At the recent Spirits Victoria Association Annual Conference in Ballarat, Brogan Carr announced she was undertaking PhD studies at Melbourne University to investigate the chemical and sensory contributions that native botanicals have for Australian Gins.

Spirits Victoria considers this an extremely important research project as there are very few published papers on the topic and this research will vastly improve our industry’s understanding of the impact these ingredients have to a product category that is the largest in the craft space in Victoria. Spirits Victoria hope this is the first step towards an Australian Botanical Library.

Brogan is on the start of a long journey to collect data and conduct detailed chemical analysis, but as a first step, she needs our help. Brogan has developed a questionnaire that allows distilleries to provide information in a confidential manner - all information is de-identified and stored on a secure cloud server.

The results of the research will not be available for some years, but we hope to be able to publish them when they are available.

So this is our call to action - help Brogan by completing the Survey, which can be accessed using the QR code below (The password for the QR code is SVA24). You can contact Brogan to ask questions about the research at carrbl@student.unimelb.edu.au.

Thank you for assisting what we hope is the first of many research projects that can help our industry improve and develop.