STORY BY MAHMOOD FAZAL, PHOTOS BY CHRIS TURNER

Joseph Maiden was a botanist, curator and collector, most famous for his work with the eucalyptus and the acacia. Visitors to his museum were presented with 'narratives of progress' that traversed Australian botany, geology and zoology. Maiden would present a raw product and demonstrate how it could be made useful, the exhibits focused on ideas of progressive transformation.

When you drink a splash of Maidenii’s classic Vermouth in Trentham’s Du Fermier, the ghosts of Joseph Maiden’s ideas come to life through a fragrant bouquet that calls to memory the Wombat State Forest and
the smell of bush that makes Australia feel like home. Their classic Vermouth is made from Syrah grapes and a botanical blend of Strawberry gum, wattle seed, river mint, sea parsley, orange zest, bay leaf and gentian root.

Maidenii Vermouth is a collaboration between Shaun Byrne, a celebrated mixologist who
has been making cocktails since he legally allowed to do so, and Gilles Lapalus, the third generation of a prestigious wine-producing family from the Cluny region of Burgundy.

Together, their visionary practice harks back to the experimentations of early innovators toying with the rarest botanicals and spices, such as 13th century Catalan theologian Arnau de Vilanova and George Baker in the 16th century – whose Vermouth making philosophy was, “to make the weak become strong, and the old crooked age appear young and lusty.”

Like all purists, Gilles and Shaun started producing Vermouth as a passion project. “When we started it was just like a hobby,” explains Gilles Lapalus, who is currently in the middle of a harvest, “it was all very experimental, every year when I make wine I focus on some small projects on the side to experiment with wine. I knew I really wanted to master botanicals.”

Recipes for infusing white wine date back to ancient Greece from around 400 BC, the name "vermouth" is the French pronunciation of the German word wermut for wormwood because it was used for its medicinal qualities.

“We were different to the other Vermouths in the market because we were making wine specifically for Vermouth, we were using very high quality grapes from Heathcote and our wine was made with zero additives, quite naturally. We started experimenting with native botanicals, using the botanicals and spirits during fermentation - which no one was doing.”

The result is a line of Vermouths that summons nostalgia on the nose while bewitching the palette. Maidenii’s Vermouth aperitif was quickly sought after by Attica, among some of Australia’s best restaurants, launching them to the forefront of the Vermouth world.

As an artful cocktail maker, Shaun’s process is focussed on the progressive transformations that open up the possibilities of their Vermouth. “We use 34 botanicals in our vermouth, each of them maturated anywhere between two weeks and two months by themselves. Those individual botanical tinctures become the master tincture that we use to fortify the wine during fermentation,” says Shaun.

Maidenii

shaun@maidenii.com.au

0424 471 311

maidenii.com.au