Skip to content
Southern Wild Distillery
Southern Wild is a new distillery that produces premium gins created around the pure water, fresh ingredients and passionate growers of Tasmania.
Isolated from the rest of the world, north-west Tasmania is naturally blessed. Full of towns named Paradise, Promised Land, Nowhere Else and Whisky Creek, everything points to the perfect place to make good liquor. Surrounded by clean air, the purest water runs from the snowmelt from Cradle Mountain via rivers such as Dasher and Fisher, through the rich soils of undulating hills, crossing the narrow coastal plain and into Bass Strait. This place is home to Southern Wild Distillery.
An experienced food scientist by trade, George Burgess has years of technical expertise. Working for the food and beverage industry, his job was to eliminate the variations of different seasons and ingredients. Now he’s rebelling, creating delicious fresh flavours by highlighting the different ingredients he finds at his doorstep, embracing the different seasons they are harvested in. While his background is the food industry, it’s the perfume industry that influences him most. He loves to play with multiple layers of aromas and flavours that evolve and add a sense of mystery. A proud Devonport local, he’s been tinkering with spirits for over a decade. Now he has the formula just right. George believes that every sip should give you a sense of time and place; that you should almost smell and taste the season and the landscape. It’s something only a distiller that fully grasps the process, the ingredients and Tasmania can achieve.
The process
Dasher+Fisher gin is made in a unique copper still, hand-made in Tasmania by local craftsmen Stillsmiths. It was specifically designed by our own George Burgess to maximise the vapour process and produce the smoothest possible spirit. His design allows the botanicals to be placed in three different zones. Combined with a hand-crafted dimple-plated heating jacket and super-efficient condenser, the process is slower and gentler, best showcasing the botanicals purest flavours.
Tasmania is full of wonderful small growers who produce ingredients that burst with pure flavour. We support over a dozen family-run businesses because they have the world’s best produce, and they’re all really nice people.
Cellar Door