Stone Pine Distillery owners Ian and Bev Glen are preparing to enter their unique Bathurst Dry Gin in London’s International Spirits Challenge, where it will be tested against gins from some of the world’s largest distilleries.

It is a bold move from a microdistillery that has been in operation for barely six months, but one that will put the Bathurst brand name on the international stage in a whole new market.

When Mr Glen started the Stone Pine Distillery on historic Merembra on Gormans Hill Road, one of his goals was to create a uniquely Australian gin.

After returning to Bathurst in 2006 following more than a decade working in the brewing and distilling industries in England and Scotland, Mr Glen immediately started his search for the right mix of flavours to create his Australian gin.

“I had the concept when I was still in Scotland of developing an Australian gin because I really felt there was a market for it,” he said.

“I started by infusing probably 50 different botanicals in base spirits and slowly narrowing them down to the five that gave us the flavours we were looking for. Then there were a lot of blending trials to get the balance right.”

The result is Bathurst Dry Gin, featuring the flavours of juniper berries and five Australian botanicals - finger lime, iron bark, wattleseed, river mint and lemon myrtle.

The gin is one of three Stone Pine products - along with a lime-infused vodka and an apple schnapps - that are already for sale from the microdistillery’s cellar door and at recent Bathurst Farmers’ Markets, and there will be more to come.

In the coming weeks, Mr Glen will take stone fruit from Merembra’s orchard and start work on developing more schnapps flavours, some fruit brandy and perhaps a slivovitz [plum brandy]. The orchard was hit hard by the wild storms that tore through Gormans Hill last week but he will be able to salvage enough fruit to continue production.