‘Whirlwind’ romance leads to Wellington’s only locally distilled whisky

When Frankie McPhail met her partner, she was a week away from moving to Scotland to study whisky making.

Instead, she was convinced to stay and start up her own distillery in Wellington.

Six years on, Southward Distilling is the only whisky distillery in the capital and has recently opened a tasting room in Lyall Junction in one of the four airport-owned spaces.

McPhail had been working for fitness brand Lululemon, following a move from her native Canada to play ice hockey. Her work visa prevented her staying more than a year, but she had fallen in love with Wellington.

“I walked down to Courtenay Place, as you do in a crisis, started drinking and decided, if I could do anything, I’m going to make f…ing whisky.

“I didn’t know how to make whisky … I failed math and science. Didn’t have any money. Which all of those three things you need, especially the money part.”

To follow her dream, McPhail decided to move to Scotland to study how to distil the liquor.

A week before the move, she met her soon-to-be partner, plumber Llewy Davidson-Powell, on a dating app. After a “whirlwind” romance, he asked what her plans were.

“They said, ‘if you meet a Welly boy, you’re not leaving Wellington … you’re here for good’. So I met him … and I said, ‘this has been great, but I’m about to f… off to Scotland to live my dreams’.

“He goes, ‘what do you want to do?’ I said, ‘well, I want to make whisky’.” Davidson-Powell suggested she do it in Wellington.

Despite a collective lack of knowledge, the couple purchased the equipment, put it together and started distilling.

They began with gins, as whisky needs to be aged at least four years.

“Not being a gin drinker myself, I cried … I didn’t want to make gin. So when we entered into the market, we made stuff a little bit differently.”

The distillery’s mountain gin is “big and bold”, so when mixed into a gin and tonic it could still be tasted, McPhail said.

The distillery’s second most popular gin is blood orange, made with hand-juiced and peeled New Zealand blood oranges.

McPhail said she had always been a bourbon and whisky drinker. Part of her job was challenging the preconceptions that came with rye liquor.

“We would go out drinking, and I’d have a bourbon, right? And the [hockey] team, who were largely female, were like, ‘Oh, you’re so tough. You’re a bourbon drinker, you’re a whisky drinker’. No, there’s actually sweet whiskies and buttery whiskies.”

Whisky has strict laws over how it is distilled and what it can be called.

In New Zealand, alcohol has to be aged for two years to be called whisky. McPhail said the reality was, even after two years, the alcohol needed more time to absorb the flavour from the wood.

“With gin, you let it steep, then distil it and proof it down. Whisky needs to be distilled, stripped down, and then put into a barrel to wait.

“So whisky takes a lot more time, resources and effort.”

Southward Distilling’s tasting room is open from Wednesday to Sunday.

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