Here's exactly how it happens.

Most gins start with a blank canvas. A neutral grain spirit that gets flavoured with botanicals and called finished. Strange Nature starts somewhere entirely different: in a vineyard in Marlborough, New Zealand, with grapes that already carry forty years of winemaking knowledge before a single drop of gin is made.

The result is a spirit with genuine provenance. Not a story invented for the back label. It's a process that's traceable from the row the grapes were grown in to the bottle in your hand.

It starts with wine, not grain

We use a spinning cone technology to gently remove the alcohol, preserving the aroma and flavours of the Sauvignon Blanc wine. What's left is a beautiful, pure New Zealand alcohol. 

That alcohol — a by-product of Giesen's 0% wine range is the foundation of Strange Nature. Nothing is added at this stage. Nothing is stripped back artificially. The character of Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc, think tropical, zesty, and herbaceous which is already present in the spirit before it ever meets a still.

This is what makes Strange Nature a true grape-based gin. Not grape-flavoured. Not grape-inspired. Distilled from the wine itself.

Eighteen months of saying no

Over 18 months, we worked closely with distillers to experiment. Trialing a range of botanicals and taste testing each batch. The winning recipe was the one that allowed the aroma and flavour to jump out of the bottle.

Most gin recipes involve ten, twenty, sometimes forty-seven botanicals layered together to create complexity. Strange Nature went the other direction. After trying all sorts of combinations, the team realized the Sauvignon Blanc aroma and flavour captured in the spirit tasted so good that they only needed a single botanical — juniper. 

That's a decision that takes discipline. It also takes confidence in your base spirit. When the liquid is already doing the work, the job of the botanicals is to define it as gin, not to disguise it.

What you're tasting when you taste it

The result is a gin that carries something most gins can't claim: terroir. The vineyard, the terroir, and the rows the grapes were grown in. Every batch has complete trust and traceability.

The juniper is present and correct, as any gin requires. But what's underneath it is something genuinely unusual: the character of a place, a season, and a winemaking philosophy that goes back four decades.

As we simply put it: "We started off pursuing one thing and discovered entirely another. What's resulted is an inventive spin on a traditional gin. A natural, truly grape-based gin that goes against the grain."

That's a fair description. It's also why it's called Strange Nature.