Last week South Coast Distillery snagged a gold at the Australian Distilled Spirits Awards for its Sublime: Batch Zero Gin, which comes with aromas of lemon myrtle and cardamom.

That medal earned them a nomination for the overall Champion Australian Small Batch spirit - which they went on to win.

The same gin also scored a silver at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

It's not a bad result for a gin co-founder Luke Harding saw as a bit of a learning experience 

"I'm absolutely stoked because the next release is the one I intended to win all the awards," Mr Harding said.

"It was our first ever commercial run. We called it Batch Zero because we intended to write it off but with some fine-tuning it came out really well."

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Mr Harding and co-founder Oskar Schwab opened the Drummond Street distillery just three months ago but the idea goes all the way back to "martini Thursdays" in 2011.

"Every Thursday in our sharehouse on the balcony we'd drink a new gin every week," Mr Harding said.

"Eventually we reached a point where we ran out of gins and started researching how to make it ourselves.

"After a couple of years we were pretty confident we had something that was better than a lot of what was out in the market and took a crack at going commercial."

It turned out to be really popular as well - even among those who don't count themselves as gin fans.

"Sublime is fairly approachable," Mr Harding said.

"A lot of people who aren't heaps into gin find it very easy to get into just because of the lower juniper content."

A visit to the South Coast Distillery's Drummond Street base can be made via appointment through their Facebook page until the tasting room opens some time in May.

Sublime: Batch Zero Gin is available at several bottle shops, including Crown West Cellars, and bars like The Little Prince and Births and Deaths.