About the Keepers

About the keepers

Greytown Fine Distillates is the brainchild of Neil Catherall, the company’s distiller and master craftsman, and Andrew Wright, a local businessman. Their vision and drive combine with the energy and enthusiasm of distiller James Graham to form the core team responsible for bringing Lighthouse™ Gin to you.

Gin Facts

Lighthouse™ Gin is, first and foremost, a New Zealand gin. 

Whilst the history of gin goes back to at least the mid-fifteenth century in Holland, its true antecedents are much earlier, founded in those first experiments in the ancient and mysterious art of distilling in the presence of herbs and spices. 

The predominant flavour and aroma of a modern distilled dry gin will always come from juniper and coriander, but the great challenge for the distiller is to select and blend a variety of additional, exotic botanicals to impart a uniquely satisfying, balanced character to the gin.

Lighthouse Gin

For Lighthouse™ Gin Neil took pleasure in researching and experimenting with many such botanicals, and, among those finally selected, after several years of trial, are the dried leaves from the unique New Zealand botanicals kawa kawa, together with the fresh zest of New Zealand-grown navel oranges and Yen Ben lemons, the intense-flavoured descendant of the famous Lisbon lemon.  These components lend herbal and citrus notes to the gin, distinguishing it from its English and American counterparts.

Lighthouse™ Gin is made by hand in the classic ‘distilled dry gin’ tradition, utilising nine botanicals in their natural state.  Neil creates the gin in a 200-litre copper still, which he designed himself, and had specially built by local craftsmen at 2K Design in Masterton.

The final formula of Lighthouse™ Gin must remain a secret, but the distillers believe they have achieved a distinctive and complex gin that is smooth and fresh and combines herbal, citrus, and spicy characteristics, with a subtle delicacy.  The double distillation process is costly and time-consuming but results in a softer, more refined, and more approachable spirit, with each batch having its own subtle signature.

To answer the question – does this gin reach new heights?  Well, from all reports coming back from the experts and connoisseurs, it does.  And in the great tradition of kiwi quality and reputation, it is a worthy newcomer.

Lighthouse™ Gin is hand crafted, hand bottled, hand labelled, and the heart cut of a small number of distillations is double distilled and combined into a batch.

When did it start

Greytown Fine Distillates was established in 2005 and is dedicated to creating small batches of traditionally distilled spirits.

What about the Lighthouse

The Lighthouse brand was inspired by the spectacular Cape Palliser Lighthouse at the southernmost tip of the Wairarapa and the southernmost tip of the North Island of New Zealand. 

On a clear day, looking south-west you can occasionally glimpse the Seaward Kaikoura mountains of the South Island but looking to the south-east from Cape Palliser you can see only the wild, aquamarine-blue ocean stretching all the way to Antarctica – a worthy place for a great cast-iron lighthouse, which was imported from Birmingham in 1896-7 and erected in sections, one on top of the other, hauled up by cast-iron pulleys to the top of a seemingly inaccessible cliff. 

There was no road until 1941 and in the preceding years the lighthouse families would have lived very isolated existences.

 The Cape Palliser Lighthouse is an unforgettable place, inhabited by a growing population of fur seals and the intrepid fishermen of Ngawi village, their fishing boats hauled up the shingle banks, with their precious catches of crayfish.