Matthew Anastassiou is far from your average distiller.

With stints as a bartender, chemical engineer and air traffic controller, Anastassiou has taken the long way getting to where he is today - founder of award-winning Haiver Spirits.

Known for innovating through small-batch gins and vodkas, the Victoria-based distiller pushes boundaries of craft spirits, including through its use of vacuum distillation.

For Anastassiou, creativity has been core at the company since it was founded in 2018.

“Me being a chemical engineer, I was pretty interested just in process equipment, so we got one of these vacuum stills so we could make these distillates for all the bars and restaurants and things around Perth,” he says.

“No was really doing it and I don't think many of the venues had got the money kind of fork out the more than 30 grand you need to spend to buy one of these things.

“So we started making these distillates or flavoured alcohols that were kind of almost bespoke to what the venues were after.”

Matt Anastassiou’s path into distilling was unorthodox. Pic supplied

Exotic origins

Some of its earliest forays was crafting exotic flavours hard to source in Australia.

This included pandan and chilli distillates for popular Thai venues in Perth, where the company was originally based.

The flavours were for venues to “use in their cocktail menu and kind of really, I guess, increase their offering,” Anastassiou says, with Haiver helping to replace more time and energy intensive methods.

“The alternative was a bartender back of house jamming a heap of chillies or pandan leaves into a bottle of vodka and letting it sit for 30 days ,” he says.

“And even still you don't really get the flavour that you're after."

“Whereas with using vacuum distillation, you can effectively distil at room temperature, which means you can extract the flavours a person experiences at room temperature."

But it didn’t stop there.

The company started distilling literally anything that popped into Anastassiou’s head, including parsley, kaffir lime leaf, coffee, quandong, mandarin, clam shell, parmigiano, sandalwood, sesame, yuzu, strawberry, pineapple, and juniper.

Lemon, grape fruit, coriander seed, lime, blood lime, finger lime, yoghurt, , basil, mint, rose, and orange were also given a whirl.

“We kind of did that for a few years, but just found cocktail menus are very seasonal,” Anastassiou says.

“A customer might be running a cocktail for a few months then decide, ‘Oh, it's not moving as well anymore, let's do something wintry’.

“That meant we were always chasing our tail with what we're supposed to be producing, which is cool as you get to innovate and play around a lot, but that's also quite costly.

It was at this point that “someone said to us, well, why don't you try doing a gin”.

“And so we did.”

Shift to gin

The same experimental spirit is captured in Haiver’s gin range.

Haiver hit its strides with award-winning gin. Pic supplied

Its botanical gin, for instance, incorporates flavours of strawberry and mint as well as Macedonian berries distilled on its copper pot still.

At the same time, it still employs its “new world” cold vacuum distillation techniques.

“We've kind of moved into that more gin space and then done some coffee liqueur, which also kind of uses both, you know, new and old distilling techniques, and then now through like a schnapps and just recent hard teas,” Anastassiou says.

“So yeah, it's been a pretty interesting journey as a business. And it's kind of purely driven by just wanting to make nice products that everyone can enjoy, but also that have a bit of a bespoke touch to them. “

Hard teas focus

These days, the distiller is focused on rolling out its new product – one of the first brewed hard teas in Australia.

The tea, which comes in peach and tropical punch flavours, are pitched at the fast-growing ready-to-drink segment as more people shift away from beer, wine and traditional spirits.

So far so good. Haiver’s initial run of the product sold out in six months.

“I’ve always loved iced tea and wanted to create a boozy version that was just as refreshing but with a crafted edge,” Anastassiou says.

“Unlike what’s already available, instead of simply blending tea with spirits, I’ve brewed it on a beer base.

“This was an intentional move to give the product a silky, full-bodied mouthfeel that feels much closer to real iced tea - crisp and refreshing.”

He sees at as ideal for a new generation of drinkers who want lighter, refreshing options.

“Haiver has never been about doing things the conventional way. We wanted to create something that feels new but also instantly familiar. Like the iced tea you know and love – just slightly carbonated and a little boozier.”

According to Anastassiou, months of R&D on family and friends ended with a product that’s fits contemporary tastes, but also remains a bit of a throwback.

Haiver is now eyeing the ready-to-drink market. Pic supplied

“Once it kind of got to the point where I was happy, with how the flavours started to turn out, then it was, you know, my wife and friends and family doing tastings and just honing in on, you know, what's working, what's not.”

The breakthrough moment was where “taking a sip of the drink is more silky and kind of full-bodied like that of, you know, if you had a Lipton from 7-Eleven.”

It’s the right time to branch out into ready-to-drink, he says, as “people are kind of becoming a little bit more deliberate in how they drink”.

“People still love going to pubs, drinking beers and, you know, having a big night on beers and things like that. But I think there's also people who are like, well, I still like to  go out and have a few drinks with friends, but it's more on an occasion basis.

“It’s during those occasions that you can actually enjoy instead of, you know, feeling like crap for it the next day type thing.”