite simple, it must be done correctly, tasting along the way to ensure the best quality. There are no shortcuts.”

Rachel Hall became New Zealand’s first female head gin distiller when she took over Lighthouse Gin in Martinborough, Wellington in 2014. Using neutral spirits, local high-quality spring water in combination with carefully selected botanicals such as punchy juniper berries, local New Zealand coriander seeds, cinnamon, almonds, cassia bark, orris root, and the zest of local Yen Ben lemons and oranges, Lighthouse Gin makes one of the best gins in the country.
lighthousegin.co.nz