Four Pillars Gin Pairs Great Gin with a Smaller Footprint

Photo: Four Pillars Gin

What goes into Four Pillars Gin is easy to love: whole fresh citrus, native Australian botanicals and a genuine obsession with flavor.

What happens around and after the process — from reusing leftover botanicals to powering operations with renewable energy and rethinking packaging — is what makes Four Pillars a Seeing Green Solutionist of the Day.

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A Gin Built on Flavor and Place

The brand was born in 2013 in the Yarra Valley of Victoria, Australia, when three friends set out to make what they called "modern Australian gin" with a single custom-built copper still they named Wilma, after one founder's late mother. More than a decade later, the distillery has become one of the most recognized gin producers in the world — and one of the more thoughtful ones when it comes to how it operates.

Photo: Four Pillars Gin

The Four Pillars lineup ranges from approachable to genuinely inventive, but a few things run through all of it: whole fresh citrus in every gin and locally sourced native botanicals like lemon myrtle and Tasmanian pepper. These aren’t just flavor choices. They’re a reflection of where this gin comes from.

The standouts are the ones that push furthest from convention. Bloody Shiraz Gin steeps gin with whole Shiraz grapes, producing something fruit-forward and deeply drinkable. Olive Leaf Gin takes things in a savory direction with olive leaf tea and olive oil, textural, bright and unlike most gins you’ve tried. For those who want more intensity, Navy Strength turns up the proof and the botanical punch.

The Rare Dry is the entry point, and it’s a very good one: bright citrus, balanced spice and a clear sense of the Australian landscape it comes from. Beyond its core gins, Four Pillars also extends the experience with ready-to-drink cocktails, a non-alcoholic option and a range of products that build on the same flavor-first approach.

What Happens After the Still

The sustainability story at Four Pillars started small and practical, with a question about leftover oranges.

Photo: Four Pillars Gin

Early in the distillery's life, spent citrus from the Rare Dry Gin distillation was piling up with nowhere to go. Rather than discard it, the team turned it into Orange Marmalade — and that simple decision grew into a “Made From Gin” range that gives distillation byproducts a second life in items like marmalade, gin salt, chocolate and even a Breakfast Negroni spread.

That circularity mindset has expanded considerably since. The distillery roof is now fully covered in solar panels. In 2022, Four Pillars became Australia's first certified carbon neutral gin distillery, covering both its bottled products and overall operations. By 2023 the distillery was running entirely on renewable energy. A refill and takeback program for bottles, launched as a trial and made permanent, rounds out the packaging side of the equation.

For its efforts, Four Pillars received the inaugural Global Green Spirit Initiative trophy from the International Wine and Spirit Competition, the first award of its kind designed specifically to recognize sustainability leadership in distilling.

Photo: Four Pillars Gin

The Distillery Itself

Four Pillars' expanded Healesville home is worth a mention on its own. Built with recycled and upcycled materials including concrete bricks, the space is wrapped in a copper "veil" made from 1,650 meters of raw copper tubing that functions as a natural heat exchange system, reducing energy consumption as the distillery operates. It is, to put it plainly, a beautiful and intentional building.

The brand has also set a target of 50% emissions reduction by 2030, a forward-looking commitment that goes beyond what most spirits producers have put on paper.

A More Thoughtful Pour

Great gin and a genuine sustainability story don't often come in the same bottle. Four Pillars is making the case that they should, and that the commitment to doing things better doesn't have to show up as compromise anywhere along the way.

It turns out making gin more thoughtfully also means making it more interestingly. That's a trade-off worth toasting.