What Is a Botanical Distillery?

A botanical distillery is generally a producer built around infusing or redistilling plant-based ingredients into spirits — most commonly gin, but also botanical liqueurs and other flavoured spirits.

"Botanical distillery" isn't a strictly regulated or legally defined term — it's generally used to describe a distillery whose core focus is building spirits (usually gin) around a curated selection of plant-based ingredients, rather than, say, a distillery primarily focused on grain whisky or column-distilled vodka.

What typically sets a botanical distillery apart

• A strong emphasis on sourcing and selecting botanicals — sometimes foraged locally, sometimes grown on-site, sometimes sourced from specific regions for a particular character
• Recipes built around showcasing specific plants (native, foraged or regionally distinctive) rather than simply following a standard gin template
• Often smaller-batch production, since sourcing and preparing distinctive botanicals doesn't scale the same way a large, standardised operation does

New Zealand examples of the concept

Several New Zealand gin producers position themselves around this idea — highlighting native ingredients like mānuka, kawakawa, horopito, or coastal and alpine botanicals unique to their specific region, turning the distillery's location itself into part of the product story.

Why it matters to drinkers

If a brand describes itself as a "botanical distillery," it's usually signalling that botanical selection (not just base-spirit quality or still design) is the heart of their process and their point of difference — worth paying attention to which specific botanicals they highlight, since that's likely to be where their gin's character comes from.