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Speaker 1: Welcome to Fear and Greed Sunday feature. I'm Michael Thompson.

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Speaker 1: How about this for a n AUSSI success story. In

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Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, three in mates decided to start their own

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Speaker 1: gin distillery. They called it Four Pillars and it went

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Speaker 1: from strength to strength, first here in Australia, then overseas

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Speaker 1: and pretty much won every award possible. Then in twenty

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Speaker 1: nineteen they sold half the business to global drinks giant Lion.

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Speaker 1: Last year they sold the other half to Lion as

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Speaker 1: well for a figure believed to be around fifty million dollars.

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Speaker 1: In between those two events, we spoke to one of

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Speaker 1: the three co founders, Stuart Gregor. Now, this interview by

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Speaker 1: Sean Aylmer was recorded back in December of twenty twenty,

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Speaker 1: so right in the middle of the pandemic. It is

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Speaker 1: a great chat. It is a terrific success story. I

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Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it.

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Speaker 2: Regular listeners would have heard me recently mention Four Pillars Gin.

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Speaker 2: It's an Australian company and I spoke of them because

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Speaker 2: they were named in International Gin Producer of the Year

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Speaker 2: and the International Wine and Spirits Competition. And what makes

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Speaker 2: it even more impressive is the fact that they've won

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Speaker 2: the title for two years in a row. It's quite

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Speaker 2: a remarkable story considering the business was only founded in

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Speaker 2: twenty thirteen by three mates and since then has gone

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Speaker 2: on to become a favorite Australian brand and an international success.

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Speaker 2: I'm pleased to say one of the founders of Four

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Speaker 2: Pillars Gin is my guest this morning, Stuart Gregor. Welcome

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Speaker 2: to Fearing Greed Oda Sean.

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Speaker 3: It's lovely to chat to you again in a while.

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Speaker 3: It has been quite some time.

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Speaker 2: Congratulations on the wind. I mean to win it once

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Speaker 2: could be a fluke, but twice not bad. Yes, I

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Speaker 2: could use.

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Speaker 4: A much well worn golfing analogy that I like to

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Speaker 4: tell people that yeah, the win at once. My theory

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Speaker 4: to win at once is that the world is littered

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Speaker 4: with people who've got lucky. I'm not necessarily referencing Stephen

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Speaker 4: Bradbury here, but I could be referencing Bob Dway or

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Speaker 4: someone who wanted maybe one Grand Slam. But I think, look,

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Speaker 4: when you win it a second time, particularly in consecutive years,

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Speaker 4: I think to use a racing pilance. I think Frank's

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Speaker 4: the form. I think it shows that you you just

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Speaker 4: didn't get lucky. I mean, it's a hugely competitive it's

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Speaker 4: the biggest spirits competition in the world's run out of London,

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Speaker 4: and sometimes you know, you can just sort of sneak

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Speaker 4: your way through, get a couple of lucky gold medals

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Speaker 4: and maybe pop a win. But I think to go

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Speaker 4: back to back, particularly in this year where you know,

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Speaker 4: it's been such an impossibly crazy year for us to

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Speaker 4: win it again, it was I genuinely, you don't think

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Speaker 4: I'm more excited about doing this than it was last year,

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Speaker 4: because this for us, there's that you know, we're now

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Speaker 4: on the world stage. We're now making it best the

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Speaker 4: best gins in the world, and you know we can

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Speaker 4: proudly say that rather than well we got we flipped

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Speaker 4: one in twenty nineteen before the world Captain fell.

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Speaker 2: Yea, So tell me the four Pillar story, or tell

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Speaker 2: our listeners the four Pillar story.

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Speaker 4: Look, it probably dates back to the late nineties. So

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Speaker 4: I mean Cameron McKenzie and I first met in nineteen

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Speaker 4: ninety nine. So Cameron is our head distiller and the

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Speaker 4: co founder of the business, and we met in the

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Speaker 4: late nineties when he'd actually just he'd run in the

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Speaker 4: ninety six Olympics in Atlanta for Australia and the four

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Speaker 4: x four, and he was on an Olympic scholarship the

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Speaker 4: intention that he would run in the two thousand Olympics

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Speaker 4: in Sydney, and he failed to qualify by one spot.

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Speaker 4: He made the national finals in the four hundred, they

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Speaker 4: took the first five and he failed to qualify. He

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Speaker 4: blames coming to work for me as the reason he

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Speaker 4: never qualified, because he missed his on the first day

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Speaker 4: he came to work for me. We were both working

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Speaker 4: for a wine business at the time called Mildara Blast

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Speaker 4: which is today which is today Treasury Wine Estates, which

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Speaker 4: I imagine everyone knows not traveling that beautifully at the moment

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Speaker 4: given the China situation. It's true, but it came to

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Speaker 4: work from me and he missed his first ever training session.

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Speaker 4: So I've been guilt riddled for twenty years basically about

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Speaker 4: him not making his second Olympics, because you know what

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Speaker 4: I said about guys who make one Olympics, that's lucky.

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Speaker 4: But if he'd made a second Olympics, he would have

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Speaker 4: been an actual a bit of alledge. I've always felt

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Speaker 4: guilty about that. So we started making wine together. And

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Speaker 4: O two he became great mates. I was living in Melbourne.

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Speaker 4: He was living up in the Yarra Valley. He worked

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Speaker 4: for lots of great production businesses in the era. I

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Speaker 4: was sort of doing lots of marketing and pr.

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Speaker 3: I mean, we.

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Speaker 4: Probably decided ten years ago or eight or nine years ago,

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Speaker 4: back twenty eleven twenty twelve, what if we made gin.

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Speaker 3: We drank a lot of gin.

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Speaker 4: We were making some wine and you know, it was

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Speaker 4: it was pretty good wine, but it wasn't something that

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Speaker 4: was you know, it was just too competitive in the

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Speaker 4: climate's a bit stuffed and we couldn't really to figure

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Speaker 4: out our way. And we met a guy called Matt Jones,

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Speaker 4: who's the guy who's a brand strategist and a big

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Speaker 4: picture sort of digital guy, and he helped us pull

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Speaker 4: it all together because frankly, Cameron and I, whilst enthusiastic

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Speaker 4: and great drinkers of gin, we really needed we really

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Speaker 4: needed someone to pull it all together. So when Matt

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Speaker 4: joined us in the start of twenty thirteen, we you know,

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Speaker 4: we thought we'll give this a crack. We raised a

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Speaker 4: bit of money, We found a beautiful building that we

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Speaker 4: could distill in Hillsville, right in the heart of the

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Speaker 4: yarra Vada. We made our first gins in December twenty thirteen,

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Speaker 4: and that was the thing called Rare Dry Gin, which

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Speaker 4: was always going to be a gin and tonic gin.

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Speaker 4: Then subsequent to that we've done a few really fun innovations,

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Speaker 4: you know, with bloody schiraz gin and you know, a

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Speaker 4: gin that just goes into the groanies all that sort

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Speaker 4: of stuff, and you know, the business has just slowly grown.

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Speaker 3: It's been a pretty great journey.

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Speaker 4: And then obviously last year in March, our mates at

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Speaker 4: Lion bought half the business.

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Speaker 3: So yeah, we've had a pretty good time.

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Speaker 2: So we'll get there. But was there some moment that

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Speaker 2: you thought we could be onto something?

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Speaker 3: You know what there was? It was April twenty fourteen,

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Speaker 3: so I reckon.

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Speaker 4: We've been in the business maybe five months and the

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Speaker 4: World Spirit so the two biggest competition in the world

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Speaker 4: ones run out of San Francisco called the International Spirits Challenge,

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Speaker 4: and we won a double goal in that, which meant

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Speaker 4: every judge had given us a gold medal for our

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Speaker 4: Rare Dry Gin. I didn't even know Cameron had entered it.

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Speaker 4: We basically just entered it in order for some judge

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Speaker 4: to say yes, taste like gin and thumbs up bronze

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Speaker 4: or something like that, and that got us.

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Speaker 2: I'm finding this a very amusing conversation. So Stewart, it's great,

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Speaker 2: keep it going. I'm just going to shut up.

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Speaker 4: Well anyway, just what that did is it's got a

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Speaker 4: lot of people internationally interested in it, because there weren't

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Speaker 4: many when we started I Reckon there was probably single

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Speaker 4: digit numbers of Australian distilleries making gin. There was a

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Speaker 4: fairly nascent, interesting Tasmanian whiskey industry, but there weren't that

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Speaker 4: many people making in Australia. Today there's over two hundred

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Speaker 4: and fifty distilleries in Australia making gin, and I Reckon

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Speaker 4: it was less than twelve when we started in twenty five.

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Speaker 4: So I guess in many ways we triggered that interest

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Speaker 4: in the Australian gin category. We you know, we had

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Speaker 4: set ourselves up pretty professionally to grow and to be

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Speaker 4: serious player. We didn't ever want to just be a

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Speaker 4: hobby cottage industry, you know, just based out of the Yarra,

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Speaker 4: So we really wanted we had global ambitions from the

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Speaker 4: get go, you know, we started getting some international inquiries there.

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Speaker 4: You know, we're probably in thirty odd markets around the

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Speaker 4: world now and things have you know, just continued to grow.

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Speaker 4: But that moment in early twenty fourteen was the start.

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Speaker 2: I reckon, stay with me, Stuart will be back in

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Speaker 2: a moment. I'm speaking to Stuart Gregor, co founder of

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Speaker 2: Four Pillars Gin. Why is Jin so popular all of

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Speaker 2: a sudden. I've never been a gin drinker until the

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Speaker 2: last two years, and then I'm a regular gin drinker.

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure what's happened to the world, but Gin

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Speaker 2: it seems to be the drink of choice at the moment.

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Speaker 4: Well, I mean I turned up Sean Frankly before a

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Speaker 4: category full of boring old brands, and then a long

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Speaker 4: come Four Pillars.

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Speaker 3: No.

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Speaker 4: Gin is having this renaissance for a couple of reasons.

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Speaker 4: One is that it's aligned with a few things. The

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Speaker 4: cocktail renaissance, right, the small bar renaissance or the small

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Speaker 4: bar birth. Basically in Australia, where only ten years ago

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Speaker 4: there were not many cocktail bars in Sydney, there are

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Speaker 4: a few in Melbourne. And if you have a cocktail

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Speaker 4: bar or a small bar and you're going to make

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Speaker 4: great drinks. Gin is going to be the base of

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Speaker 4: a lot of those drinks, whether it's in a Groni

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Speaker 4: or a martini or a gimlet or a south Side

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Speaker 4: or a London Calling whatever. So many of the great

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Speaker 4: cocktail drinks a gin. So so many people have tried

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Speaker 4: gin for the first time by going to one of

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Speaker 4: these new small bars where it's in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane,

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Speaker 4: wherever else in Australia. But this is also happening everywhere

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Speaker 4: around the world. People are rediscovering the gin and tonic

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Speaker 4: for two reasons. One is that they're using better gin,

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Speaker 4: so they're finding you know, basically, a gin and tonic

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Speaker 4: up until ten years ago was Gordon's and swets basically,

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Speaker 4: and if you didn't like Gordons or sweats, and let's

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Speaker 4: be frank, not a lot of people liked either. Certainly

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Speaker 4: very few people other than my mother liked both. So

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Speaker 4: once you've got a gin that had some native botanicals,

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Speaker 4: gin can represent a place like so we use botanicals,

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Speaker 4: Australian botanicals with its lemon myrtle or Tasmanian pepperberry or

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Speaker 4: finger limes, so our gin doesn't taste like a London

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Speaker 4: dry gin that might be beef either or bombay or

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Speaker 4: you know. And Hendrix played a huge part in this

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Speaker 4: as well, because when Hebrix was created only in the

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Speaker 4: early two thousands, it make gin a bit quirky and

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Speaker 4: a bit cool, and all of a sudden it stuck

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Speaker 4: a cucumber in it because they use these cucumber essence

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Speaker 4: and rose essence, and people say, oh my god, all

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Speaker 4: gin doesn't have to taste like Gordon's image and Gordons,

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Speaker 4: but I'm god gin can have all these other amazing

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Speaker 4: botanicals in it. And because frankly, vodka is vodka, which

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Speaker 4: is essentially a vector for cranberry juice, right, Vodka has

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Speaker 4: no flavor, you know, it's essentially just there to play

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Speaker 4: its functional role.

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Speaker 2: Eighteen year old joy, Yeah, exactly.

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Speaker 4: So gin's from California, and gin's from Australia and New

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Speaker 4: Zealand or you know, we're doing a little bit of it.

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Speaker 4: We've done collaborations with gin distilleries in Kyoto, one in

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Speaker 4: Ta San, which is four hundred kilometers north of Stockholm

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Speaker 4: and Sweden, and we've done one with a distillery in Madrid,

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Speaker 4: all making beautiful, interesting gins using some of their local botanicals.

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Speaker 4: So you know, it's become a truly international phenomenon. And

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Speaker 4: to give you a sense of the growth, I was

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Speaker 4: talking to someone at Dan Murphy's the other day. Five

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Speaker 4: years ago, so twenty fifteen, the vodka category was four

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Speaker 4: times the size of the gin category. It's now one

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Speaker 4: to one. Wow, So vodka stayed pretty much flat. But

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Speaker 4: people are getting into gin the flavors that you know,

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Speaker 4: it's an exciting agre.

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Speaker 3: See.

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Speaker 2: If I want to taste red wines or white wines,

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Speaker 2: I can do that, and I kind of understand how

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Speaker 2: to do that. The thing about gin in the last

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Speaker 2: couple of years, as I've developed my palette for it,

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Speaker 2: Shall I say? What I tend to do is go

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Speaker 2: to the shop and buy on price a little bit

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Speaker 2: because I think more expensive gin is worth it, and

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Speaker 2: certainly I'm buying reputation. Is there such a thing that

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Speaker 2: gin tasting? How do I work out? Because I've even

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Speaker 2: tried flavored gins which are probably less to my liking.

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Speaker 2: You're sure, as gin is great? Do you get across

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Speaker 2: all this? Is it just amount of buying and drinking

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Speaker 2: sort of thing? But is there such a thing as

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Speaker 2: gin tastings that type of stuff.

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Speaker 4: Well, I'm never going to make you feel disinclined buying

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Speaker 4: more gin. You know, it's quite good from my business.

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Speaker 4: But yeah, look, we do little master classes both here

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Speaker 4: in Sydney, so I'm in the Surrey Hills. We've got

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Speaker 4: a little new laboratory and Crown Street the Surry Hills.

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Speaker 4: We've also got to add distillery down in Hills Will

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Speaker 4: and we do literally hundreds of gin tastings a year,

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Speaker 4: little mini master classes where people can't and I taste

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Speaker 4: four four pillars gins all taste extensibly different, yet they're

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Speaker 4: all made by the same distillity, and and go, well,

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Speaker 4: this one's got you know, olive oil and olive leaf

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Speaker 4: as a botanical. This one's got oranges and a star anise,

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Speaker 4: and this one's got and people can just tell the

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Speaker 4: difference straight away. And there's this light bulb moment for

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Speaker 4: so many people when they taste two or three gins

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Speaker 4: that they probably would have thought, oh, they're all just

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Speaker 4: going to taste the same, and oh no, I like

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Speaker 4: that one because that's super spicy, or I like that

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Speaker 4: one because that's a more savory style that I might

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Speaker 4: put into a into a martini. So and then then

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Speaker 4: I've got the purple one, you know, the one that's

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Speaker 4: soaked in shirazsgrape. So I think people are realizing that

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Speaker 4: they don't have to like all gin as a category,

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Speaker 4: but they can like some gins, and Australia is probably,

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Speaker 4: I reckon, pound for pound making the best quality gins

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Speaker 4: at the moment. I reckon, we're somewhere like where we

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Speaker 4: were in the Aussie wine industry in the nineties.

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Speaker 3: Baby, yeah right.

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Speaker 4: You know, people are starting to realize we're very small

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Speaker 4: on a global scale. We're all timey, we're the biggest

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Speaker 4: gin producer in Australia, but globally we're still we're not

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Speaker 4: even half of one percent of the gym market. But

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Speaker 4: there are some stunning gins coming out of Australia, whether

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Speaker 4: it's from Never Never in South Australia or seventy eight.

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Speaker 4: And also in South Australia, some of the guys in

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Speaker 4: Tazzi are making great gins. Is it's a really exciting

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Speaker 4: category right now.

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Speaker 2: So you sold half the business to line last year.

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Speaker 2: What's that mean for global growth?

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Speaker 3: Look?

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Speaker 4: It actually, interestingly probably means more for domestic growth than

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Speaker 4: it does globally because Lion have such a great footprint

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Speaker 4: across Australia domestically, it's meant that our sales force, so

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Speaker 4: we work in partnership with a wholesale distributor that Lion

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Speaker 4: also bought half of the business, and it means that

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Speaker 4: we've been able to totally retool that business, professionalize that business.

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Speaker 4: You know, we've got two and a half times more

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Speaker 4: staff just representing it. So I'm talking about just selling

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Speaker 4: it into regional bottle shops and all sorts of different

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Speaker 4: bars and banners in Western Australia and South Australia. Because

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Speaker 4: one of the things that the big companies have over

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Speaker 4: little guys like us is just the power of the

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Speaker 4: salesforce that they can go and sell to all the

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Speaker 4: regions and all the all the country towns in Australia,

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Speaker 4: all the rural properties, all the banner groups, you know,

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Speaker 4: all the big retailers. So we've become more competitive in

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Speaker 4: that guard. So you know, four Pillars is now simply

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Speaker 4: more available in more stores and behind more bars than

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Speaker 4: we were before Line came along and they have you know,

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Speaker 4: Kieran and Line have a really interesting international business. You know,

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Speaker 4: they've got a great bourban distillery called four Rowses over

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Speaker 4: in Kentucky. They've got an increasingly interesting craft beer business

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Speaker 4: in the US as well. So yeah, look, we're finding

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Speaker 4: our way with them internationally, but they've really helped us

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Speaker 4: unbelievably domestically. And the fact of the matter is that

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Speaker 4: they're and I mean I would say this, I take

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Speaker 4: it with a grain of salt, but they're really good

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Speaker 4: people and they've kept out of our way. They know

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Speaker 4: that they're great at beer and craft beer, but they're

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Speaker 4: happy to learn from us when it comes to spirits

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Speaker 4: because you know, they figure. I think there's a bit

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Speaker 4: of a maturity in terms of corporates buying small businesses.

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Speaker 4: They maybe ten or twenty years ago, they would to

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Speaker 4: come in and put all their systems in place and

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Speaker 4: all of their their ways of doing things and sort

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Speaker 4: of rolled their eyes when the little startup guys were like, well,

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Speaker 4: that's not the way we do it here. I think

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Speaker 4: these days they've learned a lot from that and they're

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Speaker 4: really letting us run our own show. I mean, I'm here,

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Speaker 4: I'm still on the tools every day.

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Speaker 2: Fantastic, Stay right there, will be back in a minute.

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Speaker 2: My guest this morning is Stuart Gregor, co founder of

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Speaker 2: Four Pillars Gin. So what next for Four Pillars then?

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Speaker 4: We I mean we just opened I mean as you would,

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Speaker 4: we opened I think of the Four Pillars Laboratory up

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Speaker 4: in Surrey Hills. We opened that in Juram, which is

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Speaker 4: just a spectacular time to be opening a bar obviously.

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Speaker 4: So we've got a bar and little educational area where

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Speaker 4: we do master classes. I'll probably do five or eight

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Speaker 4: master classes this week in this bar in Surrey Hills.

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Speaker 4: We're going to do some more collabs when we can

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Speaker 4: travel again. You know, we always love making amazing gins

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Speaker 4: with distillers who've got sort of like minds with us offshore,

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Speaker 4: so we're going to We're going to do a fun one.

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Speaker 4: We're trying to make a gin via zoom at the moment,

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Speaker 4: not funnily enough, not one of the easier things to do,

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Speaker 4: but we've got an idea of making a gin via

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Speaker 4: zoom with a distillery actually in southern India, which is

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Speaker 4: going to be really exciting and more of the same.

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Speaker 4: We want more, look, we want to I mean I

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Speaker 4: had this great plan last year because basically my job

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Speaker 4: used to just be fly around the world and flogged

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Speaker 4: into people like I literally had the best job in

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Speaker 4: the world until this year, although it's still pretty good job.

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Speaker 4: And I had this plan to take the trophy to

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Speaker 4: every market we were available in, you know, the big trophy.

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Speaker 3: It hasn't even yet got to Queensland.

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Speaker 2: They're tough up there, those borders.

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Speaker 4: So I'm hoping to I'm hoping to get to Queensland

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Speaker 4: next year and that's my big goal. And you know,

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Speaker 4: maybe across the South Australia.

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Speaker 3: But now we want to.

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Speaker 2: Share almost global domination almost.

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Speaker 4: I want to share as much of our gin as

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Speaker 4: I possibly can with as many people as we can,

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Speaker 4: have as much fun as possible, keep making really beautiful, luxurious,

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Speaker 4: delicious gin. And I would love the Australian gins. I

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Speaker 4: think we're on the cusp with something really exciting in

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Speaker 4: spirits in Australia. If we could just get the excise

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Speaker 4: situation resolved with the government, because we pay more for

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Speaker 4: our spirits of this country than any country other than

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Speaker 4: Norway and Iceland, where they have incredibly high excise rates.

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Speaker 4: So if we could just get that figured out to

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Speaker 4: give some of these small distilleries ago, I reckon we're

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Speaker 4: in a very exciting place and particularly with the wine

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Speaker 4: industry facing the troubles.

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Speaker 3: It is facing right now.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, opportunity Spirits could be a real opportunity for us

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Speaker 4: to earn a lot of export dollars. Also employ a

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Speaker 4: lot of people in regional and rural Australia. So yeah,

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Speaker 4: there's a lot that can be done. It's going to

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Speaker 4: be a fun couple of years.

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Speaker 2: How do you drink your gin?

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Speaker 3: Well, right now, I don't. I take my gin. I'm

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Speaker 3: going to trademark it gin Sonic. Right.

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Speaker 4: It's half tonic and half soda, right, so basically you

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Speaker 4: can taste a little bit more of the gin. So

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Speaker 4: if I have my rare dry gin, I have my

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Speaker 4: red dride gin, I have fever Tree tonic, which is

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Speaker 4: beautiful Mediterranean tonic. I stick an orange in it, and

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Speaker 4: then I stick about half tonic half soda. So it's

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Speaker 4: a little lower in calories and you just get to

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Speaker 4: taste the gin a wee bit more. So that's how

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Speaker 4: I take mind or I just love love lava Martini

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Speaker 4: with our olive leaf gin, It's honestly can't be better.

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Speaker 3: Although you know that too.

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Speaker 4: Martini rule, I think we're going to have to instigate,

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Speaker 4: especially for me because if I have a third martini,

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Speaker 4: it's not good for anyone.

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Speaker 2: It's not good for business, trust me, Stuart, thanks for

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Speaker 2: talking to fear and greed.

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Speaker 3: Thanks Ave, Sean.

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Speaker 2: Stuart gree a founder of Four Pillars GIN