How it started…
It all started with passion. My passion for listening to people, their stories and their history, my passion for experiencing the unfamiliar, my passion for discovering new flavours and my passion for passing these experiences on to others. I started in hospitality a lifetime ago, making Lemon Lime Bitters in my sisters’ restaurant, but it was enough for me to catch the bug. I loved perfecting the drinks I served, I wanted to know about the components that made them up, I wanted to respect the ingredients, and this is where my passion began.
My passion soon pushed me into the world of café’s, restaurants, pubs, casinos and cocktail bars. I was lucky to witness the birth of ‘premiumisation’ of spirits and the renaissance of the ‘craft cocktail’ and dove myself headfirst into cocktail competitions, I was lucky enough to travel around Australia, New Zealand and represent Australia in a World Final in Amsterdam, and my passion continued to grow.
I expanded out into training, Brand Ambassador work and discovered another side of my passion, passing my love of the products I worked with on to other people. I prided myself on being able to walk into a room full of strangers and walk out with some new best friends that shared the love of the product I was promoting.
My passion then pushed me to build my knowledge on all the worlds wine regions, forever working on a better answer to the question “What’s your favourite drink?” to which these days I can only answer “Whatever is currently in front of me”
Then COVID hit, it made me have a different perspective of my passion and what I wanted to do with it. I realised I wanted to only work with people who are as passionate as me, small producers that start out with an idea and a drive to make singular, honest products that speak of place, that don’t buck to trends, and most importantly, taste freaking delicious!
This is how Dispatch Fine Wines and Spirits was started in June 2022. The company looks vastly different to what I thought it would be when I started, but the core idea has never waivered from the initial idea:
“Discover passionate people making products with passion, and help others develop a passion for them”