![]() ![]() “People are blown away by just how tiny she was and love to get a photo with her,” says Shane. A life-size cut-out of Biddy Goodwin perpetually puffs on her pipe in the tasting room. Either way, you’ll be regaled with tall tales of West Coast characters who have become part of the brand’s identity.įirstly, their signature gin, Little Biddy, is named after a four-feet-tall 19th-century gold prospector who, the story goes, did “men’s work”, wore trousers and lived with two men out of wedlock. Alternatively, you can book in for an hour-long tour and tasting. “They even used to distil gin here back in the day.” Today, visitors call in to sample the distillery’s gin, vodka and berry liqueurs before committing to a purchase. “It was the old Harold’s General Store,” says Shane, who runs the cellar door. Opened in late 2018, Reefton Distilling Co occupies an 1870s building just off the town’s main street. It’s one of those unspeakably quaint gold-rush towns that’s crammed full of heritage buildings – and while it’s got some good cafés and a surfeit of antique stores, it’s yet to be completely gentrified and packaged for tourists like, say, Arrowtown. If you haven’t been to Reefton, you really should go. “It just happened to be right when gin was starting to get sexy in London.” After all, the West Coast of the South Island is known for its abundance of pure water and its lush rainforests, which are full of natural botanicals. ![]() A distillery was one of several ideas mooted. Reefton-born Patsy Bass and her husband, Shane Thrower, were relocating from Christchurch, and Patsy was looking for a project that could create jobs and help to revitalise her hometown. Reefton Distilling Co was a happy coincidence. ![]() He also writes for the Daily Telegraph, is a columnist for Practical Boat Owner, Classic Boat, Hortus and Broad Sheep magazines and the RYA website, and is a sought-after public speaker.Reefton-born Patsy Bass and her husband, Shane Thrower, were relocating from Christchurch, and Patsy was looking for a project that could create jobs and help to revitalise her hometown. The object of the MQ is to print stories and articles about the sea as it is seen from the sea, and the parts of the land visible from the sea. Since 2010 he has been the Editor of the Marine Quarterly, a journal of the sea. He believes that telling stories is the summit of human achievement, and that the existence of humanity on Earth is a story, and that the story deserves a happy ending. He owns an electric bike, a fifty-year-old guitar, and several boats, in which he spends months every year sailing in the North Atlantic. They live in a medieval farmhouse in Herefordshire, England’s wildest and most beautiful county. He is married to the prizewinning Canadian children’s author Karen Wallace. He was brought up between the coast road and the sea in North Norfolk. Sam Llewellyn was born on Tresco, Isles of Scilly, thirty miles west of Land’s End, Britain’s southwesternmost point. Sam Llewellyn - One of Britain's Great Storytellers. “An ingenious story, well written and so detailed in its description of the Norwegian Sea that you can feel the chill in your bones” Mail on Sunday Including the Russian mafia, stolen art treasures, whale poachers, and political ghosts from the Fascist past. And finds himself way over his head in some lethal business. And Fred is no saint himself, having a dodgy past in ecoterrorism and other blood sports. Ernie says he has been framed, but he would, wouldn’t he? The only person who believes his innocence is his nephew, Fred Hope. When Customs searches the ship, they find a huge arms cache. Seventy-eight-year-old Ernie Johnson, scrap dealer, Spanish Civil War veteran and dyed-in-the wool leftie, sails towards Ireland in his rustbucket freighter Worker’s Paradise. These two things together lie at the root of this book. I have always been a keen collector of whirlpools – the Old Sow in Eastport, Maine, the Corryvreckan off the Isle of Jura, and most of all the Maelstrom in the Lofoten Islands, immortalised by Edgar Allen Poe (who never saw it) I am also disgusted by Norway’s whaling policies, an exploitation of natural resources that dates from an earlier, more fascistic age.
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