Animus Distillery Elements Grapefruit Triple Sec

When friends at Curly Flat Wines in Macedon came to them with a surplus of freshly picked grapefruit, Animus seized the crop with both hands, resulting in the inaugural batch of Elements Grapefruit Triple Sec. Grapefruits are painstakingly peeled by hand—taking care to avoid any pith inclusion—and the peelings are steeped overnight in high-proof, wheat-based ethanol that has been triple-filtered with charcoal to ensure a clean and neutral base for the fruit to take centre stage. In the morning, the peels are removed from the spirit and added to a basket with the grapefruit flesh, then the basket is added back to the spirit for vapour infusion. Importantly, half of the flesh retains its pith to ensure vapour doesn’t infiltrate all the flesh too quickly. It’s then diluted back to 30% with water and house-made sugar syrup.

It's a full, rich and intensely flavoured Triple Sec, with pithy and fleshy grapefruit flavours and textures throughout. There’s lovely candied peel complexity and a nicely balanced grapefruity close.