Nine Circles Distillery celebrate major wins in the industry

Fast forward to present day ... Nine Circles Distillery has not only released three gins and one vodka in under 18 months but also won several awards for their gin creations.

In the first week of August, business owners Cat and Ben Coathup and their business partner Jason Ball received news that they'd won awards across the Melbourne Royal Distilled Spirits Awards and Sydney's Australian Gin Distillers Awards.

Cat said the highlight had been finding out that they'd won two gold medals at the prestigious Melbourne Royal Distilled Spirits Awards on August 3.

"It really took a couple of days for it to sink in, we were expecting decent scores from our entries but nothing like this," she said.

Cat said they had been particularly surprised to discover that their pink gin won the only gold medal in its category at the Melbourne Royal.

"We only launched it in December so it's a brand new product for us and we had no idea what to expect when we put it up for the awards," she said.

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Cat said they had put a lot of work into getting the balance between colour, flavour and sweetness right for it.

"We worked really hard to make sure it actually tasted like gin because you get a lot of pink gins on the market that use artificial sweeteners," she said.

Cat said the creation phase of their spirits was always a collaborative effort between the three of them, wherein Ben is the head distiller and Jason and Cat get involved with the tasting, putting the recipes together, corporate structure, marketing, branding, social media management and so on.

In the case of the pink gin, Ben created a sweetened style of gin and Cat got creative with the syrup that gave it its strong colour and flavour.

"I created a rhubarb and raspberry syrup using locally grown produce, we then soaked the fruit in the gin and added the syrup for a bit of sweetness," she said.

"The finished product has a lot of colour and it comes from the fruit that we use, there's nothing artificial about it and you get a really beautiful fruit flavour to it," she said.

Cat said they'd received a very positive reaction to their pink gin from their clients and local community, but getting accolades from qualified tasters in the industry had been a major highlight for them.

The second Nine Circles product to win gold was their signature gin, which also had a strong debut scoring silver at the Melbourne Royal Distilled Spirits Awards last year.

"We only had our signature gin in competitions last year and after getting that result we knew what standard it was at, but to score gold now, shows the improvements we've made," she said.

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With over 970 entries for the 2023 Melbourne Royal Distilled Spirits Awards and 112 gold medals, 364 silver awards and 318 bronze given out, Cat said they were all very proud to have taken home two gold as a small and new business.

"It's hard to realise just how special it is sometimes when you see all the gold medals that are given out, but when you look back at the overall scheme of things, the awards were spread out across all the spirits, with six categories in gin alone," she said.

Within the same week of winning gold at the Melbourne Royal, the trio discovered they'd also won two silver medals and a bronze at 2023 Australian Gin Distillers Awards in Sydney.

Winning silver in the pink gin and the Australian dry, the signature gin scored bronze.

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Cat said it was great to see the pink gin and Australian dry do so well for their first time at the Australian Gin Distillers Awards as well.

"The judging for this one was based more on the taste rather than texture, palette, length and those kinds of things.

Cat said it's been a big month on the whole for the business with them winning first place in two categories at the Australian Rural Business hosted by Spend With Us (Buy from a Bush Business).

Nine Circles Distillery had taken home awards in the Rural Business to Watch category and the Disability Business Owner category.

Cat said while these awards didn't focus on the product itself, it was motivating to have awards that also recognised them for how they ran their business.

"Ben really struggled after his accident eight years ago, so to have something that he's won for the team as a business owner and distiller, that recognises all the hard work he's put in, is really exciting," she said.

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Looking back on the results from all three award ceremonies, Cat said they all felt "pretty overwhelmed" with the results.

"It really took a couple of days to sink in, we were expecting decent scores from our entries but nothing like this," she said.

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