File this one under Bartenders Launching Their Own Booze Brands.
The homegrown Australian spirits industry has experienced a big boom in growth over the last decade or so, with more than 700 distillers operating in Australia today, according to the Australian Distillers Association.
And the latest spirits brand to join this group launched last night on the Gold Coast. Beudi is an agave spirits brand from award-winning bartender and bar owner Jack Connor (Rosella’s), with ex-Stone & Wood operatives Pat Coulson, Tom Ruhl, and Dane Pitman.
If you know Jack, you know that his Gold Coast bar is big on Australian nostalgia (without the cringe), and champions native ingredients in their drinks. And there’s a good whack of that approach present in Beudi.
They’re launching with four products: two canned brands, the Beudi Bushwater — which I have more thoughts on below — and the Beudi Sparkling Margi, as well as two bottled spirits — a blanco tequila, and a sweetened spirit they’re calling a Margi Spirit.
The interesting ones for me were the Bushwater and the Margi Spirit. The Beudi Bushwater is decidedly crushable — it’s a riff on Ranch Water — and the kind of drink you’ll want on hand around the pool come summertime.
And I think what they’ve done with the Margi Spirit is unique. Having tried it last week, there’s a distinctly Australian taste to it, and it lands at 35 percent ABV. You add 60ml of that to 30ml lime and you’ve got a Margarita ready to be shaken, albeit one made with sunrise lime (a citrus pioneered by the CSIRO in the 1990s), strawberry gum, passionfruit and vanilla.
I’m sure some enterprising bartender out there will find a way to use the Margi Spirit as a component in another cocktail, too. (Adding a shot to the Beudi Bushwater works, too — trust me.)
The Beudi launch is an interesting one, because they’ve done away with many of the design cues of tequila and mezcal. On the label, there’s a figure of a frill necked lizard in the heart of a Sturt desert rose (they’re calling it Lizzie), and the brand font gives off big Ken Done vibes. The only head nod to agave spirits design cues are little agave plant illustrations. And with this design and presentation, they’ve moved away from the cultural appropriation arguments surrounding tequila and mezcal, I think. Agave has been growing in Australia for over 100 years now, and this brand is a distinctly Australian expression of what agave spirits can be here.
Below — lightly edited and condensed for clarity — I spoke to Jack, Tom and Pat at Rosella’s last week ahead of the brand’s launch, to find out how it came about, how it’s made, and more.
What possessed you to want to make a new agave spirit? What’s the big idea?
PAT: Tom, Dane and I have been in the beer industry for 10 years plus each. We have always loved more the Margarita and refreshments space — who doesn’t love a Margie? And talking to Jack over last few years, we’re like, let’s play in this space a little bit more. We were just ready to try to have a crack at it ourselves. But it’s been a long time in the making.
When did this start?
PAT: Three years ago. It’s been a challenging space as well. There’s a lot of gin, there’s a lot of vodka, a lot of whisky even now in Australia. But there’s not a lot of agave.
That’s the challenging and refreshing part. It’s a new field to go into. And championing native ingredients, is a big part of it.
TOM: There’s some really good brands that are doing stuff out of Mexico. And then there’s some good brands that are already doing it here. We were just like, well, there’s still an opening for another one. It’s not too flooded right now. And we wanted to just pull the trigger at the right time on that front.
PAT: This space is still a little bit untapped for us, and Australia is the third biggest consumer in the world for tequila and agave spirits behind Mexico and the US. So it made sense to try to jump in and have a bit of fun with it.
And so how do you make the blanco agave spirit?
JACK: So we do a lot of co-packing and co-producing. That’s to get us to market and get the wheels turning. We’re using Seb [Reaburn] down at Anther in Geelong.
PAT: We became mates with him when we originally wanted to jump in, and that’s where our manufacturer’s license is. We’re currently on the hunt for a distillery, we want to build a home somewhere around here. Like whether it’s Gold Coast or Northern Rivers or somewhere.
Where do you source your agaves for this?
PAT: It’s a mix between Mexico and Australia. Originally, we wanted to go all Australian, but it just wasn’t viable or sustainable. So we’re bringing in Mexican 100 percent blue weber agave syrup. It would be really hard bringing that many pinas over. And then [we use agaves] from Eden Lassie Farm, it’s where Act of Treason get their stuff as well.
Our vision and goal is to one day use all Australian agave. And when these pinas up north and around the country mature a little bit more, it probably will be more viable. But that’s the long-term vision and goal — to one day put us on the global map for Australian agave spirits.
Talk to me about the Margi Spirit, because someone mentioned this to me when I was up in Brisbane. You just have to add lime to it, is that it?
JACK: Yeah. Just add 30ml fresh lime. And ice — it’s adding ice and shaking. But it is just trying to take the guesswork out of your classic Margarita. And it was a big on-prem and off-prem play in the way of bars and restaurants, but also bottle shops. The Margi Spirit is two thirds blanco, and one third is our sunrise lime liqueur.
That’s pretty smart.
JACK: Have you seen a sunrise lime before?
I had no idea there was such a thing. Until just now.
JACK: It’s probably the closest native fruit to an orange type flavour. They look like kumquats. But the CSIRO developed them in the 90s. So it’s a finger lime, a kumquat and a mandarin all in one. You get all those flavours. It’s really, really cool. We get those from Bush To Bowl, down in New South Wales — it’s an indigenous and native farm.
PAT: It’s a 100 percent indigenous business and they source from other indigenous farmers. We had a relationship from way back, and they offer different native fruits. Even though sunrise lime wasn’t an OG native, it’s been made for our land. And yeah, it’s great working with those guys because the freshness of all the fruits we get off of them are ridiculous.
JACK: And we lengthen that out with a few other ingredients like passionfruit, cassowary coast vanilla, and strawberry gum leaf.
PAT: It’s Jack’s version of a fancy triple sec.
JACK: It’s made a touch sweeter so then that way you don’t have to add sugar yourself. So 60ml of our Margi Spirit, 30ml lime. A nice little unique Australian Margarita.
Tell me about this Bushwater can.
PAT: Bushwater — it’s our version of a Ranch Water, but it’s kind of like seltzer. Australians don’t really know what a ranch water is, so we were like well everyone’s familiar with the term bush water and then let’s try to coin it into this kind of drink.
That’s ridiculously crushable.
PAT: 5 percent ABV by the way. We peeled 200 kilos of limes, hand peeled without the pith.
JACK: So many people were trying to tell me that dried lime peel is much easier. I’m like, yeah, but it doesn’t taste the same. It’s like night and day, it’s so different.
PAT: From a portfolio strategy point of view, we wanted to have something that was less of a barrier entry for price point, but still showcases native ingredients, showcases what we can offer. And I would argue that’s one of the best RTDs in market for you. Very biased of course. And then the spirits are a long term play. As business owners, from a cash flow point of view, you need to have something to still get the pull-through at a retail level. The spirits are going to take a long time for education.
And talks us through the Sparkling Margi can?
JACK: This is more of your Highball Margarita. It leans a little bit more into the sunrise lime liqueur, just because it is so unique.
PAT: Five percent ABV as well.
JACK: It's a bit more on that, like on the sweeter drinker side, but it's still nice and flavourful.
How did the name come about?
We thought about it for ages; Beudi was always there, but it was going to be spelled B-E-A-U-D-I.
It’s an exclamation of appreciation. Like if your neighbour mowed your lawn, or if you were driving around a busy car park and you find that rockstar car park at the front, or it's about to storm one afternoon and you run out and grab the clothes off the line and then you get in and then just pisses down and you're like, oh, you beauty. It was an exclamation of appreciation.
Issue number four of Boothby magazine lands at the end of August — to get your copy, and the next three issues, sign up here. Your support of Boothby means a lot!
