Stills from up in the Hokonui Hills have been recreated. Photo / RNZ, Gianina Schwanecke
By Gianina Schwanecke of RNZ
From the highlands of Scotland to the hills surrounding Gore in Southland, Mary McRae’s legacy of distilling lives on at the Hokonui Moonshine Museum and Distillery.
Arriving on New Zealand shores in the 1870s, along with her seven children, the widowed McRae brought with her a beautiful little petite whisky still which had been passed down to her.
And so, trained in the art of distilling by her mother and grandmother before her, the healer and midwife brought the tradition of Highland Scottish whisky making to rural Southland.
“She also continued in the tradition of not paying excise on the sale of any of that product,” explained the museum’s curator Jim Geddes, adding that the McRae family refused to pay excise tax in Scotland on moral and political grounds.
Making the spirit was part of their culture, they believed, and was used for medicinal purposes and family celebrations.
The McRae’s whisky, distilled in the rugged Hokonui hills, was considered a “very high-quality spirit”, Geddes said.
Hers was in “stark contrast to the adulterated spirit” that importers were sending to Southland – this was the “real deal”.
Townsfolk had grown tired of the poor behaviour stemming from local imbibers, who Geddes described as “hard-working” and “hard-drinking”.
But the McCraes had a more measured approach.
“The McCraes had always had a policy of not putting their product into a home where it would do any harm.
“So they pretty much minded their own business, and they were able to do that in the shadow of the Hokonui Hills.”
But like other whisky makers and producers of “moonshine” – a lesser quality spirit – the McRaes would be caught up in the temperance movement, which swept through much of the region and eventually saw Gore become a “dry” district where the sale of alcohol was prohibited.
“From July 1, 1903, the Mataura licensing district was dry, and it stayed dry for 51 years.”
Despite the closure of the 15 hotels in the licensing district, demand for alcohol remained high, giving way to a number of illicit moonshine-makers capitalising on the now lucrative tradition of distilling.
The booming trade also gave rise to police and customs officials determined to put a stop to it.
“Hokonui was always high-quality spirit, strongly connected with the McRae clan.
“Hokonui moonshine was something else.
“It was a grain spirit, straight out of the still and gone.”
The Prohibition era led to more than 30 prosecutions, the last of which was in 1957.
In nearly all of them, there was a McRae link, Geddes said, and often a tenuous one.
The tradition still lives on today, now legally, with a modern distillery built in 2020 alongside the museum.
“Working with Bill “WD” Stuart, the great-grandson of Mary McRae, we were able to source a family recipe,” Geddes said.
With guidance from others in New Zealand’s burgeoning spirit industry – now worth $40 to $50 million in exports – the distillery functions in a non-profit capacity.
“The spirit that we make is from grain which is grown in the area.
“So we have engaged with families who have been farming here for generations.
“All the ingredients are local. The recipe is local.”
- RNZ