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It’s official: The best gin in the world comes from South Australia

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Adelaide's Never Never Distilling wins coveted World's Best Classic Gin award.

You might have noticed that gin is making a comeback. Over the past decade or so more and more distilleries have been opening their doors around Australia and one of the newest and most promising hails from Adelaide.

It's named Never Never Distilling and even though it was only established in August 2017, which by the way isn't based on the first day of gin-making but when the first bottle is sold, it's already gathering quite a bit of attention. Especially now that it's taken out the award for World's Best Classic Gin at the World Gin Awards 2019.

The winning drop was its Southern Strength Gin. It's a "52%, classically-driven style gin" says Sean Baxter, one third of Never Never Distilling. It's aimed at bartenders with a penchant for martinis though still does a good job at "cutting the sweet and bitterness of the tonic" in a G&T, according to Never Never's head distiller Tim Boast.

Ultimately, the judges hailed it as having "nice complexity, but the balance impresses most".

It was first short-listed as the best classic gin in Australia before winning out against its international peers. This included numerous exciting gins that are shaking up the game as well as Tanqueray No 10.

To put things into perspective, Tanqueray is the current benchmark for gins. "It is the highest awarded and highest selling [gin]", said Baxter. "It was retired from the San Francisco spirit awards. It launched in 1999, it entered in 2001, 2002 and won double gold every single time and then they said stop doing it and made a new category called the Hall of Fame and put it in that."

So yes, winning against Tanqueray was no mean feat.

What's even more astounding is how minimal the production is. The distillery consists of one machine and is currently living the gypsy life inside Imperial Measures Distilling in Thebarton, Adelaide. Hopefully it won't be there for much longer as the trio behind Never Never Distilling has plans to move to a much larger production space in McLaren Vale.

And yes, there are also plans for a bar space so you can take your time drinking your swill whether you prefer it neat, on the rocks or mixed.

For now though, you can taste Never Never gin in cocktail form at its Adelaide Fringe pop-up. It's located on the top floor of The Stag Public House and features a tasting flight and a Francy Fruit Cup cocktail for $22 every Sunday until 17 March 2019.

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