About Us
We are Craig and Joscelyn, the husband and wife team behind Quokka Premium Spirits, and this is our story …
“I’d really love to have a drink, but with my allergies, I just can’t risk it.”
“They say no gluten or preservatives,
but I end up sick after not even a glass.”
“I don’t like the way spirits taste all ‘funky’ after a bit. It’s like I need to eat something just to clean the taste buds.”
There’s a huge problem for many people who have issues with common additives, preservatives and flavours, us included.
We wanted to be able to have a glass of spirit now and then, but as anyone with multiple chemical sensitivites will tell you, finding a product you can trust is the real challenge; and we found the same.
Not being happy to just abstain, we started looking into what additives and agents are used (but are not listed ingredients) and we were a little horrified. In talking to others in a similar situation, we found the same story. Having a drink just wasn’t worth the health impacts.
This is why we started Quokka. We wanted to be able to have a drink we enjoy without worrying that someone in the production process was a little careless.
Craig came to distilling from informal backgrounds in chemistry and practical engineering and physics. Not content to just follow tradition, Craig has substantially redesigned many of the distillation processes to produce consistent, quality spirits at an artisanal scale.
Joscelyn is from a management and practical background, but like all small-enterprise owners, she’s actively involved in every step of production.
Both came to distilling through the frustration of not being able to find a spirit that both tasted good and didn’t react badly. If it wasn’t grains in production, it was chemicals commonly used in large distillation operations.
Fast-forward after a few years of licensing, research and development, and continual system overhaul and redesign, and we now have a little distillery able to perform better than many of the big ones (in terms of quality of product).
Our mission
… is to the many people who – because of reactions, sensitivities, intolerances – can no longer drink commercial spirits, but would like to. Gluten is a great example of why.
Celiac and severe gluten reactive folks know that not all spirits are gluten-reactivity-free.
The gluten structure itself is considered too big to loft during normal distillation, but this is not the end of the story.
The small building blocks of gluten that actually cause internal reactions are far smaller than the whole gluten structure, and spirits made on gluten-bearing grains may not be free of these far smaller structures.
The same can be said for many of the agents prohibited by our Quokka-Pure standard. We know it’s free of these nasties, because they never get near the process to start with.
At Quokka, we pride ourselves on producing the very best spirit we can possibly imagine. This means long research and development, but it also means great final products.
Our range will always be small because we have no interest in turning our passion into a chore. We’d rather offer to you a small quality range rather than bottling a wider range of lower quality products.
We are a boutique, artisanal distillery, and our aim is to produce a spirit that you’ll be happy to call your favourite of all time.
Our Perfectionism
… is based on not wanting to be “just another vodka/spirit” in an already crowded and commercialised market.
We decided very early to not go to market unless we had an exceptional product. We would describe our criteria as:
It must be smooth in the mouth and throat, with no grab, just a lovely warmth.
It must be the pinnacle of flavour; not just being a form of alcohol, but to represent the soul of the spirit. It must start clean and clear, offer subtle complexity on the palate, and finish as crisp and clean as it started.
Whilst no spirit can claim to be the “world’s best”, there are certainly some that are in the very top tier, and it is there we place our spirits.
Crystal Falls is a vodka that redefines much of what people expect of vodka. Discover it for yourself, today.