INK GIN
www.inkgin.com

Our Story

What does a fella do when he’s planted his crop to make the country’s first cane juice rum, but knows that the whole project will take years? He decides to make a gin of course.

Being a complete unknown in a world of international industrial scale gin producers, Paul Messenger knew he had to do something truly different in his little tin shed in Northern NSW. He set out on a journey of botanical exploration and discovered an exotic flowering legume growing wild in tropical Australia and South East Asia, popular in Thailand and used for centuries in herbal teas and traditional medicine. The flower was the butterfly pea, clitorea ternatea. In 2011 he bought 5 seeds for $5, planted them in the backyard and a few months later picked enough flowers to start trial infusions.

It was all a giant experiment and the eureka moment came when he discovered that butterfly pea infused gin changed colour from inky blue to pink when mixed with, of all things, tonic water. That flower would go on to become the hero botanical of the gin, and the name of course, was to be Ink Gin.

Being a disrupter is a risky business and he knew that the gin would have to be very, very good. It took three long years to develop the recipe, but by 2014 the final botanical blend was settled. It featured twelve other native, traditional & exotic botanicals that worked in perfect harmony with the flower.

They were about to turn the most traditional spirit upside down. The recipe was locked, the gin looked gorgeous, and tasted great with bold citrus notes of lemon myrtle and sweet orange, warm pepper berry and soft pea blossom hugging everything together. And to cap it all the stunning deep indigo blue mixed to blush pink with the addition of tonic. But the colour was an outrage. In a world of multi-national clear gin brands the family team bottled it up and in 2015 prepared to roll the dice with their first creation - a gin that looked and tasted very different to all the other gins on the market.

A year later and Ink Gin became Australia’s most loved craft gin. For the burgeoning worldwide craft gin industry the creative shackles were tossed asunder, and there followed an exuberant and high spirited explosion of unfettered coloured gin.

The rest, as they say, is history.