How our wild landscape and small-batch distilling culture shape something truly our own.
New Zealand gin is shaped by native botanicals like kawakawa and horopito, pure spring water, and small-batch distilling rooted in local stories and landscape.
New Zealand gin has a flavour all of its own. It’s bright and clean, but never simple - shaped by our climate, our native plants, and a new generation of distillers who care more about story and place than production lines.
As one of those distillers, I can tell you: you taste where it’s made.
What local botanicals define a New Zealand gin?
If you’ve ever crushed a kawakawa leaf or nibbled a horopito, you already know why they appear in so many New Zealand gins. They carry that peppery edge and forest-green energy that seems to sum us up perfectly. Add a touch of mānuka leaf or a strand of kelp, and you’ve got a spirit that smells like the bush after rain or the sea on a still morning.
Most of us use what’s around us - fresh, local, often foraged. It’s not just about flavour; it’s about connection. You can’t fake freshness, and it shows in the glass.
How does New Zealand’s terroir influence flavour?
We talk a lot about terroir in wine, but gin has it too. The air, the water, even the light here changes the way things grow and taste. Our citrus runs high in oils, our herbs are pungent, and our spring water is soft and clean.
Even inland, there’s a trace of salt in the air that makes its way into the still. I think that’s part of what gives New Zealand gin its easy balance - that purity and brightness that makes it feel so unmistakably “here.”
Why does small-batch matter in New Zealand?
Because it’s personal.
Most of us aren’t chasing volume; we’re chasing flavour. We can tweak a recipe on a Tuesday, distil it on Wednesday, and taste it with friends by the weekend. There’s room to play, and that freedom keeps the spirits alive - literally and figuratively.
When you run a small still, you know every step of what goes in the bottle. You’ve picked the kawakawa yourself or worked with the grower down the road. That’s what gives New Zealand gin its honesty.
How Papaiti Gin fits into that picture
At Papaiti Gin, everything we make starts with the Whanganui landscape and a story.
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The Orchard celebrates the pear trees that grow around our home — we pair pear with kawakawa, nutmeg and lime peel.
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Mountains to Sea follows the Whanganui River from alpine herbs to the coast, bringing together horopito, mānuka leaf and kelp.
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The Potager is our garden in a bottle — basil, rose hip, nettle and citrus.
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The Whanganui Dry is our take on a classic, with a modern edge. Just like Whanganui itself is a classic with a lot of new things going on.
Each gin tells a story about where we live and what we love about it. That’s the heart of New Zealand distilling for me - flavour that means something.
In the end
New Zealand gin is about more than what’s in the bottle. It’s about place, people, and patience - about distillers who care enough to do things properly, and landscapes generous enough to reward them for it.
Every time someone takes a sip of Papaiti Gin and says, “this tastes like New Zealand,” I know we’ve done our job.
