2B Hemp Gin Distillery

Craft Spirits in Styria: Where Botanical Identity Meets Regional Character

Austria's craft distilling movement has taken longer to coalesce than its natural wine scene, but the signals are now clear enough to read. Graz, as Styria's capital and the country's second-largest city, sits at the centre of a region with unusually strong agricultural identity: pumpkin seed oil, locally grown herbs, and a farming culture that has historically supplied raw ingredients northward to Vienna rather than processing them on home soil. That dynamic is shifting. A cluster of small producers in and around the city are treating Styrian botanicals not as background notes but as primary arguments in the glass. 2B Hemp Gin Distillery, located at St.-Peter-Pfarrweg 26 in Graz's St. Peter district, is a hemp-focused craft gin producer.

The distillery's decision to build around hemp as a featured botanical is not purely novelty-driven. Hemp has deep agricultural roots across Central Europe, and in Austria it sits within a well-regulated framework that distinguishes industrial hemp cultivation from any psychoactive application. As a botanical for gin, hemp introduces a particular green, slightly earthy register that interacts differently with juniper than the more commonly deployed citrus peels or floral additions. That botanical specificity is what gives 2B Hemp Gin Distillery a coherent editorial identity in a category where many small producers default to generic juniper-forward profiles with a regional twist tacked on. The terroir argument here is less about soil composition in the Burgundian sense and more about the agricultural biography of a place: what grows here, how it grows, and why it ends up in the bottle.

Where the 2025 Pearl Recognition Places It

The distillery received a Pearl 1 Star Prestige award in 2025. For a craft gin operation in a city that does not yet carry Graz's wine region weight in international spirits conversations, that recognition matters in practical terms: it shifts the producer from local curiosity to verified reference point for visitors and buyers approaching the Austrian craft spirits market from outside.

For context, Austria's broader spirits recognition infrastructure is thinner than its wine equivalent. The country's wine appellations, from the Wachau to Burgenland, carry institutional weight accumulated over decades, supported by producers like Weingut Emmerich Knoll in Dürnstein, Weingut Bründlmayer in Langenlois, and Weingut Kracher in Illmitz, each with multi-generational track records and international distribution. Craft spirits producers are working without that inherited scaffolding, which makes award recognition from independent bodies a proportionally more significant signal. A Pearl 1 Star Prestige at this stage of the market suggests the product is performing at a level that justifies attention beyond the local.

That places 2B Hemp Gin Distillery in a small peer group of Austrian distillers making a credible case for the country's spirits potential. Comparable producers developing their own regional arguments include 1310 Spirit of the Country Distillery in Sierning, 1404 Manufacturing Distillery in Sankt Peter-Freienstein, A. Batch Distillery in Bergheim, and 1516 Brewing Company Distillery in Vienna. The category is developing quickly enough that the producers earning recognition now are likely to define what Austrian craft gin means to the next generation of buyers.

The St. Peter District and How to Plan a Visit

St. Peter sits in the southern part of Graz, removed from the tourist concentration around the Schlossberg and the Hauptplatz. That physical distance is worth factoring into a visit: the distillery is not a drop-in proposition in the way that a city-centre bar or wine shop might be. Visitors intending to engage properly with the production space should plan ahead, and given the absence of published booking or hours information in the current record, direct outreach before any visit is advisable. The address at St.-Peter-Pfarrweg 26 anchors the location clearly enough for navigation, but confirming visit arrangements in advance will determine whether the experience is worthwhile.

For those building a Graz itinerary with serious spirits and wine interest, the distillery fits most logically into a day that begins with the city's inner-district food and drink culture and then moves south. Franz Bauer Distillery is another Graz-based producer worth including in the same trip. The broader EP Club Graz guide maps the city's dining and drinking options across neighbourhoods, which is the practical starting point for structuring a multi-stop itinerary. Graz also functions as a logical gateway to Styrian wine country: producers like Weingut Wohlmuth in Kitzeck are within day-trip range and represent Styrian Sauvignon Blanc and Muskateller at a level that rewards serious attention.

Hemp Gin as Agricultural Statement

The tendency in craft spirits to foreground provenance is partly marketing instinct and partly a genuine response to what distinguishes small-batch production from industrial scale. At 2B Hemp Gin Distillery, the hemp botanical functions as both: it is a specific, traceable agricultural material that carries cultural meaning in the Central European context, and it is a flavour decision that produces a gin profile distinct from the citrus-led or floral-led expressions that dominate much of the current market.

Styria as a region has always had a pronounced relationship with its own produce. The pumpkin fields of the Murfeld, the Schilcher wine grown on iron-rich soils in the western hills, and the herb cultivation that supplies markets and restaurants throughout the city all point to an agricultural character that is specific and legible. A distillery choosing to work hemp into that story is, at minimum, making a coherent geographic argument. Whether that argument translates into a gin that matches the 2025 Pearl recognition is a question answered by tasting.

For visitors whose interest in spirits sits alongside wine, the Austrian producers who have done the most to build regional identity through rigorous terroir argument are primarily in the wine sector: Weingut Pittnauer in Gols, Weingut Heinrich Hartl in Oberwaltersdorf, and Weingut Scheiblhofer in Andau each demonstrate what sustained focus on a defined growing area can produce. The craft gin movement is attempting something analogous but with a shorter institutional history and a category that has been slower to develop critical vocabulary around provenance. 2B Hemp Gin Distillery's Pearl recognition in 2025 is an early data point that the argument is being made convincingly enough to warrant external notice. For producers at Aberlour and beyond, the comparison illustrates how different traditions of terroir expression can coexist across spirits categories.

Practical Notes

The distillery is located at St.-Peter-Pfarrweg 26, 8010 Graz. Visitors should pursue direct contact before making the trip. A. Batch, 1310, and 1404 offer useful comparison points for understanding Austrian craft distilling, and building a visit around multiple producers in the same trip can help those arriving from outside Austria.