I’M THE GIN GENIE
MUM-OF-TWO RACHEL HALL (40) MAKES CRAFT GIN FOR A BOUTIQUE DISTILLERY ON A VINEYARD IN MARTINBOROUGH
Why her glass is always half full
My family moved from Australia to the Wairarapa in 1988. My dad’s an Australian and my mum’s a Kiwi who wanted to come home. They didn’t have jobs or a house, but they did have five kids – so they ended up buying the old Greytown Hotel, which was perfect.
People sometimes screw up their noses when I mention I grew up in a pub, but we had a great childhood. All the kids helped with breakfast, dinner and the cleaning, and when we were old enough, we were allowed to work in the bar.
I never knew what I wanted to do in life. Even when I turned 30, I still thought, ‘I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up!’
In my sixth-form year, I got a holiday job at a local golf driving range on Andrew and Sue Wright’s apple orchard, and my first job after school was in a sewing factory. I worked there for six months and thought, ‘There’s more to life than this!’ I went on to spend three years on Hamilton Island, Queensland, as a housekeeper, then in the Ansett Golden Wing lounge at the airport.
I was back home on holiday when I met my husband Jason. Mum and my sisters set us up. They said, ‘We’ve got the perfect man for you.’ I thought, ‘Why not? I can stay for six months and give it a go and if it doesn’t work out,
I’ll go back to
Australia.’ Of course, we got married – and we’ve now been together for 20 years.
We’ve got two kids together, Elizabeth (15) and Joseph (13). When Joseph started school, I remember thinking that if I had to stay home and do the housework one more day, I’d go nuts, so I approached Andrew about working for him again.
By this stage, they were making apple juice, so I did the sales and marketing for that. Andrew and a few of his mates had been thinking about making brandy as well – this was after a few beers, of course – but decided at their age (they were nearing retirement), they might not get to see a lot of the finished product. One of the friends, Neil Catherall, piped up about quite liking gin and Lighthouse Gin was born.
They had the still in the back of the packing shed and I’d see Neil every now and then and say ‘G’day’. I was fascinated by the process and offered to help out with the bottling. Neil was a bit of a tough nut. The gin was his baby and he was very reluctant to even let me do that, but eventually he must have decided I had a good work ethic and we became a team.
Up until 2014, when Neil retired and Lighthouse was sold to Foley Family Wines (owned by American billionaire Bill Foley), I was doing everything but the distilling – bottling, labelling, neck seals, handwriting the batch numbers, you name it. I had started looking for another job but they asked me to stay on and do the distilling. I still smile when I think about it!
The still is at Martinborough Vineyard now, but the recipe is still Neil’s. It’s a London dry style, so along with juniper berries, we use locally grown coriander seeds, cassia bark, licorice root, cinnamon, almonds, orris root and fresh hand-zested Yen Ben lemons, and oranges.
When we started out, we were using rainwater as a base for the spirit, but we now use water from a natural spring at Wharekauau, which the Foleys also own. It’s pure, soft water with no contaminants that makes for incredible gin.
I set the still before I go home and leave the botanicals in to macerate overnight, then in the morning, I’ll come in and turn it on. It distils until about lunchtime. If I’m not busy, I’ll reset it later to do the second distillation, but if I’ve got a lot to make – such as when I had to pump out 17,500 bottles for the UK Craft Gin Club – then I’ll do both distillations in one day.
When it’s finished, the gin is 70-72% proof, but I cut it [add water] to 42%. I taste it all the way through the process. You have to swallow gin – it’s not like wine where you swish it around and spit it out. But it’s only ever a very small amount.
There’s nothing I dislike about my job. I can’t actually see myself ever doing anything else now. Getting messages from people on the other side of the world saying they love my gin is super-rewarding.”