CARDRONA DISTILLERY

The family-owned artisan Cardrona Single Malt Distillery sits high in the Cardrona Valley between Wanaka and Queenstown. The driving force behind the enterprise is Desiree Whitaker: 'Our spirits are made from scratch by traditional handcrafted methods, using only three ingredients: malted Scottish two-row barley, pure alpine water and yeast. The whisky distillation is conducted in a large, hand-beaten copper pot crafted by renowned Scottish whisky family, the Forsyths. Following the various stages of production and distillation, the whisky will be aged in oak casks for ten years.' While you're waiting, we thought you might care to sample their other very fine spirits. The Reid Single Malt Vodka is produced in the pot still using the same ingredients and process - as un-aged single malt whisky - and then distilled in two German column stills to further purify it into a uniquely rich, full-bodied vodka with intriguing malty biscuit and tropical fruit characters. This same product is used as the base to make their amazing Rose Rabbit orange liqueur. Infused with New Zealand oranges, it's a great triple sec alternative. So not a vodka then, but what the hell, it’s damned tasty.

Desiree Whitaker

It was managing a bar in in London’s Chelsea district that kickstarted Desiree’s love of whisky. “It was the shapes of the bottles and the colour of the liquid that first attracted me,” she says. “I’d come from a home that was as teetotal as you could get but Mum visited me [in England] for my birthday and we travelled to Scotland – we went to the Edradour Distillery and I was hooked.”

Returning home to New Zealand, she graduated with a business degree, started share-milking and eventually bought her own farm. Desiree was awarded a Nuffield Scholarship to travel the world for six months researching opportunities for New Zealand farming. When she returned home, she found herself searching for a new adventure. “I did lots and lots of brainstorming. I made lists of hundreds of different ideas, researched them, and scrapped them all, and started over. I ended up looking into spirit alcohol.

That was when Desiree decided to bring the craft back into distilling and to make something unique in her homeland. After years of research, she sold the farm, moved to Central Otago and began a hunt for the perfect piece of land to build her distillery dream. A series of serendipitous tip-offs saw her lunching in the Cardrona Hotel –a two-minute drive from what has since become the site of her distillery.