Cardona Distillery, New Zealand
High up in the Cardrona Valley of New Zealand’s Southern Alps sits Cardrona Distillery, brainchild of founder Desiree Reid. It’s tempting to think that the whisky itself takes its character and spirited blend of ambition and craftsmanship from the surrounding rugged alpine beauty – shaped by tectonic uplift and carved by glaciers through the millennia. Desiree traded her original plans to open a perfumery (2,500 damask roses around the distillery are testament to that) for whisky dreams after years of research in Scotland and the United States.