The Gold Coast’s beaches alone make it easy to laze away entire days, but tear yourself away from the sun, the sea and the sand and you’ll quickly realise that you need to stay a while.
After all, where else on earth you can you experience the glitter strip, the theme parks, and lush tropical rainforests all within minutes of one another?
Nestled in the heart of it all is Driftwood Social at The Vibe. It’s the perfect blend of all the Gold Coast has to offer.
“The whole vibe of Driftwood Social is the ambience,” said GM Cathy Jacobson. “It’s the place to be, a great location on the Nerang River overlooking the hinterland.”
The menu offerings are ideal for sharing although Cathy’s personal favourite, the steak sandwich, isn’t one you’ll want to split.
Of course there are plenty of colourful cocktails to choose from as well, which conveniently leads us to where to stay for the night.
Just upstairs, the Vibe Gold Coast’s got you covered. The toughest part is choosing your view – beach or hinterland? Rested and refreshed your night oceanside, it’s time to explore beyond the glitter strip.
The hinterland offers experiences as vast and varied as the landscape. There are tree top adventures, horse-back journeys, vineyard tours, and of course the tastings.
When it comes to new experiences of the Hinterland, there’s one place really shaking things up. Cauldron Distillery specializes in the art of gin making. Brothers Darren and Glen Stewart established the place in 2020, along with mate Greg.
“We love making gin,” said Darren. “It’s such a creative spirit. Other than Juniper you can really put anything you like into it and with the huge number of Australian botanicals it gives us great freedom and flexibility.”
“We’ve got spices here, we’ve got nuts, we’ve got fruits, all manner or things. We’ve got flowers as well that really enhance the flavour of craft gins.”
Darren’s passion for his passion project really shines through.
“We experiment and take an interim recipe and take it right through to production and then our team out the front make these amazing cocktails and we juice all our juices fresh, we make all our own syrups from fruit that we can source either locally here on the mountain or from the surrounds in the Scenic Rim. For us it means we feel right, it’s got to feel authentic. We’ve got to put the love into our drinks and I know that our patrons and our customers can really feel that too.”
Cauldron is more than just a distillery though. They run Sip and Paint classes, pottery making, Salsa and a very special gin making class!
“You can make a bottle of gin, you can name it your own gin, your own name on that,” Darren explained. “We guide you through choosing the botanicals based on a flavour wheel so if you want more floral, more citrus, more spicy, more rooty and earthy, we can help guide you with the right botanicals and then you literally sit there while the still does its work. You know it’ll boil up the contents of the pot and it’ll extract the essential oils from those botanicals and carry that across into your gin.”
While there it would of course be sacrilege not to try a cocktail or two. Our pick it their signature Rhubarb Sour and with 18 acres of established vineyards and lush countryside, you’re not short of a spot to sit back and sample the goods.
Head to the Gold Coast for a few nights. With so much to see and do, you’ll make good use of the extra time!
To help get you there, Vibe Hotel Gold Coast is offering Weekender viewers a sweet deal… the GOLD COAST VIBES package. Just head to vibehotels.com/weekender to book.
It includes overnight accommodation, breakfast, a bottle of bubbles on arrival, and two cocktails at Driftwood Social.
