Aussiedistiller, Home Distilling, Moonshine, Home Brew

has anyone tried replicating the 4 pillars shiraz gin?

its a lovely drop and seems like its as simple as soaking some gin in shiraz grapes.

cheers,

Looks like shiraz grapes steeped in gin for 8 weeks:
https://www.liquoroutletwinecellars.com/sku21291_FOUR-PILLARS-BLOODY-SHIRAZ--GIN-750ML

I think you need to be specific with the grapes. Given how sweet the gin is I'm guessing they use late season grapes that are a harvested after the regular wine harvest takes place. You will need to experiment with the grapes, their sugar loading and steeping time to get the desired flavour. I'm also guessing that you will want to avoid and stems as they will be fairly bitter in flavour.

Hopefully these are a few more points to think about. I know they aren't answers :)

thanks maka, i didn't really think about harvest times and such.

i emailed a local winery and unfortunately they harvested their shiraz grapes about 6 weeks ago so looks like im waiting until next year to give this a try.

my plan was to try 100 gms of grapes per litre and see how that looks. I think it will be a lot of trial and error to get the blend right

Interesting that you said they harvested 6 weeks ago. The only 2019 vintage is about to be released, so maybe they aren't late harvest.

yeah i dont know much about wines,

he said they finished this years vintage about 6 weeks ago so im guessing they harvested a while ago, im in southern vic if that makes a difference

Mate has a vineyard - gave me about 5Kg of left over pressed grape skins last night, so I'm going to throw about 500g into a litre of gin, with some caster sugar and see what eventuates.

Copying a sloe gin recipe I did very successfully, just replacing the sloes with the grape skins.

The Dark Alchemist wrote:Mate has a vineyard - gave me about 5Kg of left over pressed grape skins last night, so I'm going to throw about 500g into a litre of gin, with some caster sugar and see what eventuates.

Copying a sloe gin recipe I did very successfully, just replacing the sloes with the grape skins.

This sounds interesting, I'd like to hear your results as I've just ran my 2nd ever batch of Gin today, how much castor sugar did you use?

BTW: Did everyone not know it's 'World Gin Day' today apparently??

Chocko

Woohoo was looking for an excuse to crack the bottle I was gifted :handgestures-thumbupleft:

bluc wrote:Woohoo was looking for an excuse to crack the bottle I was gifted :handgestures-thumbupleft:

So how was it bluc? I did my 2nd Gin run yesterday and airing at the moment, smells consistent so happy to age this one after run #1 was consumed before a week by family members and bystanders!
I think I've missed the boat this year but we've got a lot of wineries around us here so will ask around.

Chocko

Was actually at four pillars distillery over the long weekend and asked them about the Shiraz gin.

Late season Shiraz grapes, soaked in there rare dry gin for a few months, then removed, grapes pressed and that added back to the gin.

Roughly 5g sugar per bottle (more than likely from grapes) and an extra 50ml in every Shiraz gin bottle.

bigadz wrote:Was actually at four pillars distillery over the long weekend and asked them about the Shiraz gin.

Late season Shiraz grapes, soaked in there rare dry gin for a few months, then removed, grapes pressed and that added back to the gin.

Roughly 5g sugar per bottle (more than likely from grapes) and an extra 50ml in every Shiraz gin bottle.

Good info - will be doing my version this weekend probably. 5g sugar per bottle (assume 700ml), then 50ml of what in every bottle?

My first sloe gin was exactly the same colour as the Shiraz gin; got a whole lot lighter and took it to 3 blends, using the same sloes. Will blend them off to find perfect flavour, but the 3rd is pretty flavoursome.

I have now added the left over sloe berries into a mix of neutral, juniper, coriander and mandarin peel, to get a clear sloe gin after re-distillation. An interesting experiment.

The Dark Alchemist wrote:

bigadz wrote:Was actually at four pillars distillery over the long weekend and asked them about the Shiraz gin.

Late season Shiraz grapes, soaked in there rare dry gin for a few months, then removed, grapes pressed and that added back to the gin.

Roughly 5g sugar per bottle (more than likely from grapes) and an extra 50ml in every Shiraz gin bottle.

Good info - will be doing my version this weekend probably. 5g sugar per bottle (assume 700ml), then 50ml of what in every bottle?

My first sloe gin was exactly the same colour as the Shiraz gin; got a whole lot lighter and took it to 3 blends, using the same sloes. Will blend them off to find perfect flavour, but the 3rd is pretty flavoursome.

I have now added the left over sloe berries into a mix of neutral, juniper, coriander and mandarin peel, to get a clear sloe gin after re-distillation. An interesting experiment.

Really keen to see how you go! I really wanna recreate this for myself.

The Bloody Shiraz bottles are 750ml and they normally are about 700ml, except for navy strength which is 500ml I think.

The 5g of sugar is not added from what I was told, it's from when they press the grapes and add the juice back in.

They just bottle at 750ml, nothing more added.

bigadz wrote:Really keen to see how you go! I really wanna recreate this for myself.

The Bloody Shiraz bottles are 750ml and they normally are about 700ml, except for navy strength which is 500ml I think.

The 5g of sugar is not added from what I was told, it's from when they press the grapes and add the juice back in.

They just bottle at 750ml, nothing more added.

It's on. 2L of an easy gin in 500g of pressed grape skins, with a 100g of sugar.

Not alot of colour straight away as you'd expect, but let' see what time and patience does to it.

Made some grape gin a couple months back. Was pretty popular with gin drinking friends, so I'm making another batch from frozen grapes, the last of this seasons.
Can't tell you the grape variety, no one knows it. But their a bigger, purple, sweet table grape smuggled into the country after the war. Only two known vines here. The flavour reminded us of Hubba Bubba grape flavour chewing gum (always thought that "grape" flavour wasn't a real thing) Thankfully that didn't stand out in the finished gin.
1/3 filled a 2L sherry bottle with fruit and filled the rest with my standard gin. Let sit for 6 weeks, shaking occasionally.
Strained off the liquor, filtered through a wet paper towel. Crushed the remaining fruit, pressed out the juice, filtered it and added to the liquor. Very sippable neat, no ice. Tonic just didn't work with it for me. Not anywhere near as sweet as I was expecting.
Made 2x 700ml bottles and a little bit. Theres also a blueberry version macerating alongside the grape gin.
3weeks to go...

The Dark Alchemist wrote:It's on. 2L of an easy gin in 500g of pressed grape skins, with a 100g of sugar.

Not alot of colour straight away as you'd expect, but let' see what time and patience does to it.

Colour coming through very nicely after a week - btw, these are pinot grapes.

Patience!

FWIW Probably want to get onto the grapes around March and later for higher sugar, depending on area but most will be gone by end of April.
Just ask them the Baume of the grapes, anything over 16 is sweet and going to start to shrivel which is the bunches you're after.

This year was hard to get as yields were down due to dry weather.

MaKa wrote:I think you need to be specific with the grapes. Given how sweet the gin is I'm guessing they use late season grapes that are a harvested after the regular wine harvest takes place. You will need to experiment with the grapes, their sugar loading and steeping time to get the desired flavour. I'm also guessing that you will want to avoid and stems as they will be fairly bitter in flavour.

I think Maka is right. I was at Junipalooza 2019 in London (yeah I know it's a naff name - it's not just losers that go!!) and tried / bought bottles of the 4 Pillars shiraz gin, but also Seppeltsfield Distillery Barossa Shiraz Gin. Whilst the 4 Pillars variety is nice (try it with bitter lemon), the Seppeltsfield variety is amazing. It's expensive, but you can tell the difference that the Barossa grapes make. It's great sipped straight up with a cube of ice. :D

The Dark Alchemist wrote:

bigadz wrote:Really keen to see how you go! I really wanna recreate this for myself.

The Bloody Shiraz bottles are 750ml and they normally are about 700ml, except for navy strength which is 500ml I think.

The 5g of sugar is not added from what I was told, it's from when they press the grapes and add the juice back in.

They just bottle at 750ml, nothing more added.

It's on. 2L of an easy gin in 500g of pressed grape skins, with a 100g of sugar.

Not alot of colour straight away as you'd expect, but let' see what time and patience does to it.

So, this whole experiment has been a bit of a success.

My end product is about 2L of a "Pinot gin" which has the exactly the same colour as the Bloody Shiraz gin. Initially, it was extremely dry and bitter, but I then added 2 teaspoons of caster sugar to each 700ml bottle, which has softened it significantly.

The gin base was a simple, Juniper/ Coriander/ Mandarin style easy gin.

Added 500g of pressed pinot skins to 2L of 42% gin, along with 100g of caster sugar. Shook regularly and after 2 months, siphoned off the liquid, left to settle, then re-siphoned again. This was my initial drink, which was pretty dry. Added the caster sugar to the bottle, shook and waited a bit more.

End result is much more palatable; simply neat on ice. Need to try a bunch of different mixers and garnishes now, as well as compare to the Shiraz Gin!

Put it this way, tastes good enough to repeat!

10g of sugar per bottle?
Did you invert it before adding?
Or just tip it in?

You might of had better colour extraction from a higher %ABV