Distillery couple's delightful dance on shifting sands with a gin in hand
Dancing Sands is the brainchild of expats who now call Golden Bay home, and with summer knocking on the door, there's a new drop you won't want to miss, writes Neil Hodgson. Dancing Sands Distillery, a food and wine writer living in Golden Bay, has released a lychee gin called The Lazy Days Lychee Gin. The gin was created after the couple bought a still and some equipment and took over the lease of a building in Tākaka. The couple, who met when Sarah was working on a project in the US office, moved to New Zealand and were working in the IT sector in Wellington. They had talked about starting their own business and had been throwing ideas around for a year or two. They decided to focus on food and drink and found a still for sale on Trade Me. Despite their growth, the business still has many challenges.
Publicados : 2 anos atrás por Neil Hodgson no Lifestyle
Neil Hodgson is a food and wine writer living in Nelson.
There are two very good distilleries in Golden Bay. One is Dancing Sands, and it has just released a tasty lychee gin.
The Lazy Days Lychee Gin is “an ode to those days where you ‘should be’ doing lots but are deciding ‘Stuff it’ – adult responsibilities can wait while you do whatever you want”, according to the label.
This grabbed my attention, so I caught up with co-owner Sarah Bonoma to find out more. She and her husband, Ben Bonoma, started Dancing Sands in April 2016 after they bought a still and some equipment and took over the lease of a building in Tākaka.
Sarah says: “We started from scratch. We knew nothing about distilling and didn’t have a brand, but we were ready for a new challenge and jumped in boots and all.
“We spent the first six months with the doors closed figuring out how to make what we wanted to make before we released our first drinks in October 2016.
“Initially we thought we would be a rum distillery that made dry gin, but our gin was so popular we very quickly became a gin distillery that makes rum and vodka. Gin is now very much our focus.”
So what enticed this couple, both with a background in information technology, into the world of spirit-making? Sarah was an IT project manager and used to work for Proctor & Gamble. She worked across the company’s main operations in the United Kingdom, United States and China.
Sarah and Ben met when she was working on a project in the US office.
“He was working for a company contracting for P&G and was working on a project I was leading. The rest, as they say, is history. That was in 2012, and we now live in New Zealand, have two daughters, Mia [8] and Zoe [5], and own a distillery – who would have thought!”
The couple moved to New Zealand and were working in the IT sector in Wellington, Sarah says – “me at Contact Energy and Ben at PwC”.
“We had talked about starting our own business and had been throwing some ideas around for a year or two. One thing we decided quite quickly was we wanted it to be in food and beverage – we both love to enjoy food and drink and thought there was huge opportunity in the industry.
“We’re obviously not chefs, so we looked at sectors we could learn about quite quickly.”
They looked at brewing and the craft beer scene, but it had already exploded, she says.
“We thought we would be too late to the brewing party, but our research showed that where craft beer takes off, craft spirits follow a few years later.
“In the UK, gin was already a big thing when I left in 2012. But in 2016 in New Zealand, there wasn’t the selection of gins we have now. We saw that as our opportunity to get involved in the distilling business early.
“We found a still for sale on Trade Me; it looked like the stars were aligning, and we thought it could be really interesting.”
The couple flew to Golden Bay one weekend, when Mia was 10 weeks old, to meet the owner of the still. They “saw heaps of opportunity”, so they left the busy international and city life for Tākaka.
There are many challenges when you start a new business, but moving to a small town with a first baby to start a business in a sector you know very little about must have had many challenges.
“Where would you like me to start?” Sarah says with a laugh. “We didn’t know anything about spirit production, branding or marketing; we really didn’t know anything. We just figured out what we thought would work and what wouldn’t.
“We got a lot right and a lot wrong. It was a huge learning curve and we’re still learning more than seven years later.”
They figured out how to make spirits; then, in 2019-20 as Covid hit, Dancing Sands Distillery experienced a lot of growth as people discovered the brand.
While growing a business is a good thing, it does come with serious challenges. “Having to upscale production and employ staff [while] dealing with supply chain issues, increasing freight costs and buying more raw ingredients when everything was closed during lockdowns were just some of the challenges.”
Part of that growth was the need to invest in a larger still. “We were running our 150-litre still twice a day, six days a week. We sat down and decided we had to back ourselves and buy a big still or accept we would always be a small producer,” Sarah says.
“We decided to take the leap and invest in a larger 700-litre still – called Florence because every still has a name – and our own bottling equipment.”
Part of the decision-making process of expanding the business was to look at their key suppliers and see how they could do things differently.
“During Covid, the issue of climate change and the part businesses and individuals play became more front of mind. Pretty much every brand that makes spirits in New Zealand would get their bottles from overseas; ours came from France,” Sarah says.
“The turning point was when we started exporting to the UK in some volume. We were shipping empty bottles from France, filling and labelling them in Tākaka and then shipping them back to the UK.
“Add in the huge increases in freight costs and it just made economic and environmental sense to source local bottles. Also, the French bottles didn’t have any recycled content.”
There is only one glass manufacturer in New Zealand: Visy Glass in Auckland. “I called them and asked if they could make a bottle for us. Initially they said no, but we persevered,” Sarah says.
“We basically tried to sell them on the idea that if they could prove it would work for us, other local producers may buy from them too, and we told them it was the right thing to do. After several calls, and rejections, they finally called me and said, ‘We think we can make you a bottle.’
“Our bottle is custom designed for us. It has about 50% recycled glass content that comes from Auckland kerbside recycling.
“A key reason they decided to try and help us is that our bottles are made from what’s called transition glass … There’s a time where the colour changes from totally blue to totally clear glass, and during the transition from one colour to another, that molten glass isn’t used.
“We opted to have our bottles made from that transition glass. It means they don’t waste glass, and we get slight variances in colour in our bottles, something we actually quite like.
“As well as using recycled glass, it means we are using a material generated in the manufacturing process that would otherwise go to waste. We’re removing approximately 15,000kg of carbon from our production cycle every year.”
Dancing Sands Distillery is now a team of six, Sarah says. “Ben is the flavour guru and he has developed all of our recipes while I run the business.”
The business currently exports to nine markets – the US, the UK, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and the Cook Islands.
Dancing Sands Distillery will be making cocktails and serving gin at Roots Bar’s Roots Bar Adventure event in Tākaka on November 24 as part of Feast Whakatū. The brand will also be at the Gindulgence Gin Festival in Nelson on November 18.
Tópicos: Food & Drink