Two-still Hepburn Distillery wins gold medal for organic vodka

After less than two years into the industry, owner Basil Eliades' product has been recognised by a international tasting committee from London as among the best varietal vodkas in the world.

Everything that goes into the vodka is from Lyonville, just a few minutes west of Trentham, from the potatoes grown at Wombat Forest Organics to the rainwater taken directly from the skies, and has Mr Eliades' personal touch at every stage of its production.

Mr Eliades personally picks up hundreds of kilograms of potatoes at a time and drives them back to the distillery he built on his property where they are processed, cooked, fermented, distilled three times and filtered before the vodka is ready for bottling.

Mr Eliades said the process allows the vodka to have a deep-rooted connection to where it is made.

"What I'm trying to do is not strip out everything. I'm not trying to strip out all the flavour, I'm not trying to strip out all the oils, I want something that's got a sense of what we call terroir in French which is a sense of place, a sense of deep root," he said.

Mr Eliades, who has synesthesia, said while the condition had helped with his writing and painting, it was especially helpful in finding the right flavours for his spirits.

"When I'm making the gins, my senses are actually crossed over so when I see something, I can hear it, when I smell it, I can taste it," he said.

"So when I'm doing the gin, for example, I can feel if it's too round and I need to add more points or if it's too soft and I need to add more stiffener so it's a different way of processing flavours.

"It's helped enormously with the painting and the writing because I get a sensation that other people don't get, but it definitely helps with the flavoring of these [spirits] because I can really tell when something is balanced because I just put it on my tongue or smell it and I feel this equilibrium."

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While Mr Eliades first became interested in vodka as a teenager in Sweden, a rough 2019 gave him the spark to pursue distilling.

"I said to my wife that I'm going to stop the painting and the writing and the teaching and lecturing and all that stuff, I'm just going to plant apple trees and grow apple cider," he said.

"She said 'wouldn't you rather make whisky?' and I said 'don't be stupid, it will take 10 years and cost a million bucks' and the next day, my best mate Dan said word for word the same thing and so I went 'bugger it, that's it' and I started."

Everything made by Hepburn Distillery is made in Lyonville and is very much a family affair.

"We are tiny, you don't get much smaller than this, basically," Mr Eliades said.

"I make all the spirit and my partner Jane Knight does all the design and the visual concept is hers, our daughter Emily designed and drew the labels, a friend did the graphic design of it and my other daughter Sarah helps out with ideas and images and so it's very family.

"Our bottles and our labels are very modest and very humble, we haven't gone for big, we haven't gone for flashy, we've gone for really modest because our values are local, sustainable, unique."

While his spirits are available at bars and bottle shops locally in Ballarat and surrounding towns, with the recent success and accolades, Mr Eliades has received a number of offers to distribute his product overseas and interstate but said he would prefer to remain locally focused.

"It's these spuds, it's this rainwater, it's that still which was made by an old guy... who used to make them for Australian industry, he kept the one for himself, he never got to use it because he came old and unwell, I got it... You can't change any one thing and end up with the same product," he said.

"I want to produce a beautiful product, I want to be able to enjoy my time. I want to be able to work with my friends and family and relax and enjoy that.

"I love being able to leave my home, come in here, check on the fermentation of something and then go back in and sit on the couch and go for a run with the dog in the afternoon and in the morning."

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