Our Story
AT HARRIER SPRINGS DISTILLERY LTD, SUSTAINABILITY IS NOT A TREND—IT’S OUR TRADITION.
Harrier Springs Distillery is family owned and operated from our homestead, named Harrier Springs Homestead. We have a deep passion for relearning old forgotten skills and making products from scratch. We often have to start by making the tools to make the products! For example, we built our 440 litre wood fired still and mash tun ourselves, to historically correct design, but with the intention of making it beautiful, not just functional. we produce small-batch premium spirits using only time-honoured methods that would have been available or possible in the time period that wood fired stills were the mainstay of the distilling industry. Our focus is on historically correct products and methods. For example, this is why we do not chill filter our spirits. Everything we do is more labour intensive but gives us great satisfaction at the end of a hard day!
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Harrier Springs is not a one trick pony, only capable of distilling. We also produce and process our own food on our homestead. Organic beef, chicken, eggs, honey, vegetables, corn, organic tallow soap, tinctures, moisturisers, face creams - the list goes on! In time we will also be releasing all of these through our Harrier Springs Homestead site.
Now let's get back to our Distillery!
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We are deeply respectful of the land and our natural resources which provide us with the materials and ingredients for the luxuries and necessities we produce.
Here's how our passion for heritage, the environment, and quality flows through everything we do.
​From Seed to Spirit
Our story begins in the soil.
Our fields are nurtured naturally. Manure from our own cows and chickens fertilises the land, creating a growing cycle that keeps our corn seed pure, healthy, and true to its origins.
Cow and chicken manure is fermented over winter ready for fertilising and planting in spring, it is then applied by hand with buckets. Our corn field is covered over winter so we don't have to spray for weeds when it is time to plant which is also done by hand.
We use only New Zealand malt supplemented with our own period correct - heirloom bloody butcher corn seed, which we propagate on site away from other corn fields to protect this strain of heirloom genetics, before planting in a leased corn field nearby.
From seed, to harvest, to the final spirit in your glass!
WE RESPECT EVERY DROP OF WATER
Water is at the heart of distilling — and we treat it with care. Cooling water is drawn from our on-site spring-fed reservoir, passed through the still’s oak barrel condenser, and returned unchanged to the same source.
This closed-loop system means there is absolutely zero net water usage — a rare achievement in distillation — allowing us to craft spirits while preserving one of nature’s most precious resources.
LEGACY IN EVERY DROP
At Harrier Springs, sustainability is not an obligation — it’s a way of honouring our heritage, our forefathers and the land that gives us everything. Our dedication to ethical, low-impact production is more than a method, it is who we are.
To learn more about all aspects of our distillery and homestead, follow our blog where we chronical our activities. This is a place to share what we have learnt and to learn from other's comments, share our successes and failures - perhaps better called "learning opportunities".
Life is a journey and so is Harrier Springs!