North of Eden gin distillery partners with Australian juniper grower at Bombala
A juniper plantation in the NSW Snowy Monaro region and a nearby gin distillery have joined forces in an Australian-first partnership. See their story.
A juniper plantation on a family farm in the NSW Snowy Monaro region is helping blaze a trail for a new emerging industry in Australia.
Juniper requires a unique combination of altitude, very cold winters, and hot and dry summers to thrive, which has to date rendered it unsuitable to grow commercially in Australia but as mixed farmers Lucy Vincent and Bruce Campbell discovered, Bombala’s climate ticks all the boxes.
In 2018, the couple planted 200 juniper trees. They now have 600 and are beginning to see the fruits of their labour, supplying their entire modest harvest this year to a small gin distillery 100km away at Stony Creek, near Bega, called North of Eden.
North of Eden will be the first distillery in Australia to transition its entire range of gin to locally grown juniper consistently and ongoing.
Both Lucy and Bruce, and North of Eden distillery owners Gavin Hughes and Karen Touchie, are passionate about sustainability, local produce and the future of their ‘paddock to glass’ partnership.
“Juniper is the single most important ingredient in gin,” Gavin said.
“To be able to source juniper from just up the road is absolutely brilliant from a sustainability perspective, but it also means we can now control the provenance of all the ingredients we use in our gins.
“We already grow a lot of our own botanicals at the distillery, but the thing we can’t grow here because of the climate is juniper. Now we’ve found a reliable source, our aim is to transition all our gins to locally grown juniper over the next 12 months.”
LEADING THE WAY
Junipers are a hardy, slow growing, evergreen conifer that produce ripe black berries.
The trees take 10 years to fully mature, reaching a height of four metres to become a hedge-like shrub.
Lucy, an agricultural scientist, said being leaders in the juniper growing field in Australia was difficult as there was limited resources to work with and much of it was trial and error.
Initially, Lucy and Bruce worked with a nursery where the juniper trees were struck before being transplanted on their Bombala property. The trees were planted on a sloping, sheltered block and in relation to the contours of the land to avoid excessive moisture at the roots.
Once established, the trees required little input of water or nutrients.
“Junipers are individually sexed wind pollinators, and we plant a ratio of 10 females to one male,” Lucy said.
“In spring, the male plants release their pollen, which sticks to the female flowers, pollination occurs and the berries grow from that. The berries need to fully ripen on the plant before harvesting.”
It is an 18 month growing phase. Pollination occurs every year in spring followed by harvesting 18 months later in February-March.
There are both immature (green) and mature (black) berries on the plant at the same time, making harvesting delicate. It is conducted by hand and is very labour intensive.
“You can’t go in with an olive picker and shake the tree because you’d lose two years of crop,” Lucy said.
Suitable mechanical harvesting options are currently being explored and are ultimately essential to making the process financially viable.
“They are extremely slow growing so you don’t get a good commercial harvest until the plants are nine or 10 years old,” Lucy said.
“You have to financially survive over that period of time between establishing and harvest. We have done our budgeting that it will be a financial loss for the first 10 years.”
PRICE POINT PAIN
Alongside the developing juniper business, Lucy and Bruce run 70 beef cattle on their 160 hectare property and 30 beehives producing about 800kg of honey each year for their artisan branded product, Australian High Country Honey.
“Our first ever harvest of junipers was 2.2kg and we were so proud,” Lucy said.
“That quantity was useless from a commercial point of view but last year we harvested 60kg and it will keep growing as the plants do.
“People often ask, what do we expect at full maturity? We don’t know but we would hope to get into the hundreds of kilos and possibly tonnes.”
The current price for imported juniper is $35/kg to $45/kg. Lucy charges $50/kg and while that currently won’t cover costs, she expects the price point to change as the local industry develops further.
Lucy works with about 15 other growers around Australia to share knowledge and data in the hope junipers will be considered by AgriFutures as an emerging industry, allowing further access to research and development plans and assistance.
“I absolutely think we can have an emerging juniper industry and then an industry here,” Lucy said.
“Consumers, as they become more aware of provenance, they will start calling for it, and as things like carbon neutrality start kicking in and having a commercial and financial impact, the cost comparison will start to even out.”
PASSING THE TEST
Once harvested, the fresh juniper is processed and dried at North of Eden Distillery before being used to make gin.
“We knew we needed to dehydrate the juniper before using it in the gin, so I came up with a design, built a couple of dehydrators, and slowly dried the juniper over a period of 6½ weeks,” Gavin said.
Laboratory testing at the University of Tasmania has shown that Lucy and Bruce’s juniper is on par with overseas samples in terms of oil content and composition.
“We absolutely love working with Lucy and Bruce and supporting a burgeoning local juniper industry but – best of all – their juniper actually tastes better than the stuff we were importing,” Gavin said.
Lucy hopes a commercial Australian juniper industry can be established.
“I look at the gin that has just been released and tasted it, and can say this is 100 per cent Australian made, it hasn’t had juniper grown in Macedonia, shipped to Britain and then sprayed for entry into Australia. I delivered the juniper to the distillery within 24 hours of harvesting,” Lucy said.
“I know where my steaks come from and where my eggs come from and I can now say the same for my gin.”
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