A Cross-Continental Collaboration; Stranger & Sons x Four Pillars

National, 24th May 2022- From being the first to explore contemporary style gins in India to launching India’s first distilled cocktail - Perry Road Peru, Third Eye Distillery (parent company of Stranger & Sons Gin) is now all set to disrupt India’s gin landscape with two new limited-edition gins created in collaboration with Four Pillars distillery!

A collaboration between expert distilleries on either side of the Indian Ocean, with the main inspiration being the tides and coast that connect them, this partnership between Four Pillars and Third Eye Distillery was driven by their mutual passion for creating quality gins. Needless to say, Third Eye Distillery’s constant desire for innovation went hand-in-hand with the Four Pillars team’s intense creativity leading to the creation of two unique gins that will soon launch in India, Thailand, Singapore and the UK.

Four Pillars is an award-winning craft distillery based out of Australia, well-known for their ‘Distiller Series’, a yearly collaboration with an internationally reputed distillery. “We first met the team from Stranger & Sons at Bar Convent Berlin in 2019 and we were taken by their passion, their expertise and by their complete and absolute charm. And their very first gin was terrific.” recalls Cameron Mackenzie (co-founder, Four Pillars). Over recent years, Four Pillars has collaborated with several IWSC Trophy winners, as Mackenzie believes “medallists at the IWSC show beautiful purity of spirit and concentration of flavour. They are also true to the category of gin.” This prompted Four Pillars to keep an eye out for the announcement of the 2020 winners and “was delighted when Stranger & Sons became the very first Indian gin to take home a gold medal from the 2020 IWSC. It definitely put them front and centre for our next collaboration.” says Mackenzie.

The two contemporary distilleries initiated the collaboration via email correspondence during the lockdown with a firm intent to create two expressions of gin that capture the spirit of India and Australia. Over Zoom calls and emails, they traded ideas about modern gin craft, flavours, the legacy of gin they were building and more. Considering how Four Pillars is true to its roots while at the same time having a very modern take on Australia and how Stranger & Sons celebrates the transmission of centuries-old traditions while recognizing the contemporary India we live in today, their ideologies were already very much in sync. Both the teams embraced the global trend of virtual tastings and invented ‘zoom’ distilling to bring this collaboration to life!

Stranger & Sons being flag bearers of showcasing India’s agricultural bounty, wanted to share the wonderful spices and flavours that are rooted in India’s heritage with the team at Four Pillars who managed to capture the bold and complex flavours of Indian spices and botanicals perfectly in the Spice Trade Gin. And the team at Stranger & Sons ‘traded’ ingredients to create a gin inspired by the unique flavours and botanicals indigenous to Australia, Trading Tides - Coastal Dry Gin.

“From first meeting the Four Pillars team at the Bar Convent Berlin in 2019 to being awarded a Gold Outstanding at the very same IWSC event where they won the International Gin Producer of the Year, this has been an extremely thrilling collaboration for us! We hit it off right from the start, as we were fascinated by their inept knowledge of the craft and passion towards Gin.” “To put it simply, you can expect two unique gins that combine the best of Australia and India in a bottle through the expertise of two diverse distillers at Four Pillars and Stranger & Sons”.

Sakshi Saigal, Director & Co-founder of Third Eye Distillery

With turmeric, finger lime, teppal, long peppers, red chilli and black cardamom, Four Pillars created Spice Trade Gin, their take on modern India. Spice Trade Gin is a kaleidoscope of flavours, with fragrant aromas and of course, big, bold spices on the palate. And with Australian lemon myrtle, anise myrtle and river mint and the Indian flavours of mangosteen, kokum and tamarind—Stranger & Sons crafted Trading Tides, a coastal dry gin and an ode to this rather strange trade. Trading Tides Gin is a bright bouquet of citrus notes that’s vibrant with a refreshing hint of mint and a soft, spiced finish. The two expressions are a celebration of gin that tells the tale of a truly strange collaboration!

Trading Tides Gin and Spice Trade Gin are currently available in Karnataka, Maharashtra and Goa and will be launching in Delhi soon.

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