Our Story

We are Natalie and Ben of Taylor & Smith Distilling co. We have started a small independent Tasmanian Distillery in Pearl St, Moonah, a suburb of greater Hobart.

A little while ago we started making gin on the back deck of our place in Hobart. We had lots of lovely neighbours close by and we had this nice thing where we would take around little jam jars of gin and leave them on their doorstep. People would arrive home from work on a Friday night and there would be a jam jar of our latest gin experiment ready for G&T testing that night.  I think our neighbours really loved it and they’d turn up at our place with lemons, quinces and cumquats—to feed back into the gin. Two years later Taylor & Smith was born and now we are about to launch our first official spirit, our beautiful Tasmanian gin. 

What inspires us to make great spirits is sharing the essence of something—it’s finding the essence of a place or the essence of a wonderful botanical or a product someone's produced like a delicious honey. As a painter (Ben) and a writer (Natalie) we have learnt to distill the essence of things and now we take seeds, leaves, fruits and nuts and distill them into the very essence of place itself. 

Our Gin

Our gin is made with a uniquely Tasmanian base spirit which is a closely guarded secret. Our gin is distilled with 14 botanicals, many of them grown in our ,distillery garden. We source the best local, native and naturalised Tasmanian ingredients and we bring those together to make this complex and vibrant spirit. We get lemons and lovely blood oranges from our garden; honey from our own hives; hand-harvested Sweet-scented Kunzea—a shrub from the East Coast; some fantastic Kombu (Lessonia corrugata) seaweed that only grows in Tasmania, and gives it a lovely hint of salt. The scale of the season here is more compressed than it is on the mainland. So you get an intensity of flavour in the botanicals, you know, you get a stronger more oily essence. 

The air in Tasmania is just phenomenal and the water that we use in the distillery comes from Mount Field, a national park not too far from here, therefore,and it's just extraordinary. It is so clear and it's a lake of snowmelt and that feeds directly down to our distillery.

The spirit and the botanicals are distilled together in our 400-litre copper pot still, Essie, handmade by Ben. This gives the gin a really soft sensation when drinking and makes for a delicious G&T or cocktail. We work in small batches, only making 200 bottles at a time. This lets us do a very slow, cool distillation over a long period of time. We also direct fire our still in the old way, which gives us even more control over the spirit. 

Our design and packaging draw on these unique qualities, and reflect our heritage—the names Taylor and Smith—are very much based in ideas or processes that are handmade. You can take a lot of pride in things when you do them yourself. We don't have any automated systems. We just work on it all. It comes from the heart. 

This is something that we do outside of our work, and it's quite an ambitious venture for where we're at in the world. So there's the element of risk but there's also the element of just being creative and having a go. It’s a creative outlet for us, that celebrates the things we think are really important—but it’s also an opportunity for us to create a heritage for our kids.

Our friends and family and the people we work with have been incredibly supportive and endlessly giving. We’ve been working at Mona for quite a few years now, and that’s provided us with an environment that is conducive to this kind of development. David [Walsh] says himself that his advice to anyone is to highly risk a small amount of what you have—and I think that's what we've done. 

Now we need your help to launch and share our great product and are providing our friends, family and early birds the first opportunity to get your hands on some.

By pledging to this campaign you will help us fund our first release and in return you will get one of our very first bottles of gin. The first individually numbered batches of 200 will be released through the campaign and both batch one and two will be posted to you in time for Christmas. What you get from us is something that we've given great care to and it's special.

More Info

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If you have any distillery or distribution enquiries please get in touch:

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0437192152

Legal Stuff

Taylor and Smith Gin supports the responsible service of alcohol.  It is against the law to sell or supply alcohol to, or to obtain alcohol on behalf of, a person under the age of 18 years. All product shipped by us must, therefore, be received and signed for by a person over the age of 18 years. We are unable to post to PO Boxes. Due to licensing restrictions, we are unable to ship Taylor and Smith Gin outside of Australia.

Tasmanian Liquor Licence number: 83952

Tasmanian Liquor Licensee:  Ben Taylor

We’re an independent distillery; we produce everything ourselves, and because of that, we are able to put huge amounts of care into everything we do. We built the shed and made the still; we’ve spent a year testing and making, and now we’re ready to produce and release our first batch of Taylor and Smith gin. These things take time to do well, so to keep on producing, we need the help of people like you.   

A huge proportion of alcohol in Australia comes from overseas, and while it’s great to have that choice, it's important to harness the beautiful natural environment of this place and produce things we can be really proud of. By purchasing this gin, you are helping to grow the production of local Australian and Tasmanian spirits.  We want to foster a community of people who want to drink the best quality Australian booze; and in doing so, support local handmade, small business enterprise and contribute to the Australian economy, culture and way of life.