Introducing Bancroft Bay Distillery, East Gippsland's best distillery
Wow, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve written a blog post. Many of you wouldn’t know that prior to COVID Craig and I (well me!) ran a family travel blog taking us to many wonderful places in the world with the kids. While we loved all of the travel some of our favourite places included India, Jamaica and Myanmar however it’s hard to pigeonhole any country and say it was or wasn’t a favourite as each country is so varied and provided a completely different experience.
Then COVID hit, border shutdowns, curfews and chaos. This meant our lives pivoted and without even knowing we left our travel life behind. It happened without us knowing so we didn’t need to grieve for our old life. Like all great cliches, when one door closes, another one opens.
Here enters gin and Metung, it wasn’t a planned development, it happened slowly and coincidently. However, it took us on a completely different ride. We fell in love with East Gippsland and opened our eyes to a whole new world of country living.
We started Bancroft Bay Distillery, the best distillery in East Gippsland, from scratch. From the grass roots up. We originally set a 5 year plan that would see us through until the kids were out of school, with a fair bit of hard work and a huge amount of community support from Metung and surrounding businesses we topped out that business plan in just over 12 months. Good problem to have but we weren’t ready.
From the start we’ve done the market trail in East Gippsland, we landed on our feet with awesome market buddies on either side of us, Fractal Flow Designs and Snowy River Biltong. We became the three amigos and hanging out with them each weekend wasn’t hard.
Apart from markets, we approached a lot of local businesses to stock our products, we were supported in a big way. From the Metung Village Store to Sodafish and Sardine restaurants our spirits were stocked across East Gippsland. We started events across the region with a huge response, mostly booked out, our Gin Cocktail Masterclasses were a crowd favourite.
Where is East Gippsland’s best distillery now?
Still doing loads of markets! True but markets give us good exposure, and you never know what doors will open with the people you meet so we’ll keep doing them.
We’ve built a purpose built shed for the distillery, East Gippsland’s best distillery should have a purpose built home right? We’re about to start moving Esther (the still) down to Metung over the next few weeks. That will change the game for us. We don’t know what that’s going to look like for us over the next few months but we’re ready for change/challenge and we’ll keep you updated.
Craig & Sal