8thTRIBE Kiwifruit - Premium Liqueur, 26% alc/vol, 750mL

Kiwifruit was the first fruit that went through our brand new still back in 2001. It really couldn’t have been any other - the heart of New Zealand’s kiwifruit industry is visible from the Distillerie!  

We start with delicate ZESPRI® GREEN Kiwifruit, known around the world for its tangy and refreshing taste. Picked for us from the orchard down the road. After slow and careful batch distillation, we blend this four times distilled liqueur with 100% pure water from our own spring; creating this sophisticated, multi-layered, truly sensational liqueur that will leave your taste buds tingling - DISTINCTIVELY SMOOTH.

Proudly distilled in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand.

These are two of our favourite ways to enjoy 8thTRIBE Kiwifruit:

ON THE ROCKS - over ice, any time, any place

KIWI CAIPIROSKA

• 30mL 8thTRIBE Kiwifruit Liqueur
• 1 green Kiwifruit
• 1/2 Lime quartered

In a Boston Glass muddle the limes and peeled kiwifruit. Add Ice and remaining ingredients, shake well. Using a Hawthorn strainer, pour into short glass or martini glass and garnish with a slice of kiwifruit.

For more inspiration download our cocktail recipe list - TribalMixology.pdf (390Kb)

The story of how we make our Kiwifruit liqueur has more to do with how we didn’t, than how we do.  Quite simply our first batches of Kiwifruit were total disasters. We expectantly hung around our brand new still for those first drops of heart distillate to emerge (it was massively exciting), we were thrilled; so much flavour, so much amazing fruit aroma, so much back slapping for a job well done! Oh, the naivety! What in that moment of unbridled joy we didn’t realize, was later in the heart run, undesirable traits that are part of every furry little kiwifruit came through in abundance. Seeds, skins, fur, the end of the stalk, even the white bit in the middle, all contributed to a grassy, silage like flavour and smell.  Deflated but not deterred we started the process of figuring things out; theories were hatched, hypotheses tested.  Soon we got to enjoy the fruits of our labour; foam coming out of the still, furry fruit fluff everywhere, pulp on the ceiling and us, even very very drunk dairy cows. It took a while, but we finally learned how to make a truly fantastic Kiwifruit distillate. This journey continues, excellence is always our goal - what we learn from making other products finds us constantly raising the bar and our own expectations.

To this day Kiwifruit still rates as one of our most challenging flavours to capture.