Small Business: From childcare to gin – what led to the creation of award-winning distillery Clarity Distilling Company

We’re one of a few companies around the world that distil our botanicals individually to ensure you get the best flavour profile out of every single one.

What inspired you to start the business?

George: So I owned a company in Rotorua that provided childcare, and Stephanie was the manager of that business. I think when you meet people you can quickly work out if they’re on the same wavelength in terms of values and ethics, and Stephanie had that.

I had been distilling at home and doing my own thing, and I was always keen to do gin commercially. I tapped Stephanie on the shoulder and said let’s give this a go.

Stephanie: For me as well, I am extremely creative by nature. My childcare role was extremely creative, creating programmes and activities for them to constantly experience. For me that directly translates into the gin because it’s so creative with your botanical expressions. Then just being part of designing the whole look and feel of the brand, for me it’s been really good.

How do you come up with new recipes?

Stephanie: George is constantly watching YouTube, reading and looking to find ways we can continually improve to get the best flavour out of our botanicals. We obviously have a base of what botanicals we enjoy the flavours of the most, but we are always experimenting with weird and wonderful different botanicals to see what flavours we can create.

We’ve had a few fails with flavours, just trying to distil different things. We tried a mushroom to get a real earthy flavour, but that was just foul. Trust me when I say you don’t want to drink mushrooms. Our last gin that we launched, called Sundrop, took over a year to develop. It can be a really long process.

Your gin has won several awards already, has that surprised you?

Stephanie: It’s phenomenal, it’s really genuinely unbelievable. George and I do 100% of the recipe development, so we put a lot of trust in our own palates. It’s a lot of doing what we think is going to taste good and what we think is going to be received well, and only when we’re actually finished with our recipe do we even let our families try it.

George: There’s a sense of pride I think knowing that every single bottle of gin that’s tasted anywhere has touched both our hands. We both do everything in the distillery, whether it’s the filling, labelling, corking or stocking, we do it all. We think that’s important because it means we know each bottle is made to the same standard, so when we enter competitions, it doesn’t matter what batch we send in.

What is the plan for the next few years?

George: We 100% want to be overseas, it’s been a real driving force. We need to export, and we know we have to. Gin is seasonal, so it’s an extremely strong product through your summer months, and then as soon as we hit winter you’ve got your restaurants and your bars that continue to serve products at a slower rate.

If you can get exported to a northern hemisphere country, you just ride those seasons. We are in talks at the moment and we’ve had a few good inquiries from London, so we’re busy talking to them at the moment and hopefully within the next few months we can say we’ve got another market added to our distribution.

What would be your advice for a budding entrepreneur wanting to start a business?

George: I think if you’ve got a passion and if you’re brave enough, just give it a crack. I think there are too many naysayers out there with so many different personalities and opinions. Try to mitigate your risk as much as you can, but give it a go and don’t take everybody’s advice.

Stephanie: I think you’ve got to obviously do your research. Make sure you’ve got a plan and have an idea and direction that you want to go in. You will always miss every opportunity you don’t take, but you never know what might happen if you do take the chance.

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.