A new gin brand from three Adelaide bartenders has moved into suburban bar and cellar door Ferg's.

In December 2019, two weeks before Christmas, three bartenders launched a gin label, called Threefold, debuting a citrus-forward, summery spirit.

Of the 800 bottles distilled from their first batch, there are left with just 50.

The three bartenders – Aidan Shaw (2KW), Luke Fleming (Paloma Bar & Pantry) and Steven Roennfeldt (Steve the Bartender) – were quietly confident about their product, but the warm reception was still greater than they’d initially anticipated.

Threefold Distilling, as a concept, began in January last year, when Steve and Aidan purchased a lab still to set about creating a gin of their own, with Luke joining the troupe a little while later.

All three have spent their entire adult careers in the hospitality industry, and this experience has been the driver behind the gin’s recipe design.

“Gin is just ever expanding, getting more intricate, complex, and delicate in flavours, which, as bartenders, is awesome to play around with and experiment with flavours,” Luke says.

“But when you actually get to that sales pitch [to guests], it can get a bit more complicated in explaining to guests what they’re drinking and enjoying.

“We wanted a product that is easily identifiable – so when someone picks it up, whether you’re an experienced drinker or not, you can pick up grapefruit, rosemary, lavender, our three champion ingredients.”

Threefold’s graphic identity was designed by Voice Design

The inaugural Threefold gin brings together a classic gin pairing: rosemary and grapefruit. Future products will be similarly aligned with summery and sessionable flavour profiles.

“First up we’ll make sure we’ve got a good amount of backlog of this, and then look at a couple more gins this year,” Aidan says, “We’d really like to do a spiced rum.”

“Instead of doing an aged rum that’s been sat in a barrel for ages and is for sipping, it’ll be a spiced rum that’s sessionable, fun, for socialising. So it will fit into the brand,” Steve says.

None one in the trio had any prior distilling experience, and all give huge credit to David Danby of Imperial Measures Distilling for his consultation while they were learning the ropes.

David, who is also the distiller behind Ferg’s Stepney Dry, was also the link that has brought Threefold Distilling into the suburban cellar door and bar Ferg’s.

As of this week, Threefold has officially moved their still into the space and will be producing from the site.

“We sat down and had a chat about how we could get it to work, and after a long-term battle with everything that comes with setting up a distillery, we finally got there,” says Ferg’s co-founder Jordan Hein.

“The idea for what we had here wasn’t always intentional for a wine-specific venue. We wanted to be able to bring in all producers of multiple beverages, and then create a space where we can focus predominantly the smaller producers of those beverages, and then all collaborate, all push and create events and focus on other small producers from around SA.”

Jordan hints that he’s in the process of also finding a brewer to share the space.

“We’ve created a space that’s super versatile, so everything’s on wheels, we can push it to the side,” Jordan says.

“Everything that we’re doing doesn’t require the entire space, so we can have multiple things going at once – we can be bottling wines while these guys are distilling, it’s a large enough space to be able to facilitate that.”

Three bartenders walk into a suburban cellar door. L-R: Aidan Shaw, Jordan Hein, Luke Fleming and Steven Reonnfeldt

For the Threefold team, they didn’t expect to have a cellar door operation so quickly – they each still have full-time jobs outside of their gin label – but opening within an already established venue was too good an opportunity to pass up.

“It’s not just our cellar door, now we have this awesome opportunity to work with [Jordan and Bevan Ferguson, the other Ferg’s co-owner] and learn from [them] about winemaking, and collaborate with products,” Aidan says.

“After coming here for our first meeting, we walked out and we didn’t have to ask each other if we were going to do this, it was just, ‘Yeah, of course,’” Steve recalls.

Ferg’s will be throwing a housewarming party for Threefold Distilling on Sunday, 1 February, with Pan & Vine pizza in tow and deejays performing.

Keep an eye on both Ferg’s and Threefold’s social media for updates. For information on where you can find Threefold Distilling’s products, see their stockists page.