Words - Vanessa Rose
IT started in a garage and with a love of experimenting.
Add to that a desire to create simple cocktails plus the difficulty of finding two types of spirit on the market and Lucid Distilling Co. was born in Angaston.
The dream of Rebekah Richardson, a winemaker of 25 years and counting, has become a reality.
In what started as a Covid project, working with friend Scott DiSalvo, who was master distiller for E & J Gallo in California where Ms Richardson was employed for seven years, she has taught herself the process.
“Scott offered guidance and learning all along the way. So, from playing around with a small still through Covid, I now play around with larger volumes for various projects,” she said.
“I spent most of my winemaking career in large corporate and enjoyed the breadth of these roles.
A few years ago I realised I wanted to have more time to do the things I loved, such as spending time with the important people in my life, rock climbing, motorbiking, reading and taking my tiny camper out and about, so just stepped off the merry go round.”
From there, Ms Richardson, along with Ed, “the man beside the woman [who] likes to be behind the scenes”, decided they loved the idea of lime and chilli spirits.
“We then started to think about what was missing presently in the cocktails market,” she said.
“We wanted to make something that showed the beautiful intensity of our chosen ingredients.
“We didn’t want it to have anything artificial or any sugar. Most importantly, we wanted it to be versatile and be able to stand alone as a new to world spirit offering.”
And then came Lucid, which Ms Richardson said was all about one of the definitions of the word – “showing or having the ability to think clearly, especially in intervals between periods of confusion or insanity”.
“It felt – particularly through the early days of Covid – that we were all trying to think clearly but there was this confusion and insanity,” she explained.
I also love the idea of being in a dream but able to control events. All of it sort of struck home as I was creating the spirit.
Using ingredients home-grown organically in their garden, Ms Richardson produces Lucid Chilli and Lucid Lime spirits.
“They are intense spirits made to be part of the cocktail experience,” she said. “I love lime and chilli and couldn’t find anything on the market that was natural, not sweetened, intense and flavourful.
“Everything was either really sweet or all the flavour and aroma was not from a natural source.
“I am a huge fan of tequila-based cocktails and I wanted something that would augment those, or stand alone as a tasty spirit to have with just a mixer.”
What makes these spirits special compared to competitors is that they are triple-distilled from a wine-base-with-distillation technique Ms Richardson said she has not heard of anyone else using.
“I make the spirit from start to finish. Then, the ingredients are infused into the spirit with a combination of dried and fresh at different times, for different periods and at different alcohols.
“The process is very much small batch and takes quite a bit of time.”
Although the brand was created as a “fun project”, Ms Richardson said she “wanted to do good with it, so all profits are sent to global re-wilding initiatives”.
But her generosity doesn’t stop there.
She is also involved in raising funds for women in the wine industry through the ‘Hear Me Roar’ brand, “to help lift them up and hopefully continue to close the gap on gender and wage disparity”.
Hear Me Roar launched in 2019 with a collaborative shiraz to not only recognise women in wine, but also fund opportunities for them to succeed.
“I sit on the Women in Wine Awards board, which is the brainchild of Jane Thomson,” Ms Richardson said.
“Her idea was to create the first women in wine awards in the world in an effort to highlight the wonderful women in our industry and continue to raise awareness about the lack of parity both in physical representation but also in remuneration.
Having reached fairly senior levels in the wine industry, I felt we needed to do more to bring women up to those levels and beyond.”
The first Hear Me Roar product, a shiraz wine made by Ms Richardson and three other female winemakers – Sue Hodder of Wynns Coonawarra, Corrina Wright of Oliver’s Taranga and Emma
Norbiato of Calabria wines – helped raise about $40,000 which went directly to funding women to achieve developmental opportunities in their chosen area.
“We are hoping to match if not exceed this for Hear Me Roar – the Gin,” she said.
“The recipe for the gin was determined by a vote after asking women across the industry to submit what ingredients they thought should be included.
“We then narrowed these entries down to four choices, this went out to vote and with over 200 people placing their vote the final winner was Tracy Taylor from Southwood Vineyards in Tasmania.
“Her winning combination was blackcurrant leaf, native finger lime and Tasmanian pepperberry.
The project has been supported by the Women in Wine Awards board along with companies donating services and products, including Ms Richardson, with sponsorship and distillation.
All profits will go to assist women to flourish and succeed in their chosen profession in the Australian wine industry.
As for her Ms Richardson’s own industry plans?
“I am just enjoying seeing where it may take me,” she said. “Already it has taken me to creating Hear Me Roar as well as helping out a few friends with their distilling project.”