A word from Jo
When the team suggested mango as the feature ingredient for our Summer 24 Seasonal Gin, I had a moment! Memories of being the child of experimental vegetarian parents back in the 60βs, and a reliance on dried mango and papaya as the sweets alternative were not always joyful.
However, the sensual pleasure of discovering fresh juicy mangoes in my 20βs went a long way to restoring my love of tropical fruit. Pair this with a trip to Singapore in December β23 to visit our agents there and to speak with some of our key customers, and my enthusiasm for diving into this challenge knew no bounds!
One of the key things when using new botanical ingredients is to find out how to prepare them prior to distillation to best capture the flavour and emotion. Dried? Fresh? Whole? Pairings?
We had a number of 10am tastings of the experimental works, which took a period of weeks. Suffice it to say, mango isnβt easy!
A huge thank you to Spudz for keeping us supplied with the most flavourful NZ mangoes, and red chillis, root ginger and limes. Along with some pink peppercorns we finally captured that tropical experience of heat and fruit.
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Congratulations to our Winning Artist – Morgan Paige Taitoko
Residing in New Plymouth, New Zealand, Morgan Paige Taitoko effortlessly balances her roles as an artist and a graphic designer.
Morgan has been a painter since her early years, but she recently embarked on a stylistic transition, creating an entirely new body of work. This creative shift took shape when she returned to her roots in Taranaki.
Drawing inspiration from the aesthetic charm of 1980s and 1990s NZ architecture, her artistic style emerged from the innovative use of textured, retro glass panels.
Countless hours are dedicated to crafting conceptual foundations through the arrangement of objects and the utilisation of obscured glass. By capturing the refracted interplay of light within these manufactured materials through photography, organic shapes comes to life. These concepts are then skilfully painted in layers, onto canvas.
Each layer is a process of design intuition, experience.
