Western Australian Estate Opens Australia’s First Botanical Distillery Garden

PEMBERTON, WESTERN AUSTRALIA – A winery in Western Australia’s Southern Forests has opened the growing grounds behind its gin and vodka to the public, in what Ampersand Estates describes as Australia’s first Botanical Distillery Garden.

The Estates Terroir Tasting Experience walks visitors through the whole chain, from soil, to still, to sip: the vineyard that supplies the base spirit, the Rainfall Distillery Garden that supplies the botanicals, and the distillery where the two meet.

Where the Spirit Begins
Ampersand’s Chardonnay went into the ground in 1982, four decades before anyone on the property was distilling anything. Those vines still make the estate’s Chardonnay, and they now supply the alcohol underneath its gin and vodka, distilled from estate-grown fruit rather than bought in as neutral grain spirit.

Most Australian gin and vodka starts with neutral grain spirit, which arrives by the tanker. Building a base from your own fruit costs more and takes longer, and it leaves a fingerprint in the glass that a bought-in spirit cannot carry.

Rain falls on the estate, is collected there, and reaches the still without leaving the property.

Beauty & Purpose
Above the vineyard sit two hectares of terraced planting known as the Rainfall Distillery Garden, home to more than 2,100 native and international botanicals. Every plant in it has a job, and the garden is beautiful for it.
Lemon myrtle, juniper, citrus and rosemary grow alongside scarlet bottlebrush, a species endemic to south-west Western Australia that gives one of the gins both its character and its name. Tasmanian pepperberry grows alongside it. So do macadamias, and the Karri honey that joins them in a vodka. Guests on the walk are handed the raw material – leaf, fruit, seed – and asked to smell and taste it before meeting it again an hour later in a glass.

What grows changes with the season, so the walk in October is not the walk in March.

Greenhouse, Then Still
The route ends on high ground, in a greenhouse above the vines, where the estate’s cool-climate wines are poured for the group alone. From there it drops to the distillery – among the spirits, an Australian Rain and Scarlet Bottlebrush gin, and a Karri Honey Roasted Macadamias vodka.
The experience is priced at $180 a person for groups of up to ten.

Recognised Before It Opened
Ampersand Estates entered Ultimate Winery Experiences Australia in February 2026. The collection runs to twenty-nine wineries nationally; Ampersand is the fourth in Western Australia, listed alongside Vasse Felix and Leeuwin Estate in Margaret River, and Mandoon Estate in the Swan Valley.
Australian Traveller followed in August, naming the property the Ultimate South West WA Winery Escape. Writer Bonita Grima described the Terroir Tasting as a journey through the original Chardonnay vines and the gardens behind the estate’s single-estate spirits.
Both arrived before the garden was open to visitors.

“What we set out to build was not simply a winery or an accommodation destination, but a complete experience rooted in this landscape,” said Melissa Bell, co-founder of Ampersand Estates.

Beyond The Tasting
The tasting also sits inside the estate’s signature stay, A Marriage of Luxury & Nature, which takes one to four guests from $3,145. That package covers a private residence, an owner-hosted tasting drawn from the private and museum collections, a five-course dinner cooked over open fire, and the run of the vineyards, gardens, lake and walking trails.

The estate occupies 56 hectares inside a national park on the Donnelly River, roughly 300 kilometres south of Perth, between the Margaret River and Pemberton wine regions.

About Ampersand Estates
Ampersand Estates is a 56-hectare property on the Donnelly River at Pemberton, Western Australia, founded in 2020 by Melissa Bell and Corrie Scheepers. LGBTQIA+ owned and operated, the estate takes its name from the ampersand: fine wine and thoughtful hospitality, artisanal spirits and breathtaking landscapes. It has been named one of Australia’s top ten winery stays, and its 2024 Pinot Noir was voted Western Australia’s Favourite Wine for 2026, the second year running, from more than 26,000 public votes.