Hepburn Distillery began with the idea of local and drawing from the mineral-rich soil, and abundant rainfall of Hepburn Shire. Surrounded by forest in cold, spud country, the owners of Hepburn Distillery were inspired to make a product that grew locally, was free of chemicals and low in food miles. They source as many of the raw materials locally, organically and seasonally and grow some of the botanicals for the gin.

Meet Basil and Jane, owners of Hepburn Distillery. They LOVE trees. They love hanging out with trees, they love planting trees and they love how important trees are to life on this planet. Every month, Basil and Jane purchase 100 trees for us to plant on their behalf.

Campaspe Valley | 500 trees | 2023

The trees were planted at Edgecombe in the Campaspe Shire, Taungurung Country (Northern VIC) by Campaspe Valley Landcare Group. The group comprises of members who have rural properties in a part of the state that’s been extensively & intensively cleared since the 1840s. Members are aiming to re-establish some tree cover using locally indigenous species. They are also work on revegetating public lands, such as roadsides that are currently devoid of, or have very few, trees.

Some of the species planted included; Silver Wattles, Lightwoods, Black Wattles, Blackwoods, Bulokes, Dropping Sheokes, River Bottlebrushes, River Red Gums, Yellow Gums, Grey Boxes, Messmates, Snow Gums, Red Boxes and Manna Gums.

Thanks to the donors it would be a far more difficult job without your kind help, in fact very restrictive to proceed at all without your help.

Graham Connell | Member | Campaspe Valley Landcare Group

Gardening Australia recently featured this group in a segment on the importance of biolinks between properties, reserves and waterways. In this segment (8 min), Graham speaks to Millie Ross from the ABC show.

Ironbark Gully | 500 trees | 2022

The Ironbark Gully Friends Landcare (IGFL) group initiated their project at the Garden Gully Recreational Reserve. This project is aiming to:

• Slow and treat stormwater from a nearby pipe and create a series of ponds.
• Create habitat and food for frogs, birds, lizards and insects by vegetating frog ponds, planting pollinating shrubs and trees, planting native grasses, and placing mulch, logs and rocks.
• Connect the local community to nature by creating a high-quality example of landscaped garden that celebrates native plants.

IGFL were very appreciative of the support they received from Hepburn Distillery.

Cape Clear | 300 trees | 2022

I would like to extend my pure gratitude to the generous people that made it possible to allow me to begin to reintroduce native habitat back to the land that my partner and I are caretakers for. Being able to attract new life in the form of bees and birds, thanks to the donated saplings is extremely rewarding.

Elen Rees | Director | Wild at Heart Therapy

We love your commitment to sustainability. Was this always an important part of the business for you? What drives your passion for sustainability?

We’ve been involved with sustainability our whole lives. Jane has worked as a social ecologist for almost 30 years beginning at Greenpeace in the early 1990s. We’re passionate about creating a life that is aligned to our values and that is sustainable both personally and professionally. Business and ecology do not have to be at odds with each other. Business can be a force for good in the world and can be used to support regenerative agriculture, forestry and investment in renewable energy and sustainable packaging. We’re passionate about being the change we want to see in the world. We believe people and the planet can both thrive when we make holistic decisions.

Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, from the packaging we use through to where we source our base products. Local is always the first decision, along with organic, chemical free and seasonal. We compost all our organic waste or feed it to local pigs. We use renewable energy to power our stills and recycle water for cooling. We only use rainwater in our products and unlike most distilleries, we ferment and distill all our base product onsite, rather than importing it in. We choose to sell locally rather than transport stock across the state or the country and even when we post items we make sure the postage kilometres are offset.

What is it about planting trees that appeals as part of reducing your carbon footprint?

We LOVE trees. We love hanging out with trees, we love planting trees and we love how important trees are to life on this planet. Not only are they the lungs of the world but provide incredibly important habitat and other ecosystem services. Trees are life and we need lots more of them! We feel that planting trees is one small way we can give back to the planet, to help replenish the systems that sustain us.

Why gin and vodka? Has spirit-making been in the family, or was it a passion discovered later in life? Hepburn Shire is a beautiful part of the world. How do your products reflect the area in which they are created in?

Basil’s experiments with making vodka began many years ago as an exchange student living in Sweden, where his girlfriend used to make potato vodka on the windowsill of her apartment. Over the years he has experimented with many different types of fermenting – making explosive elderflower champagne and delicious blackberry wine for example. When he decided he was ready to make a change from teaching, fermenting and distilling seemed like a good path to explore. He quickly discovered that he really loved the alchemical process of transforming something as simple as a humble spud into a beautiful, full-flavour, smooth spirit and that he has a real talent for fermenting and distilling.

The vodka we make was an obvious choice because we live in spud country, with rich red volcanic soil. We’re lucky enough to have 5th generation organic farmers working 5 minutes up the road from us. Wombat Forest Organics grow a special variety of potato for us and also supply us with organic strawberries for our Bullarto Strawberry Gin. The gins we make are inspired by our local, seasonal produce and the creative people of the region. We’ve collaborated with our neighbour Annie Smithers, for example, to create a signature gin for her restaurant.This gin has all organic ingredients including organic local juniper sourced from the Garden of St. Erth in Blackwood.  Another neighbour had a crop of sloe berries – so we’ve made a batch of sloe gin from these. Our Organic Potato Saffron Vodka is a collaboration with Trentham Fields Saffron farm.

So for us, creating vodka and gin is all about collaboration, inspiration and making the most of the abundance on our doorstep. Local is important to us because we want as few carbon kilometres as possible and because we love collaborating with local growers, encouraging investment in small local businesses to build a more resilient and abundant community.

Thank you Hepburn Distillery for your passion for the environment, gin skills and the understanding of what is important.