Four Pillars Gin, the Yarra Valley-based Australian distillery, is delighted to announce the appointment of Love Drinks as its exclusive UK-based importer and distributor.
Four Pillars has been distributed by Liberty Wines since May 2015 and co-founder Stuart Gregor thanked Liberty for its efforts in establishing a strong foothold for the brand in Great Britain and Ireland.
“We have had a terrific start to our sales life in the UK thanks to David Gleave and his team at Liberty and we want to thank them for all their efforts,” Gregor said.
“The time has come for us to work closely with a group like Love Drinks that is single-minded in its focus on great spirits, great relationships and growing high quality craft brands so we are delighted that we’ve been able to come to an agreement with Kirsty and her team.
“We love their portfolio and we’ve been keeping a close eye on the success of our Aussie mate Mr Black and we hope we can really turn up the volume on our sales over the next few years.”
Speaking about working with Four Pillars Gin and distributing throughout the UK, Kirsty Loveday, CEO and Founder of Love Drinks said;
“When starting Love Drinks almost ten years ago, I wanted to work with brands that were credible, innovative, award-winning and authentic – oh, and they had to taste good too! Four Pillars has all of these elements in spades.
As we all know, gin is an extremely crowded market, but at Love Drinks we are working with gins that have USPs that cut through the chatter of other gins; gins that have got a long-term plan and are investing in the UK market.
Four Pillars Gin complements the fantastic heritage and classic Britishness of Hayman’s Gins with their new world innovation and Modern Australian attitude.
For starters they have this uncanny knack of creating simply world class gins; their Rare Dry and Navy Strength have won more gold medals combined than the Aussies did in Rio and the distillery continues to deliver serious new gins with a twist – their Bloody Shiraz Gin, a typically Australian riff on Sloe and the new Spiced Negroni Gin both show what they can do when let loose…
Their whole ethos, from the gins they make, to their host of activities at their distillery in Yarra Valley just makes me smile; they make marmalade from the oranges that go into the botanical basket and feed their own litter of rare breed pigs on the spent botanicals for goodness sake! We know that there will be a real appetite for Four Pillars Gin and we’re looking forward to working with the team.”
Four Pillars burst onto the global gin scene in early 2014 when its Rare Dry Gin collected the first of its two Double Gold medals at the World Spirits Competition in San Francisco. The Rare Dry gin (41.8% ABV) is the cornerstone of its expanding portfolio of unique and at times idiosyncratic gins.
The Rare Dry is a modern New World style of gin – plenty of juniper supported by some indigenous Australian botanicals including lemon myrtle and Tasmanian pepper berries as well as the addition of whole fresh oranges in the Carl-still botanical basket.
Sitting alongside the Rare Dry gin in the Four Pillars portfolio will be the Navy Strength – an explosive gin coming in at 58.8% ABV with native finger limes, turmeric and ginger added in the botanical basket.
The Navy Strength has finished top of the World Gin Masters Navy Strength class in both 2015 and 2016 and has won multiple accolades in the UK and around the world.
Also becoming available in the UK for the first time will be the Four Pillars Spiced Negroni Gin (43.8% ABV) – a hugely spicy gin that has been augmented with the addition of African, Indonesian and Chinese peppers and spices to be a gin specifically made to stand up and be noticed in that king of drinks, the Negroni.
Four Pillars also has something of a phenomenon on its hands with an Aussie riff on a Sloe Gin; a sweet, purple elixir that they call Bloody Shiraz Gin. Steeped for eight weeks with freshly picked shiraz grapes, this near full strength gin (37.8% abv) is sweet and luscious and unlike anything on the world gin market. In Australia, the entire production sold out in two months and some small quantities are arriving in the UK this November, with most already pre-sold.
Four Pillars will be joining the Love Drinks portfolio from December 1, 2016.
DRINKS ENTHUSIAST 