Dancing Sands

Dancing Sands takes its name from Te Waikoropupū Springs in Golden Bay, whose Māori name translates loosely to 'the place of the dancing sands', where fine white sand appears to dance in the crystal-clear upwelling water. The distillery draws its own water from the aquifer feeding those same springs, one of the largest freshwater systems in the Southern Hemisphere. It was founded in 2016 by Sarah and Ben Bonoma, who built a range spanning gin, vodka and rum through years of experimentation.

Their gins lean spicy and savoury rather than purely floral, built around foraged local ingredients like horopito, kelp and wasabi alongside the usual juniper. The distillery was also one of the first in New Zealand to move to fully recyclable glass bottles with natural wood stoppers. If vodka or rum is more what you are after, our spirits range covers the rest of what Dancing Sands makes.