Goa-based Third Eye Distillery’s new gins involved ‘Zoom distilling’ with Australian Four Pillars

A collaboration between Third Eye Distillery and Four Pillars brings together the flavours of India and Australia, and introduces two limited-edition gins

Now, you can taste lemon myrtle on a Goan beach, or a gin-and-tonic with cardamom twist on the Australian shore. The love of a good gin has created a cross-continental collaboration that has reaped two limited-edition spirits.

The founders of Goa-based Third Eye Distillery — Rahul Mehra, Sakshi Saigal and Vidur Gupta — met Australia’s Four Pillars Distillery team at the International Wine and Spirits Competition in London, when the former’s flagship gin, Stranger & Sons, scored an impressive 98/100. It was their second meeting, after an evening discussing gins at Bar Convent Berlin in 2019. Meanwhile, Cameron Mackenzie, Stuart Gregor and Matt Jones of the Yarra Valley distillery were at the ceremony to accept the trophy for the International Gin Distillery of the Year.  

What started as a meeting of minds, led to trading ingredients across the Indian Ocean through a global pandemic. The teams embraced virtual tastings and invented ‘Zoom’ distilling. The Third Eye trio shared botanicals rooted in India’s heritage with the Australians to distil Spice Trade, while the Four Pillars reciprocated with unique flavours from Down Under to create Trading Tides. “To put it simply, you can expect two unique gins that combine the best of Australia and India in a bottle, through the expertise of two diverse distillers,” says Saigal.

How does a distillery choose the best botanicals to reflect the terroir? “There were many emails sent, discussing Indian and Australian botanicals,” explains Mackenzie of Four Pillars. “Sakshi chose the Aussie lemon myrtle, river mint and anise myrtle, and we came to the decision of using Indian black and green cardamom, long pepper, teppal and fresh chilli. These spices created a vibrant, big and loud gin — just what we were after.”

After rounds of trial and error, the bouquet of botanicals that made the final cut were exchanged via ship between November 2020 and early 2021. “The gin at Four Pillars is spice forward, while Trading Tides is more citrus forward,” adds Saigal.

The two distilleries have produced 24,000 bottles each of Spice Trade and Trading Tides, for their domestic and global markets.

The botanicals in Spice Trade, distilled in Australia include a mix of native herbs, nuts and berries, along with the Indian additions such as anise and lemon myrtle, finger lime, black cardamom, cashew, cassia, coriander seeds, green cardamom, green schezwan ( tirphal), juniper, long pepper, macadamia nut, pepperberry, red chilli. While the botanical mix used in Goa, for Trading Tides Gin has their signature juniper berries, white pepper along with anise myrtle, lemon myrtle, rivermint, angelica and liquorice from Australia, with additions of Indian coriander, grapefruit peels, mangosteen, dried kokum and tamarind.