The New Zealand spirit is forged through a unique marriage of culture and climate. It's an intangible phenomenon that produces tangible greatness and enables Kiwis to fearlessly punch above their weight on a global stage.
And it’s this spirit that inspires the flavor to create world-class- but distinctively different – single malts. Pōkeno Whisky is quite special and behind it is a journey of discovery, no compromises in the making-process, and an abundant story of culture and Aotearoa New Zealand.
We introduce you to Matt Johns, the founder of Pōkeno Whisky as he shares the inspiration behind the whisky brand. Stoelzle Masnières proudly manufactures the Pōkeno Whisky bottles in France.
Matt, tell us more about yourself and how you decided to launch Pōkeno Whisky? How long did it take to get things off the ground?
Once we had decided to make New Zealand our permanent home in 2013, we wanted to create something in this beautiful country. Having been in the whisky industry for 25 years, a distillery was the obvious choice, especially with the fantastic natural environment that we have here. As distilling is a new industry for New Zealand, the planning stage took a long time; there was no existing infrastructure or legislation.
We learned about the beautiful Pōkeno story from your website, but can you share with us from your perspective: what sets apart Pōkeno from other whisky brands?
The two main differences are the way we distil our whisky and the environment for the maturation. We use a long fermentation time of 80 hours, and we then distil incredibly slowly, which creates enormous reflux in the still. This reflux increases the contact of our spirit with the copper, which helps us create our trademark sweet and smooth whisky. Pōkeno is situated in a humid valley, almost below sea level. This combined with the subtropical climate of the North Island of New Zealand helps our whisky to mature incredibly quickly. In Pōkeno the angels are greedy!
How common is New Zealand whisky? What can you tell us about the uniqueness of the single malt whisky and first bourbon cask process?
The whisky industry is very new to New Zealand with a small group of passionate people in the industry today, hopefully this will grow in the future. In Pōkeno, we only use our casks for one maturation. As the maturation process is accelerated by the climate, we feel that after one maturation we have taken too much out of the barrel for it to be re-used.
What can you tell us about the flavours of Aotearoa New Zealand?
We are fortunate in Pōkeno to have a natural water source below the distillery. The water is rich in iron and manganese, which are fantastic for distilling. This, combined with our unique distillation process and climate, help us to create the flavours of Pōkeno Whisky. We have very vibrant fruit notes of citrus, grapefruit and passion fruit.
Why did you decide to partner with Stoelzle on the bottles? What about the fact that the bottles are manufactured in France?
There is no compromise in anything we do at Pōkeno Whisky, and this includes our choice of partners. It has been a pleasure developing our bottle with Stoelzle, and great to see the passion the team has for our project as well.
What is the idea behind the glass bottle design and overall decoration of the bottle? How does it reflect your story?
We wanted to create something a bit different – which is not easy with the number of whisky bottles that exist today. We have managed to create a bottle which is both feminine and masculine at the same time, and has an original shape, reflecting the originality and diversity of New Zealand.
How can international customers purchase Pōkeno Whisky?
We have initially launched into France, the UK, Germany, the US and Australia. More markets will be added to this in the New Year.
To learn more about Pōkeno Whisky, visit their website.
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