Australia: Black Truffle Gin launched

Stone Pine Distillery is launching the second of its seasonal releases, a black truffle gin, at the Australian Drinks Festival. While some European distillers have produced truffle gins, Stone Pine believes this is a first for Australia and the gin also celebrates local ingredients.

The gin is available through Nip of Courage and the company’s sales and marketing director Kathleen Davies, told TheShout that the truffles have been sourced locally from three Truffle Farms in the Central Tablelands of NSW within a 50km radius of Stone Pine Distillery.

“Ian Glen, the founder to Stone Pine, had to do a lot of experimenting to work with the flavours to make sure the truffle flavour came through and also the juniper,” Davies said. “So it took a lot of time to balance to flavours out and he was just looking to produce something a little bit different.

“It’s a very small release and it is quite expensive, but the added price on it is from the truffles.”

The gin retails for $135 a bottle and to complement the truffle, the gin also contains botanicals such as black pepper, flaked salt, juniper berries, coriander seed and orris root.

Davies added: “Ian went on the truffle hunts to get the truffles as well and he has tried to use as many local ingredients that he could source that were grown in Australia. The only thing that is not Australian is the juniper which is very difficult to get here.”

This is Stone Pine’s second seasonal release, following on from the summer Orange Blossom release, which proved highly popular and was actually picked up by Noma during its summer pop-up in Sydney.