Mark Watkins was just 16 when he brewed his first batch of vodka in his cubby house with his best mate in the state's far north.

"The first batch we did tasted repugnant... the guy doesn't talk to me anymore, he used to be my best mate. I made him drink it first," Mr Watkins said.

The 36-year-old has come a long way since - he founded Mt Uncle Distillery with his family on the Atherton Tablelands in 2002, from which his Botanic Australis gin last year managed to make a name for itself among the high-end London bars.

"London has been a bit of a surprise for us personally. We went over and did Junipalooza last year, which is a big gin festival, and now there are some really high-end bars that are taking it on," Mr Watkins said.

"It is weird because it is a highly saturated market, there are over 170 brands over there but due to uniqueness of our product, it makes us more attractive for them.

"They are a bit more timid, a bit more styled to the London Dry style, whereas ours is a bit of a new-world gin, it has a bit more balls about it, a bit more gusto."

Coming from a "sordid past of distillers throughout the generations", Mr Watkins spent two years and 286 batches perfecting the Botanic Australis gin, which is based on a 300-year-old London Dry recipe.

"Essentially we substituted everything for the Australian counterpart," he said.

"There is a lot of tweaking and a lot of learnt behaviour with them (the native botanicals), the problem with them is that some are so robust that it only takes a small amount.

"Something like the strawberry gum we used around 500 grams per 1500 litres of gin because it has very powerful flavours."

The head distiller drew on research and local chefs to create the gin that incorporates 14 native botanicals including lilli pilli, bunya nut, wattleseed and finger lime.

"Instead of using lemon zest we used lemon-scented gum and lemon myrtle," Mr Watkins said.

"They are both quite different, lemon scented gum has high end on the palate and dissipates quite quickly whereas lemon myrtle sits back on the palate so we had to use those two components to get the lemon flavour in the gin.

"We wanted to make a quintessentially Australian gin, we didn't want to make a London Gin with a handful of strawberry gum leaves thrown in it.

"The only thing that is not Australian is the juniper."

So what does the Botanic Australis taste like?

"It is a juniper-driven gin with the aftertaste of a walk in the forest after a rainstorm," Mr Watkins said.

"While it smells like orange cake, the flavours are full of lilly pilly and strawberry gum, citrus from the lemon-scented gum and lemon myrtle."

Most of the native botanicals are grown on site, however Mr Watkins still has to go for a forage every now and then.

"Some of the stuff... we go through the bush and forage for, which tends to be quite painful with stinging tree... I have it all over my hands and arms," he said.

The distillery exported 5000 units of Botanic Australis in 2016 and were expecting to export about 20,000 units in 2017.

Treasurer and Minister for Trade and Investment Curtis Pitt visited distillery on Thursday and commended the company for its far-reaching exports.

"Selling gin to fashionable London bars is almost as tough as selling ice to Eskimos," Mr Pitt said.

"But this impressive local team is already defying expectations by managing to enter an already saturated market and cutting through to achieve great export success."