The Coniston distillery's navy strength gin won gold at the World Gin Awards in London - the only gold medal awarded in that category.

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Their tea-infused gin also scored a silver medal.

Co-owner Luke Harding said they made more than 2000 litres of gin to perfect the Breakwater recipe, so the honour proved the effort was worthwhile.

"Breakwater is easily my favourite of all the products that we make but that doesn't mean everyone is going to like it," Mr Harding said.

"So to see it take a gold gives me a lot more confidence going forward that it's not just me, it's a lot of people who agree that it's a good product."

The distillery is moving ahead in leaps and bounds - its product is now in Woolworths and Coles-owned bottle shops across the Illawarra.

"The back end of last year was pretty hectic when we picked up Coles and Woolworths bottle shops," he said.

"We had to hire three staff to keep on top of things. We'd run all our stock levels down and had to run the still pretty much constantly to get back on top of everything."

This weekend the distillery will release a cask-strength version of their barrel-aged geneva.

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