When you live on Kangaroo Island that sort of thing happens. This fella watched our cellar door for several months before sneaking in the back door. All of our hand-crafted gins are influenced by the environment we live in on KI. So, when presented with this opportunity we had a think about how to share this in a bottle of gin.
Naturally we decided against distilling any animals or eucalyptus leaves and instead used some German initiative. There is a lovely story about a German gin called Monkey 47 which many people will know as a remarkable and complex gin made using 47 botanicals collected from the Black Forest.

We scratched our heads on this and started looking around our own Gin Garden which has been established over 13 years. Without too much trouble we were able to come up with 48 distinct botanicals grown on our block and then managed to combine these in our preferred method of single run distillation.

We called this limited release gin (900 bottles) Koala 48, like its German cousin it is in 500 ml bottles and is batched to 48% abv.

If this wasn’t exciting enough all this coincided with our first crop of common Juniper which we have included, making this Australia’s first estate grown juniper Gin. We now have 150 trees and 4 varieties of common juniper growing at the distillery. Every year our production of fresh Australian berries will continue to increase and allow us to incorporate these into our truly Australian gin range.

“Comparing the intense clean flavour in these freshly picked berries from our bushes, to the imported berries from Europe makes a huge difference to what we can create in our pot stills” Sarah Lark said. “We continue to be overwhelmed by the high level Australian and international awards we receive, and we love to see others enjoying what we are passionate about,”.
“We invite everyone who visits Kangaroo Island to come into our rustic-charmed cellar door and enjoy our range including the gins, along with vodkas and other liqueurs – all produced on-site,” Sarah added.

For more information on how to get yourself a taste of Koala 48, contact kispirits.com.au.