If you are looking for an alternative to a wine tour in the Swan Valley, I highly recommend visiting
Old Young's Hand Crafted Spirits.
They are an award-winning gin and vodka distillery and really is worth an hour or two of your time, even if you are not a massive gin or vodka fan.
We have passed this place copious amounts of time on the West Swan Road and never felt the need to pull into the car park but this particular Sunday afternoon, we decided to and we are so glad that we did.
Gin and fancy mixers are so in-vogue currently and it was great to learn a bit more about the distilling process and the pure ingredients that go into making a premium grade spirit.
It costs just $5 for the tastings and you get to try a mix of six gins and vodkas, totalling one full measure (for those that will be driving home).
Adam took us on our tasting journey. He was fantastic and totally captivated his audience.
We learnt the importance of using quality ingredients and how the owner managed to persuade growers in Italy to supply him with the world's best top grade Tuscan Junipers (no mean feat), to enable them to use as a base botanical to produce all their gins. However, the Tuscan Juniper is the only botanical they use in their Common Gin, winner of the 2018 Australian Distilled Spirits Awards, which is just amazing; a gin for purists.
You are given the opportunity to smell the raw botanicals they use in the distilling process and then you get to try the end result; firstly straight up/neat and then with a mixer if you prefer.
You get to smell the raw botanticals
Adam explained the sacrilege of using cheap mixers and only using premium mixers with their products and after tasting them, I totally agree. You wouldn't pay good money at a gourmet restaurant and pour ketchup all over the exquisite food, would you?
Whatever you use should bring out the spirit a bit more and give it a bit more life.
The tasting lasted around an hour and it was brilliant; Adam was brilliant. He made it fun and interesting with some humour thrown in and clearly has a passion for the products.
Each one we tried we liked and it was tricky keeping a tally of which one we liked the best, as they were all lush.
The vodkas were infused with flavours that were literally award-winning and I think my favourite was the Pavlova (who would have thought it was 40% ABV!)
I loved all the flavour-filled gins but feel the Common Gin pipped the others at the post for my taste.
Become part of the worldwide trend and try sampling these palate-pleasing spirits, made in the Swan Valley.
Bottles are available to buy onsite and selected bottles are available to buy at some bottle shops. There are numerous drinking and eating establishments that stock Old Young's too and you can find the list of those by clicking
here.
