Four Pillars Fresh Yuzu Gin 700ml

Four Pillars has always had a well-known love of bright flavours and the cornucopia of great Australian-grown citrus. It started with oranges in Rare Dry Gin, finger limes in Navy Strength Gin and continued through blood orange, grapefruit, cumquat and bergamot – the list goes on. In fact, if you can name a citrus, chances are we’ve distilled it. Over the past four or five years, there’s been another citrus slowly edging its way into our hearts. It’s yellow and looks pretty ugly (it’s all in the eye of the beholder, of course) but it tastes and distills great. Yep, we’re talking about the mighty yuzu.

Native to China, Tibet and Japan, yuzu is a citrus fruit with amazing aromatics that are a mix of lemon, mandarin, cumquat and grapefruit. We first dabbled with yuzu when we made Pure Kisumé Gin in 2017, then Changing Seasons Gin in 2019 and then fate played its part in early 2020, when what should literally land on our doorstep but some fresh, perfect yuzu grown up the road in the Ovens Valley. Clearly, yuzu was calling.  Later in 2020 we released our most distinctly yuzu-powered gin under the guise of the limited-edition Rarer Dry Gin. So here we are. Three limited-edition yuzu gins later and we’re ready to launch the stand-alone and permanent Fresh Yuzu Gin.

The yuzu brings a mix of lemon, mandarin, cumquat and grapefruit aromatics – all bright and fresh citrus notes – while the addition of finger lime adds some deeper citrus character. Learning from those adventures making gin with Japanese friends, we’ve used ginger, turmeric and sencha genmaicha, a Japanese green tea with roasted brown rice, for depth of flavour. A canvas of strong pine-needle juniper, and a bit of lemon myrtle adds a touch of lemon curd.