TasWeekend: Gin-making weekend is just the tonic at Thousand Lakes Wilderness Lodge

A DISTILLING workshop in the snow-clad Central Highlands yields top drops and plenty of know-how.

Thousand Lakes Wilderness Lodge in the Central Highlands recently hosted its first gin-making workshop with William McHenry Distillers.

WHAT I don’t know about making gin is probably not worth knowing. I’m joking, but I do know a lot more about the dark art of distilling than I did before attending a weekend workshop with Bill McHenry in the snowy Central Highlands.

Before, I didn’t know what gin was – beyond being one of my favourite drinks. Now I can make it two ways. I left Thousand Lakes Wilderness Lodge near Liawenee on Sunday with bottles of my own creations, The Mercurian, a compound gin, and The TasWeekender, a London Dry.

Bill has been making gin for a few years, as the whisky maker expands his business beyond that slow, barrel-aged, grain-based product. He is here with chief distiller Bill Ravenscroft, aka “Bill2”, to share some trade secrets.

The men were mates at Blackwood High School in the Adelaide Hills before reconnecting in Tassie to become “the hilltop hoods of distilling”.

Distillers Bill Ravenscroft, left, and Bill McHenry, both of McHenry Distillers, show off some of their top drops at the snowy weekend retreat. Picture: AMANDA DUCKER

Bill used to work in the pharmaceutical industry and Bill2 was a wool classer.

Sharing the floor, they rev each other up, and their irreverence goes down well with the sloe gin cocktail with Josef Chromy sparkling and sugar cube we are served before noon.

For some of the 10 participants, who stayed up later than me after our welcoming long-table dinner and gin-tasting session, it’s a hair-of-the-dog drop.

We spend Saturday morning making a compound or blended gin, adding to our neutral sugarcane spirit and juniper base from an array of single-flavour distillations lined up in test tubes, which we smell and taste to isolate our faves.

Single-flavour distillations in test tubes ready for blending to make a compound gin. Picture: AMANDA DUCKER

In true gin, the dominant flavour is juniper and the alcohol content is at least 37 per cent. Then it’s a matter of adding other botanicals.

The Bills strongly encourage us to respond to our palates rather than following recipes. I am reminded of a perfume-making workshop I did many years ago.

The author’s king of gins, a London Dry christened The TasWeekender, is prepared in a glass pot that sits on a heated element. The black orbs are the dried juniper berries that give gin its definitive glamour. Picture: AMANDA DUCKER

I am keen to achieve an Old Tom vibe with my compound gin, having favoured it at last night’s tasting. An 18th-century recipe, it is having a resurgence as the formula is revisited by craft distillers. I don’t quite achieve a likeness, but I really like my concoction, with its native botanical notes of pepperberry leaf and anise myrtle along with coriander, cardamom and cassia bark (rather like cinnamon).

In the afternoon, we make a London Dry, the king of gins. For this process, we each use a small tabletop distiller. The botanicals table is laid out with nearly 40 seeds, dried roots, powders, lime and lemon skin slivers and more. Again, we sniff and ponder before taking the plunge. Everything goes into the glass pot sitting on the heated element. After the mixture starts to vaporise, the distillation drips into a beaker.

Within about 15 minutes, I have made my first London Dry, a name that denotes this method as well as its place of origin. Again, I’ve used coriander, which many gins do, cassia bark and cardamom, along with licorice and orris roots, ginger powder, angelica seeds and lemon and lime peel. It’s a winner.

The author’s one-of-a-kind compound gin, The Mercurial, and London Dry. Picture AMANDA DUCKER

By about 5pm, we’re all bottled and looking forward to another long-table dinner.

As we wind up, rookie gin maker Bob, from the NSW Central Coast, tells Bill he can’t remember when he last had such an interesting weekend.

I have found it fascinating and fun, too. And drinking the stuff has a meaningful new dimension.

THOUSAND LAKES WILDERNESS LODGE

This former Antarctic training facility and fishing lodge known as Bernacchi Lodge was built on the shores of Lake Augusta at Liawenee in the 1970s.

It reopened last year as Thousand Lakes Wilderness Lodge after a major refurbishment on the same footprint by new owners including former racing-car champ Marcos Ambrose.

Chalet-esque in the snow with its vaulted ceilings and wood heaters, it offers a classic lodge experience high in the Western Lakes region of the Central Plateau in the World Heritage Area. The sweeping plateau feels almost primordial. Our group, comprising mostly big-city folk, responds rapturously to the alpine vastness of the highlands.

Snow is common over winter at Thousand Lakes Lodge on Tasmania's Central Highlands. Picture: AMANDA DUCKER

The lodge has nine guest rooms. There is an extensive self-serve bar (just sign for what you drink) and a choice of two expansive and super-comfortable lounge areas.

Live-in managers Tim and Katie produced terrific cooked lunches and three-course dinners for us both evenings.

The lodge is an ideal base for hikers, fly-fishers, visitors to the Great Lakes to the east or Walls of Jerusalem to the west.

You may well get to build a snowman, too, and, of course, sip Tassie gin by the fire.

The next McHenry gin workshop will be held at the lodge on October 27-28.

The author was a guest of Thousand Lakes Wilderness Lodge