As Australia’s bar and spirits industry started to shift away from the familiar imported staples to focus on locally-produced, boutique spirits, four friends saw an opportunity to make their mark in the liqueur space. Shaun Byrne, Nick Tesar, Hugh Leech and Lauren Bonkowski, are Marionette, one of the country’s up-and-coming distilleries, creating classic liqueurs with an Australian twist.
“We noticed that this trend was yet to hit liqueurs – the building block of so many cocktails – with European players still dominating the market. It was our chance to shake things up”, states Lauren Bonkowski.
With this opportunity at hand, they partnered up with local farmers, sourcing small yield, high quality ingredients at their peak, to begin producing their line of liqueurs.
Their philosophy was simple, “Drink local. Drink Seasonal.”
“We harness the wonderful produce Australia has to offer to create a serious product, without taking ourselves too seriously.”
It was this emphasis on using quality local ingredients to make quality local spirits, that resulted in Marionette winning the 2018 Australian Distilled Spirits Awards Champion Liqueur category for their, ‘Dry Cassis’. An outstanding achievement for a distillery that is a little over two years old.
However the win took the team by total surprise, so much so that they didn’t even pick up on the subtle clues present on the awards night.
“We were completely shocked, especially this being our first-ever product. It was so unexpected that when we arrived at the ceremony, it didn’t even click that our Cassis was being used in a ‘winners’ cocktail’ of Kir Royales being circulated at the award’s entrance.”
Despite, initially entering the awards as a way of supporting and learning from their industry peers, Marionette now hopes that the win will raise the profile of local liqueurs among the drinking public.
“We hope this win will bring attention to the category. We already have good product knowledge among local bartenders, but we hope the exposure will help entice more consumers to experiment with home-grown liqueurs.”
Today, the Marrionette’s product line now spans six items, with plans to have a range of 20 liqueurs within the next three years. Their liqueurs can be purchased online from onlybitters.com.au or nicks.com.au, they also encourage people to contact them directly to check local stockists.