| 37 REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT Kiwi Spirit Distillery T T Hugh de Lacy Boutique appeal at every turn Kiwi Spirit Distillery was established in Golden Bsy 2015 to make whiskey, gin and liqueurs for the local community. Driving measurable growth with high-performance paid advertising and organic social media across Aotearoa & beyond. CO R N E R S T ON E PA R T N E R O F For e-commerce stores that want more orders 2024 Supreme & Medium Award Winner s 2025 Young Bus iness Leader - Al i ce Haz l et t Ne l son Tasman Chamber Of Commerce Bus i ness Awards keetrax.com info@keetrax.com +64 0 21 088 39058 The opportunity to acquire Weber Blue Agave Tequilana agave plants led a Golden Bay entrepreneur to launch a boutique distillery, Kiwi Spirit Distillery, producing gin, whiskey and liqueurs, onto a nationwide market that has proved highly receptive to them. Last December, the company gave its already-strong cellar door sales a huge boost by opening its Cocktail and Tapas Bar, with a menu prepared and delivered by a Michelintrained chef. The business is owned by sister-and-brother team Isabella and Jeremy Knight, who had joined their father Terry Knight in the venture once he’d got it under way in 2015. Kiwi Spirit Distillery was established by Terry in 2015 on a 6ha site 10 minutes from Takaka, to make whiskey, gin and liqueurs for the local community. Terry, who passed away in October 2024, had a prominent background in the hospitality industry, building and launching the wellknown Awaroa Lodge in Abel Tasman National Park. It was he who saw a future in distilling fine spirits. Then, when the opportunity arose to acquire agave plants, he launched into the complex process of meeting the regulatory requirements. “He had no trouble acquiring a licence for the distillery back in the day, but the subsequent effort over the last two years to open the cocktail bar went through a protracted succession of local authority hoops before we got the final clearance,” Isabella says. Isabella manages the company while Jeremy spends much of his time touring the South Island — and, increasingly, the North — directmarketing Kiwi Spirits Distillery’s products to wholesalers, restaurants and bars. The biggest-selling item is the company’s Greenstone gin. “Everybody’s drinking gin these days,” Isbella says. Other popular products include Boysenberry Liqueur, Waitui Whiskey and Lost Barrel Bourbon. In establishing the Cocktail and Tapas Bar, Isabella and Jeremy went hunting for a topline chef. “We’re very good on cocktails but food was not our forte.” They found him in Thomas Vernay, a Michelin-trained chef then looking for a venture to apply his highly sought-after skills to. “Thomas appreciated the quality and uniqueness of our whiskeys, gins and liqueurs, and he has developed an exquisite menu to complement them,” Isabella says. “At the same time as we started the Cocktail Bar, Thomas launched his own venture , the Cheeky Goat Food Cart in Takaka, making his business and ours complementary.” The key ingredient to the company’s range comes from the 6000-plant agave plot on the block’s hillier slopes — growing them at lower levels would expose them to frost. Agave is a cactus, native to the Americas, that’s widely used in foods and alcoholic beverages — its weber blue agave Tequilana strain is used in tequila — and Kiwi Spirit Distillery’s plot is the only one of its kind in this country. The distillery operates two stills, a 600-litre hybrid and a 300-litre pot still, run on diesel-powered boiler steam, and the business employs a staff usually of six that grows to 12 during the busy summer months.
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