Here's a bit of trivia most people who own one of our craft spirit bottles don't actually know: there’s handwriting on it.
Not printed. Not a sticker. Embossed right into the paper label itself, raised under your fingertips, where you'd only find it if you happened to run your hand across the bottle in the right light.
Go on — check the bottle of gin or vodka on your shelf. We'll wait.
Found it? That’s not decorative squiggle. It’s real, 238-year-old handwriting — and it’s the exact reason our Sydney craft distillery has the name it does.
A 1788 Letter from the Man Who Discovered Sydney Harbour
Governor Arthur Phillip landed with the First Fleet in January 1788 and immediately had a problem: Botany Bay, the place he'd been sent to settle, was shallow, exposed, and no good for a fleet of ships.
So he jumped in an open boat with a small crew and went looking for something better up the coast — an inlet Captain Cook had spotted from a distance and named on a chart, but never actually sailed into.
That waterway was Port Jackson.
Phillip sailed in and was completely floored by what he discovered. On 3 July 1788, he sat down at Sydney Cove and wrote a formal letter to his mentor back in England, the Marquis of Lansdowne, to describe the iconic harbour.
That exact letter — the hand-penned words from 1788 — is what is embossed into the custom labels on our Australian craft spirits:
"Botany bay, offerd no Security for large Ships, here a Thousand Sail of the Line may ride in the most perfect Security."
Translation: Botany Bay was a dud, but this new harbour was so grand it could shelter a thousand of the Royal Navy's largest warships all at once, in total safety. That’s not marketing spin — that’s a Governor genuinely awestruck by the natural harbour that is now our distillery's backyard.
Why We Embossed it on Our Australian Spirit Bottles
At Port Jackson Distilling Co., Port Jackson is in our name for a reason. It's the sparkling waterway our coastal home sits beside, and it's the whole origin story of Sydney wrapped up in a single historic quote.
We figured a discovery that legendary deserved a bit of showing off — just not the loud, pushy kind.
Instead of slapping it in big text on the front, we tucked it into the tactile background of the label design itself. It’s a subtle nod to "the finest harbour in the world" hidden in plain sight, created for anyone who takes a second to feel the craftsmanship of the bottle.
Feel the History on Your Next Pour
Next time you’re holding a bottle of our premium Australian spirits, stop just scanning the label and start feeling it. There’s a 238-year-old secret pressed into the paper, and now you’re one of the few who knows exactly what it says.
Looking to taste the harbour for yourself? Explore our award-winning range of Sydney-distilled gins, silky smooth vodka and limoncello online.