![]() Cardrona’s first single malt hit the barrels in 2015 and won’t be completely ready until 2025. Some good things take time, and top-notch whisky is one of them. This attractive distillery, built from local schist and surrounded by landscaped grounds, has quickly established itself as number four. Wedged into the Crown Range between Queenstown and Wanaka, the teensy alpine hamlet of Cardrona was already home to three icons of New Zealand tourism: its ski field, the highly photogenic Cardrona Hotel and the infamous bra fence. Perhaps the slickest of them all is the Cardrona Distillery. The Reefton Distillery is just one of about a dozen boutique distilleries to have sprouted all over Aotearoa in recent years – many of them in equally unlikely places – making a gin itinerary now a plausible alternative to the well-established wine routes. It’s named after hunky George Fairweather Moonlight, a hugely successful prospector who also lent his name to Moonlight Creek – which, in turn, is the source of the ultra-pure water used in Reefton’s Moonlight Creek Whisky (due to hit the shelves in 2024). Then there’s George, the distillery’s traditional copper-pot still. “People are blown away by just how tiny she was and love to get a photo with her,” says Shane. A life-size cut-out of Biddy Goodwin perpetually puffs on her pipe in the tasting room. Either way, you’ll be regaled with tall tales of West Coast characters who have become part of the brand’s identity.įirstly, their signature gin, Little Biddy, is named after a four-feet-tall 19th-century gold prospector who, the story goes, did “men’s work”, wore trousers and lived with two men out of wedlock. Alternatively, you can book in for an hour-long tour and tasting. “They even used to distil gin here back in the day.” Today, visitors call in to sample the distillery’s gin, vodka and berry liqueurs before committing to a purchase. “It was the old Harold’s General Store,” says Shane, who runs the cellar door. Opened in late 2018, Reefton Distilling Co occupies an 1870s building just off the town’s main street. It’s one of those unspeakably quaint gold-rush towns that’s crammed full of heritage buildings – and while it’s got some good cafés and a surfeit of antique stores, it’s yet to be completely gentrified and packaged for tourists like, say, Arrowtown. If you haven’t been to Reefton, you really should go. “It just happened to be right when gin was starting to get sexy in London.” After all, the West Coast of the South Island is known for its abundance of pure water and its lush rainforests, which are full of natural botanicals. A distillery was one of several ideas mooted. Reefton-born Patsy Bass and her husband, Shane Thrower, were relocating from Christchurch, and Patsy was looking for a project that could create jobs and help to revitalise her hometown. Reefton Distilling Co was a happy coincidence. He gives us Blais' singular vision in supple English prose that is as transcendent and nuanced as the original French.Reefton-born Patsy Bass and her husband, Shane Thrower, were relocating from Christchurch, and Patsy was looking for a project that could create jobs and help to revitalise her hometown. ![]() Nigel Spencer is Marie-Claire Blais' long-time translator and a Governor General's Award winner for his work on this series of books. Blais' transcendent prose illuminates her characters with an extraordinary light. As the GG jury wrote, this breathtaking paroxysm of a novel turns any commonly held vision of the world upside down. But this time, the tone is different: Blais' writing has acquired a new, buoyant, electrifying rhythm - a rhythm some critics have described as the heartbeat of the world.Īs we follow a central character named Rebecca, the voice in the novel becomes the voice of the world inventing itself, and the future playing itself out. With this astounding fourth novel in her ongoing series of contemporary masterpieces ( These Festive Nights, Thunder and Light, Augustino and the Choir of Destruction, and Rebecca, Born in the Maelstrom), Marie-Claire Blais invites us again to enter a complex circle of unforgettable characters.
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