3 tonnes of food. In landfill. Every seven minutes. That’s more than 600,000 tonnes a year. Once in landfill the food is compacted and rots slowly releasing harmful greenhouse gases which warm our planet.

Of all food waste, bread and bakery products are among the most wasted. Even worse, about half of all the wheat we use to manufacture the bread we then waste, is imported.

Sue Stockwell and I started Dunedin Craft Distillers because we wanted to do something about the tonnes of retail bread and bakery waste that ends up in our local landfill each year.

We believed that change could and should happen at a local level.

We began small. Processing around eight loaves of bread in a single batch in a tiny rented kitchen space in mid-2020 just after the first COVID lockdown.

By the end of 2020 we celebrated making our very first bottles of Dunedin Dry Gin and Cacao Vodka and by early 2021 we started selling small volumes of our spirits. But we had little idea of the journey that lay ahead.

Since the beginning we have worked in partnership with Kiwi Harvest, our local food rescue service, to ensure the bread we take is not coming out of the mouths of people who need it most.

Kiwi Harvest collects surplus from local supermarkets and bakeries, gives away what they can, and we take what they’ve been unable to distribute. We also receive surplus bread and seconds direct from Goodman Fielder in Dunedin, as well as from local sandwich shops, and community fundraisers.

To survive, our business needed to scale up. We needed to produce and sell more to make a profit and be viable. For three years, we hand-stirred 60 kilogram batches of bread in a giant gas-fired pot in a shed behind our distillery. The shed had holes in the roof, was cold and leaked and we shared it with a rich variety of flora and fauna.

Today, the shed has been restored, we have electrically powered equipment, much of which we designed and developed with the help of local tradies, and we’ve funded the whole enterprise with the help of many loyal customers and supporters.

We cook surplus bread with water to create a mash and break down carbohydrates and starch into sugars. We strain this mash to remove solids, add yeast to the sugary liquid which then ferments to produce an alcoholic bread beer. Next, we distill the beer to concentrate the alcohol into semi-neutral spirit. Solids from the mash are shovelled into a small trailer and taken away by Merrall from Holy Cow Dairy Farm to feed his cows.

We started out using 25L hobby stills to produce spirits. This was time consuming, labour intensive and the resulting spirit was variable in quality. So, towards the end of 2022 we took a leap of faith and began work to commission our much bigger 500L still.

Today, from each 200 kilogram batch of bakery surplus, we produce around 40 litres of 94% ethanol or semi-neutral spirit which we then redistill into award winning spirits including gin, vodka, whisky and liqueurs.

For us, it is not just about diverting waste. It is also about not plundering precious agricultural resource to manufacture alcohol. And we’re very proud that not a drop of the 3.6 million litres of cheap neutral spirit, imported to NZ each year, is used in the manufacture of our products. And it never will be.

Over the past couple of years, more than 2,000 people have taken our “bread to bottle” tours. And almost without exception when we show people the bread waste destined for our mash, they say, “But, I could eat that!”. When directly confronted by good food going to waste, people are appalled.

We’ve spoken to thousands more folk at the Otago Farmers Market every Saturday. People are fascinated by how we turn bread into alcohol, and we never miss an opportunity to explain why we do it and why we think it matters.

Recently, we passed the 19 tonne mark for bread upcycled since we started trading. We are taking just a tiny bite out of local food waste but we are now in a good position to do more.

Over the last few decades, we have all enjoyed the benefits of large scale industrial food production. But make no mistake, this approach has come at a cost.

Our planet is warming. Climate scientists tell us that the weather events we are experiencing now are fuelled by greenhouse gas emissions from the 1990s.

Public policy researchers point out that insurance losses are out running growth in GDP. This means that, at some point, our homes and businesses will simply be uninsurable.

30 years from now what is life in Ōtepōti Dunedin going to be like?

If this worries you, it should. But we are not powerless and we have choices.

Every small step matters. Every choice each of us makes to reuse resources and reduce waste, build local resilience and think differently about how we value each other and our environment contributes to meaningful change.

We’ve been contributing limited release gins, cocktails, workshops and popups since 2022. In that time, Wild Dunedin has grown in size and scope. This year, there is a dizzying array of events, activities and excursions so, do checkout their programme.

On Wednesday 15th April, we’ll be opening our PopUp Bar, serving Sustainable Drinks and Nibbles.

Open from 6PM until 9PM. No bookings required and entry is free. Just call in!

Choose from our signature sustainable spirits, light and non-alcoholic drinks (including our classic Mulled Gin and new, traditionally fermented non-alcoholic Lemonade) and a special cocktail made to celebrate Wild Dunedin. Food options include delicious fresh pretzels from the good folk at Pretzelation and antipasto platters.

Download our indicative menu and price list below.

Drinks&food Menu2026

135KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Over the last year or so our Limoncello has become increasing popular. Hand made in the traditional way we use only lemon zest, our bread-based alcohol and sugar to produce this classic Italian digestive.

In the early days we were able to use all the zested lemons in the production of our Mulled Gin. Any lemons left after that were given away to friends and family. But as production has increased, we have had to find a use for the kilos of lemons we are now going through every week.

When I was very young, from time to time, my Grandma would serve up her fermented lemonade. It was fizzy, not too sweet and delicious. I much preferred it to the sickly lemon cordials that often passed as home made ‘lemonade’. Sadly, her recipe was never passed on through the family so we began some experiments to see if we could use the zested lemons to recreate Grandma Mac’s non-alcoholic fermented lemonade.

After a few weeks of trial and error we have settled on a recipe. The fermentation is provided by the addition of a little fresh whey from our friends at Holy Cow to the lemons, water and sugar. The result is a light, lemony, fizzy beverage with beneficial probiotics (lactobacillus) from the whey starter.

There is a lot of talk about the circular economy. This is the circular economy in action. The solids from every bread mash we make from surplus bakery product go to Holy Cow as supplementary feed. Now we are taking whey from those same cows and using it to make lemonade.

In these increasingly uncertain times, perhaps now more than ever, resource reuse and recovery will be vital to ensure our communities are resilient and sustainable. I think Grandma Mac would approve.

And no one was posing for this picture!

Among those veterans, was Jenny’s Dad who served on HMS Tracker. Like many men of his generation, he spoke little about the war but in later years he clearly enjoyed the fellowship and friendship of other veterans and he was a proud member of the Convoy Club of NZ.

Today, there are only 4 remaining members of the Convoy Club of New Zealand. It is with their kind permission that we have developed a special commemorative Arctic Convoy Gin - Navy Strength. We plan to release a batch each year around ANZAC Day and at the request of the Convoy Club of NZ, 10% of the profits from sales of the gin will be donated to the Malaghan Institute for Medical Research . Our sincere thanks to:

Chris King (ex. HMS Bluebell)

Derek Whitwam (ex. HMS Berwick)

Syd Wells (ex. HMS Magpie) (dec.)

Stan Welch (ex. HMS Apollo)

Arch Jelley (ex. HMS Bermuda)

The ingredients for the gin have been carefully chosen to reflect the Arctic flora, the naval traditions of serving tots of alcohol to sailors and the link to NZ Service Personnel. Juniper, Coriander Seed, NZ Honeyberry (an Arctic native), NZ limes and Sea Salt round out the ingredients. The gin is bright and fresh with berry on the nose and palette, fresh lime and a hint of salinity. Enjoy as a sipper on the rocks, with soda and a wedge of lime or with a light tonic.

Visit the Convoy Club and New Zealand to find out more about the history of the Arctic Convoys and the New Zealanders who served on them.

We’re looking forward to Art Night at Dunedin Public Art Gallery on Wednesday the 25th February from 5pm - 8pm. Come along and enjoy one of Sue’s cocktails. A celebration of Otago summer fruits, Apricot Gimlet, Arancello Spritz and a Strawberry and Cucumber Fizz Mocktail.

Presumably to avoid upset, and extended extra-curricular discussion, the Chartered Institute of Brewers and Distillers have alighted on ‘whisk(e)y’ in all their modern educational material which covers a broad church of whisk(e)y production methods. A more inelegant case of a foot in all camps it is hard to imagine.

Frankly, life is too short and anyway, these heady debates feel a long way from our modest shed in the Otago Harbour Basin. If it looks like a whisky and tastes like a whisky, albeit from unconventional beginnings, then to us, it’s a whisky. Nevertheless, we aim to keep within the guard rails set by Distilled Spirits Aotearoa’s NZ Whisky Guidelines in both producing and ageing our embryonic product and we are watching the current regulatory space with interest.

In the meantime, we need something more than just ‘whisky’ on the label of our ‘wee craythur’. We’ve tossed ideas around for as long as our first whisky has been ageing in its cask. Many visitors who have toured our facility and sampled the bread-whisky-in-progress have proffered suggestions. Nothing has felt quite right until a pair of Irish Dunedinites breezed through on a tour early this year.

Somehow, the subject of French Toast came up as our visitors inspected our collection of small casks. The French don’t call french toast, French Toast, they explained. They call it, Pain Perdu. This point was helpfully confirmed by Bastien. Literally, Pain Perdu means ‘lost bread’ since it is usually the dry bread ends or leftovers that make the best of being dunked in egg and milk then fried in butter. How about ‘Lost Bread Whisky’?

It had a ring to it. It accurately describes the origin of our central ingredient. And it looks good in writing. Like all good things, we’ll give it time and see if Lost Bread Whisky sticks. If it does, you read it here first.

We can now process up to 200kg of bakery product into spirits each week. This is a 10-fold increase in our capacity since we started back in 2021 but it is still barely a nibble out of the quantity of bakery product that goes to waste each week. Sometimes you have to ask, does what we do make a difference?

We think it does and this is why:

Even small reductions in emissions from landfill will make a difference. There is a tendency to see small wins as inconsequential in the grand scheme of things. This article from RNZ explains why that is a mistake: Every Tonne Matters. The Climate Scientist Who Wants to Give You Hope

We share our production process through tours, talks and public engagement. This helps to raise awareness about food waste in general and our bespoke upcycling process in particular. Our tours and workshops are gaining both local and international recognition. Book your tour online.

All our products are brewed, fermented and distilled 100% from scratch onsite at our premises in Dunedin Harbour Basin. Specifically, we do not use cheap imported or industrially produced neutral spirit as the base for any of our products. And we never will.

I found Merrall, complete with headlamp and long pink milking apron, in the shed preparing to bring the cows up. He chatted amiably as he went about his business before we headed off to collect a barrow load of our smash destined for the cows’ breakfast.

Once the hay and the mash were dished out, Merrall plodded up the road to bring down the cows. I was instructed to wait quietly to one side of the milking shed entrance to get pictures as they entered the shed.

Cows are among my favourite animals. I had two of my own a few years back. They are warm, intelligent, curious and have a particular sense of humour, especially when you’re wanting to milk them.

One of my cows, Gertie, had a young calf. The other cow didn’t have a calf and was inclined to be boisterous so I somewhat reluctantly decided to dispatch her to the freezer. I will never forget Gertie coming up to me in the paddock after the homekill man had visited. It was first light too - just like here at Holy Cow. Gertie’s nose was streaming moisture and steaming in the cold. She was quivering. I put my arms around her neck and the pair of us sobbed together gently in the paddock.

The appearance of Merrall and his cows in the lane jolted me out of my reverie. Breath steaming, each cow paused to inspect me and sniff my camera. I stayed very still and admired each one as, one by one, they headed for the shed and settled to their business of consumption and production.

The cows were relaxed and unfazed by my presence as I fussed over my shots and tried not to disrupt their morning routine.

When Merrall waved me off to begin my day I felt relaxed and unfazed too. A good day is a day that begins with cows.