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I

’m sitting under a palm tree at the Darwin

Sailing Club, watching the sun go down,

drinking a beer.

But this isn’t just any old beer. This is a

wattleseed lager. It was produced by the Something

Wild Beverage Company, majority-owned by the

Motlop family, famed Indigenous AFL players whose

Larrakia country includes Darwin and surrounds.

It doesn’t, I think, get much more Australian than this.

Something Wild Wattleseed Lager is one of a

growing number of drinks produced using native flora,

and indeed fauna, in the case of Something Wild’s

green-ant gin, released last year.

Since the craft spirits boom kicked off at the

beginning of this decade, we’ve seen dozens of new

gins hit the market, distilled from local botanicals

such as lemon myrtle, strawberry gum, mountain

pepperberry – even boobialla, or native juniper. The

best of these, such as Kangaroo Island Spirits’ Wild

Gin from South Australia, or Botanic Australis from

Far North Queensland, or Brookie’s Byron Bay Dry

Gin from NSW, have featured heavily in these pages.

Encouraged by the success of these gins, local

vermouth and bitters producers such as Maidenii and

Okar have also emerged, exploring the unique virtues

of indigenous ingredients. Now brewers and whisky

distillers and soft-drink manufacturers are the latest

to work uniquely Australian fruits and flowers and

spices and seeds into their recipes.

This all feels very new and exciting, but it’s far from

the first time in Australia’s history that indigenous

ingredients have been used in this way.

Aboriginal people were enjoying fermented drinks

across the country long before Europeans arrived.

In Tasmania, for instance, the sap of the cider gum,

Eucalyptus gunnii, was collected and fermented to

The local boom in craft brews

and spirits has seen producers

turn to bush tucker for their

botanicals, writesMAX ALLEN.

produce a mild, mead-like drink called way-a-linah.

In the south-west of WA, the Noongar people steeped

banksia flowers in water and let the sweet liquid

ferment to produce a drink called mangaitch or

gep. In south-west Queensland, Aboriginal women

fermented bauhinia blossoms with sugarbag native bee

honey. In the Torres Strait, islanders distilled fermented

coconut-palm sap to make a drink called tuba.

Early colonists also experimented with local flora,

copying the locals by tapping the cider gum trees in

Tasmania, or swapping then-unavailable hops for

various flowers and herbs in their rudimentary brews:

this, for example, is how the “hop bush”,Dodonaea

viscosa, got its name.

There have been various short-lived attempts before

now to commercialise drinks made with bush tucker.

In the early 1990s, Melbourne wine merchant Nick

Chlebnikowski developed a sherry-based product

called witjuti drink – complete with a witjuti grub

inside every bottle, like an Aussie version of the

tequila worm – that was a hit with tourists but failed

to inspire the locals. And a decade ago, before he

founded Young Henrys, brewer Richard Adamson

brought out a lemon myrtle witbier and wattleseed

ale, way ahead of his time.

What’s different about this latest round of

innovative drinks is that now, in the second decade of

the 21st century, consumers are much more aware of

native ingredients, thanks to the work of high-profile

chefs such as Kylie Kwong in Sydney and Ben Shewry

at Attica in Melbourne.

Indeed, some of the most interesting Australiana

drinks can be found in these chefs’ restaurants:

Opposite:

Indigenous chef

Clayton Donovan

with a bowl of

Davidson’s plums.

Brookie’s Slow Gin,

Byron Bay, NSW, $70

Inspired by the sweet- tart

characters of traditional

British sloe gin, this local

version, made from tangy

native Davidson’s plums

steeped in slightly

sweetened Brookie’s gin,

is perfumed and moreish.

capebyrondistillery.com

Adelaide Hills Distillery

Native Grain Project,

Adelaide Hills, SA, $120

By adding lightly roasted

wattleseeds and malted

barley to the mash, the

distillers have created a

spirit with delicious

coffee and grilled-nut

characters.adelaidehills

distillery.com.au

On the

wild side

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Top drops of the month

48 GOURMET TRAVELLER

PHOTOGRAPHY JOHN BORTOLIN (DONOVAN), SCOTT HAWKINS (TOP DROPS) & RODNEY MACUJA (BROOKIE’S GIN). ILLUSTRATION LAUREN HAIRE