A ginterview with the mothers of Mothers Ruined

Full dis­clos­ure: I have worked with the Moth­ers on Boom Gin – a col­lab­or­a­tion with my eth­ic­al cloth­ing com­pany, which is fund­ing a schol­ar­ship to the week­end for fat babes that I run. Even if I had­n’t done that though, I would still think they are very cool and inter­est­ing people who make deli­cious products which more Wel­ling­to­ni­ans should know more about.

Hello! Obvi­ously I know a fair bit about you both from our work togeth­er, but the wider Wel­ling­tonista audi­ence may not. So tell us, who are you? How did Moth­ers Ruined Gin get star­ted? Whose idea was it to make gin? How did you decide to go into busi­ness togeth­er?

Jo: Moth­ers Ruined has a long and wind­ing ori­gin story, because Helen and I have known each oth­er for over 30 years – we met in Wales in 1993, when we both star­ted study­ing mar­ine bio­logy. We were lab part­ners and we flat­ted togeth­er with oth­er friends for two years, so we were party part­ners too. Fast for­ward to the mid-2000s and we’d both emig­rated to Wel­ling­ton, where while we worked and raised our fam­il­ies, we still man­aged to spend lots of time togeth­er because we both became mem­bers of Wellington’s pre-emin­ent paranor­mal invest­ig­a­tion group (Strange Occur­rences). (Edit­or note: Jo even wrote a book – Spooked – Explor­ing the Paranor­mal in New Zea­l­and
by Dr Jo Davy & James Gil­berd – so you could say she’s been involved in spir­its for a loooooooooong time) 

Then, dur­ing a small win­dow of near-nor­mal­ity dur­ing lock­downs in 2021, we went to an event where we were able to try dis­tilling gin. A name came to mind, we remembered our labor­at­ory back­ground, we both decided an adven­ture was in order, and so then, many (many!) forms later, we found ourselves at the helm of our own gin busi­ness.

Tell us about your gins. What makes the actu­al gin (see next ques­tion) of Moth­ers Ruined spe­cial?

Our gins are no shrink­ing viol­ets. They are all boldly fla­voured, and most of them are boldly col­oured. We don’t like gins where, once the mix­er is added, the gin is lost. So we set out to cre­ate gins that would be a bit of an event and, because drink­ing in mod­er­a­tion is the type of drink­ing we like best, which means someone can enjoy one really stonk­ing gin-based drink.

via GIPHY

A key dif­fer­ence for your gin – even for people who don’t know much about gin – is your paper bottles. Why did you go down that route?

When we star­ted to look at our options for sourcing bottles, we were sur­prised to dis­cov­er that the major­ity of spir­its bottles are sourced from Europe or China, and that the energy and water require­ments to both pro­duce and recycle glass are very high. We became aware of a new UK innov­a­tion, the Frugal Bottle, and once we real­ised that this recycled paper­board option exis­ted, there really was no oth­er option for us. It uses four times less water to pro­duce, has a car­bon foot­print that is up to six times lower (when pro­duced loc­ally, as we hope they will be, in time) and is five times light­er than an equi­val­ent glass bottle. It’s not a per­fect solu­tion, but it’s a lot bet­ter.

What’s the best thing about being gin makers?

Our motto is to Be Kind, Have Fun, Make Gin, and when we are in the dis­til­lery, deep in the pro­cess of cre­at­ing a new recipe or dis­tilling one of our cur­rent gins, we really are in our happy place. But when we’ve been at events around the coun­try in this first year of being in busi­ness, we’ve been get­ting a real buzz about the reac­tion to our story, the gin, and the bottle itself.

What changes would you like to see in the spir­its industry?
It would be great to see more people will­ing to take a risk with altern­at­ive pack­aging – we know that ours isn’t the only option – but some of the altern­at­ives would be more likely to be adop­ted by pro­du­cers if the reuse/recycle infra­struc­ture in this coun­try was bet­ter, so that’s some­thing that’s big­ger than just the spir­its industry.

It would also be great if there was a little more acknow­ledg­ment by the industry that back in the day, it was usu­ally women who were the dis­til­lers. In fact, we’ll soon be start­ing to share inform­a­tion on our web­site and socials about the his­tory of women in gin, gathered by our good friend and his­tor­i­an Aman­da McVitty.

As moth­ers, you prob­ably pre­tend you don’t have favour­ite chil­dren, but which of your gins is your favour­ite?

It really does depend on the day, but if I was doing ‘Desert Island Gin’ and had to choose just one to save, it would have to be Ori­gin­al Gin (Jo). Helen has a very soft spot for Fruity Ruby.

Now you’ve col­lab­or­ated with Wellington’s best eth­ic­al cloth­ing label for fat babes, what would your next dream loc­al col­lab­or­a­tion be?

Our gins are very suited to cock­tails, being so very bold, fla­vour­ful and col­our­ful, so we’d love to do a series with one of the many superb cock­tail ven­ues in the city, like Night­flower or Hawthorn Lounge.

Jo – you deliv­er a lot of the gins via bike! What’s your favour­ite bike route in Wel­ling­ton?

Undoubtedly the ride along the South Coast, from Island Bay to Break­er Bay! Whatever the weath­er, the light and water are always amaz­ing.

What’s the best licensed place to drink gin in Wel­ling­ton? And as an obvi­ous fol­low up: what’s the best place for a Moth­ers Ruined gin pic­nic?

The Sprig & Fern tav­erns have been great sup­port­ers of MRG, so we’d encour­age Wel­ling­to­ni­ans to pop in to one of them to enjoy one of our gins! And it’s hard to go past Break­er Bay as a fab­ulous gin pic­nic spot.

And finally, what’s one thing that could improve Wel­ling­ton enorm­ously?

Oooh, that’s a gnarly ques­tion! Tempt­ing to say that hav­ing all the water leaks fixed would be ter­rif­ic, but let’s go with install­a­tion of bus stops with liv­ing roofs. Get them buzz­ing with pol­lin­at­or-friendly plants!