THERE's no denying that people in regional WA love a drink and while beer is the usual tipple of choice, for seven towns that favourite is likely to soon become gin.
Those towns are Dangin, Narrogin, Wagin, Corrigin, Muntadgin, Badgingarra and Gingin - seven towns with 'gin' in the name that now have a specialty gin named in their honour.
The Outback Gin Series is an initiative from Wise Wines - the company behind the popular Gin Gin Gin brand - which saw distiller Greg Garnish hit the road to discover the flavours that best encapsulate those seven towns.
"The project is one that celebrates the floralistic diversity of the greater Wheatbelt region - we learnt that span of land has about 7500 different species of plants that are not found anywhere else in the world," Mr Garnish said.
"We thought it would be a great project to go to each of those towns with gin in their name and find a plant that is truly unique to that one location and make a gin out of it."
In total, that journey took the business almost four weeks - covering 4500 kilometres, collecting about 70 different botanicals and distilling each of them individually, eventually picking the winners from each town.
The process of perfecting the recipe from each town took Wise Wines a further three to four months, with the Outback Gin Series officially launched on Australia Day.
"We ended up with a local hero from each town who took us under their wing and introduced us to the greater community, that was the real key to getting to the right people that could get us to the right botanicals," Mr Garnish said.
"You're not allowed to go out and pick what you want out of the bush, so all the botanicals we chose were from a private farm - those farmers shared their knowledge of the land and gave us a lot of advice of what grows where.
"Don Williams from Badgingarra grows 500 species of plants that aren't grown anywhere else in the world, while Cindy Stevens and Simon Wallwork from Corrigin picked a whole heap of plants for me that the sheep like to eat."
Gin is made differently at Wise Wines - while most distilleries use grain to create their spirit, Greg made the logical decision and chose wine as the base.
The wine is distilled twice to get to a pisco and from there it is distilled a third time, which takes seven to eight hours.
During that third distillation, the botanicals are put into the still - it has to include juniper, plus there are a range of other flavours added in, including the hero botanical from each town.
"Gin by nature goes from a spectrum of pretty and floral, all the way through to savoury and earthy, and the Outback Gin Series has that entire range," Mr Garnish said.
"The Corrigin and the Wagin are quite pretty and aromatic, while the Dangin and the Narrogin are much more earthy, savoury and spicy type characters.
"That was one of our biggest challenges, to make sure that each of the seven gins all tasted different."
Mr Garnish has been in the beverage game for more than 20 years - he started as a contract winemaker creating a large portion of the total wines that originated from the Margaret River region but he reached a limit with the flavours he could explore.
"I bought a small still, distilled some wine and the alcohol that came out at 80 per cent had this beautiful sweetness to it - I knew there had to be something to it and that got me into pisco, but I always said I wouldn't make gin," he said.
"I had two barrels of chardonnay that weren't good enough to be a table wine and they were the Gingin clone of Chardonnay, so I made those into a gin but only made 150 bottles.
"I sent it to the Melbourne International Spirits Competition and it was the highest rating WA gin, from there we decided we needed to do it properly and it just spiralled from there."
While Wise's Gin Gin Gin range has been around for about 18 months, there's no denying that the Outback Gin Series has taken the popularity to another level.
This month, spirits outsold wine at the venue's cellar door in the South West for the first time ever.
"In the past two weeks, we've had more visitors to Wise from those regions in the Wheatbelt than we have ever had in the past - it's been people who have lived in those towns, have family there or are current residents," Mr Garnish said.
"We're only making 1000 bottles of each gin, so 7000 bottles in total for the series, and once they're gone, they're gone."
With about a third sold so far, it's only a matter of time until the rest are gone, especially with a series of parties planned in a few of the towns over the coming weeks.
It's expected that one of those parties, being held at the Munty Pub (Muntadgin) - a town with only nine people in it - will attract about 250 people.
The Outback Gin Series will also be making an appearance at the Make Smoking History Wagin Woolorama on March 5-6, with the plan to donate $20 from every bottle sold at the event to one of three local charities.
The decision to only make 1000 bottles of each was a simple one for Wise Wines as they didn't start the project purely for commercial gain.
It was all about exploring flavour profiles and there are a few botanicals that they plan to engage with the local communities to continue to grow to put into the Gin Gin Gin range.
"As a food and beverage community in WA, we have to travel more into these regions and explore some of the beautiful flora and fauna that we can eat to develop it into something that's commercial," Mr Garnish said.
"Everyone gets excited about South Australian oysters, or fish from New Zealand, but we should be protecting what we've got in our own backyard and sharing it with everyone.
"We want a truly unique Western Australian botanical list and the only way to get that is to get on the road and go and find them."
That botanical list is set to expand later this year when Outback Gin Series 2 is released - next with a North West twist.