FAQ

It depends which part of the range you're ordering, because the three travel very differently:

• Fresh lychees: Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT only. Interstate biosecurity rules on fresh fruit keep us out of WA, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory.
• Jars and bottles from our pantry range: anywhere in Australia. They're shelf stable and travel at ordinary temperature.
• Spirits: Australia, but you must be 18+ and show ID and sign for the parcel when it arrives.

• Fresh Fruit: travels chilled on a fast priority service and is generally 1 to 3 business days to every east coast destination we deliver to. Some regional areas we can't service at this stage.
• Pantry Range: travels at ambient temperature on a standard service, with express as an extra option. Australia wide.
• Spirits: 18+ required for ordering and ID shown when receiving. These packages are shipped directly with our distillery partners, Reef Distillers. View their delivery requirements if you have further questions.

Yes, You can order them together.

No

Yes. You'll get a tracking link by email as soon as your order is dispatched.

30 days on unopened non-perishable items. Fresh fruit and anything opened can't be returned, but if something arrives damaged, faulty or simply wrong, email <> with photos within 24 hours and we'll sort out a replacement or a refund.

Full details are in our Refund and Return Policy.

No sorry.

Email us at hello@lushlychees.com.au and we'll get back to you.

We do, and for fresh fruit it's genuinely the most useful thing you can sign up for. The season is short and we tell our list first when picking starts. Sign up here.

Our season opens around the second week of December and is usually finished before Australia Day. Lychees don't store like apples, so when it finishes, it finishes.

Within that window it's a rolling sequence rather than one big pick. Baitaying comes off first, then Kaimana and Sah Keng through Christmas, Salathiel into early January, Kwai May Pink and Chompogo through to the 18th, and Wai Chee last around 15 to 20 January. So a box in mid-December is a different variety, and a different eating experience, from a box in mid-January.

Join our mailing list and we'll tell you the week picking starts.

We sell 1 kg boxes of premium fresh lychees online. One kilogram is roughly 40 to 50 lychees depending on the size of the fruit that week, plenty for a family to share, or a generous platter for guests.

At the Farm Gate we also sell larger 5 kg boxes, but those aren't available online.

Yes. The shipping cost also decreases if you have more than one box per order.

Pre-ordering is the surest way to get fruit in a short season. It opens in November, when we know what fruit is going to be available. We pick to order.

Yes. Fresh lychees land right in the middle of the Christmas and summer entertaining season, and they're something most people never get to eat at their peak.

Enter your recipient's address at checkout and add a message and we'll include a gift card. Just make sure someone will be home or nearby on the delivery day. This is fresh fruit, not a candle.

Four reasons, and they're all in the fruit.

• It's fresh, premium fruit, direct from our farm to you. You won't get it anywhere else.
• We pick at optimum ripeness and Brix, not early for shelf life. Lychees do not ripen after picking, so the day we pick decides how sweet your fruit is.
• We don't sulphur treat. Most fruit that holds a bright red skin for weeks on a shelf has been fumigated with sulphur dioxide to keep the colour. We rely on careful picking, fast cooling and cold chain instead.
• Your box is picked, cooled and dispatched to you directly, rather than travelling through a wholesale market and sitting in a distribution centre first.

You're also paying for chilled courier freight on a perishable product, which is a genuine cost on a 1 kg box travelling interstate.

Yes, during season you can buy direct from us at the Farm Gate at South Yaamba, near Rockhampton. Visit here for opening days and hours during season.

EFTPOS is available, but cash is welcome too, as the internet signal isn't always reliable out here.

We do. Walking the blocks during harvest, seeing 9,000 trees in fruit and tasting a lychee still warm from the tree is a completely different experience to eating one from a box. View here for tour dates, duration, price and booking.

We pick to order. Your fruit is picked, graded, cooled and packed the same day it's harvested, then kept cool overnight and dispatched the following day with cool packs. From our property near Rockhampton, transit to anywhere on the east coast we deliver to is generally 1 to 3 business days.

That means your fruit typically reaches you within 3 to 4 days of leaving the tree, which is not something a supermarket supply chain can do.

Because our fruit is never sulphur treated and is cooled quickly after picking, it holds up to 14 days in the fridge. Keep them in a sealed bag or airtight container in the fridge. The enemy is dry air, not cold.

No. Surface moisture sitting on the skin in the fridge encourages mould. Our lychees are washed before packing too.

Only for the day you plan to eat them. At room temperature lychees respire several times faster than they do at fridge temperature, so the skin dries and browns within a day or two.

Straight into the fridge, in the box they arrived in or a sealed container or plastic bag, keeps them best.

Almost certainly not. Lychee skin is thin and porous, so it loses moisture quickly once the fruit leaves the tree. That browning is dehydration of the skin, not spoilage. The flesh underneath is unaffected.

Do check for any off smell or spoilage before eating.

Because most of them have been treated with sulphur dioxide. SO₂ fumigation, usually followed by an acid dip, locks in that vivid red colour and extends shelf life. It is a cosmetic and preservation treatment.

We've chosen not to do it, like most lychee orchards in Australia. Our fruit browns a little sooner on the skin, and in exchange you get lychees with no post-harvest chemical residue and nothing altering the flavour. We think that's the right trade.

No. We use no sulphur dioxide and no post-harvest chemical treatments of any kind. Our shelf life comes from growing them well, picking at the right moment, cooling them fast and keeping the cold chain intact.

Get it into the fridge straight away and then assess it. Lychees are fine for a period at ambient temperature.

Take a photo of the box and the fruit as soon as you open it and contact us within 24 hours at hello@lushlychees.com.au. We'll make it right with a replacement or a refund.

We'd genuinely rather know. We can't fix a problem we don't hear about, and we can't improve our packing without the photo.

No. Lychees are non-climacteric. They stop ripening the instant they leave the tree. There is no leaving them on the bench to sweeten up.

This is why the grower's judgement matters so much. Everything about how sweet your lychee is was decided on the day we picked it, which is why we test Brix and pick block by block rather than stripping the whole orchard at once.

Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria and the ACT.

We'd love to send fruit further, but interstate biosecurity rules restrict where fresh lychees can travel. See the next question.

Fruit fly. Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory are fruit-fly-free or protected areas, and fresh host fruit can only enter under a certified disinfestation treatment or area-freedom arrangement.

Those treatments exist, but they're not practical for a small chilled parcel of premium fruit and they'd compromise the quality we've worked hard to protect. So we deliver to the east coast only. The same rules apply if you're travelling. Please don't carry lychees across those state borders.

From our depot in Rockhampton we're generally 1 to 3 business days to every east coast destination we deliver to. There are a few remote zones we're unable to service at this stage. Check here to see if we ship to your location.

Our lychees are picked and packed on a Sunday or Monday and dispatched on the Monday or Tuesday, so they reach you before the weekend.

No. Our lychees are picked and packed on a Sunday or Monday and dispatched on the Monday or Tuesday, so no box is ever sitting in a freight depot over a weekend. If you order later in the week, your fruit is picked fresh and sent the following Monday.

It occasionally means waiting a couple of extra days. It always means better fruit.

Once harvested, the field heat is taken out and the fruit is packed and held in the cool room. At 5°C it goes into an insulated liner bag with an ice brick.

Our courier service is a fast air and road service, not a refrigerated truck. The cold comes from the pack, which is why fast transit matters so much.

It's strongly recommended. This is fresh fruit and it shouldn't sit on a hot verandah all afternoon. Use a work address, a neighbour, or add delivery instructions for a shaded, secure spot.

We can't deliver fresh fruit to PO boxes or parcel lockers.

A flat rate of $25 per 1 kg box of fresh lychees. Order more than one box in the same shipment and the delivery cost per box comes down.

Yes, during season you're welcome to buy and collect fresh fruit from the Farm Gate at South Yaamba. Check this page for Farm Gate opening times.

Nick the skin with your thumbnail, then peel it back and it comes away in a few pieces. Pop the flesh out and eat around the seed. The skin and seed are not eaten.

Over a bowl is wise. A ripe lychee is juicy.

No. The seed isn't eaten, it's discarded like a cherry pit or an olive stone.

The flesh is a beautiful first tropical fruit, but the seed is a genuine choking hazard for small children. Peel, remove the seed and cut the flesh into pieces for toddlers, and supervise while they eat.

Yes, and it's the best way to make a short season last. Two options:

• Freeze them whole and unpeeled. Simplest, takes more space, peel after a few minutes of thawing.
• Peel and de-seed first, freeze the flesh in a single layer on a tray, then bag it. Easiest to portion later.

Frozen lychees keep well for several months. Texture softens slightly on thawing, so they're superb eaten semi-frozen straight from the freezer, blended into smoothies and sorbets, or dropped into a glass as edible ice cubes.

Frozen fruit is also how we make our own jams, chutneys, sauces and cordial year round.

Fresh and cold. Honestly, that's how most of them are eaten here.

Beyond that: peeled and tossed through a green papaya or prawn salad; muddled into a lychee liqueur and soda, or a spritz; stuffed with a little goat's cheese for a canapé; on a cheese board with our Lychee Relish; frozen and blitzed into a sorbet; or halved over a pavlova at Christmas.

Check out our recipe section for more ideas.

Lychees contain around 15 g of natural sugars per 100 g and sit at a low-to-moderate glycaemic index. They're also a genuinely good source of vitamin C.

As with any fruit, portion matters more than the fruit itself. If you're managing diabetes, please talk to your health professional about what fits your plan. We're growers, not dieticians.

It matters more than most people realise. Australia grows more than fifteen commercial varieties and they're genuinely different fruit: different size, sweetness, acidity, skin texture and seed size.

We grow ten varieties for commercial production, and your 1 kg box is filled with the best, premium fruit we can offer from what we're picking that week. Read our blog post on which varieties are being harvested and when.

Size varies by variety and by season. Crop load, rainfall and heat all play a part. We grade our fruit so a box is consistent, but there'll always be natural variation. A typical lychee is around 20 g; some varieties run considerably larger.

This is a problem we've thought hard about. Fruit that's perfectly delicious but the wrong size or shape for the fresh market used to be wasted. At one point we were feeding it to our cows.

Now it goes into our range: jam, chutney, relish, sweet sauce and cordial. Same orchard, same care, same fruit. It just doesn't have to be beautiful to be good.

Preservation comes from the process, not from additives. Each product is built with the right balance of sugar, acid and, where relevant, vinegar, which together create conditions in which spoilage organisms simply can't grow. We then hot-fill or water-bath pasteurise every jar and bottle, which sterilises the contents and pulls a vacuum seal as it cools.

It's the same principle behind every jar of preserves your grandmother made, run to a modern food-safety specification with recorded temperatures, times and pH. Unopened and stored in the cupboard, it's stable to its best before date.

Yes. Once you break the seal, air and a spoon go in and the protection of the vacuum is gone. Refrigerate after opening and use within:

• Jam, chutney, relish and mango chutney: about 4 weeks
• Lychee Sweet Sauce and Lychee Sweet Chilli Sauce: about 3 weeks
• Cordial: about 4 weeks (see the cordial section)
• Honey and balsamic vinegar: no refrigeration needed at all

Always use a clean, dry spoon. Double-dipping with a buttery knife is the fastest way to shorten the life of a good jar.

A use by date is a safety limit, after it, food shouldn't be eaten and can't legally be sold. A best before date is about quality. Our products carry a best before date, which means they're safe past it but may have lost some of their colour, brightness or texture.

Trust your eyes and nose over the date on any jar that's been open a while.

A lot, and we print the percentage on every label so you never have to guess.

• Summer Lychees in Syrup, 78% fruit
• Lychee Sweet Sauce, 68% lychee
• Mango Chutney, 55% mango
• Lychee Cordial, 47% lychee juice
• Lychee Chutney, 44% lychee
• Lychee Jam, 43% lychee
• Lychee Sweet Chilli Sauce, 40% lychee
• Lychee Relish, 39% lychee

Our lychees come from our own trees at South Yaamba, frozen at harvest so we can make in small batches right through the year rather than only in January.

Everything is packed in glass. Net weights and serves per pack:

• Lychee Jam, 280 g, 14 serves
• Lychee Chutney, Mango Chutney and Lychee Relish, 260 g, 13 serves
• Summer Lychees in Syrup, 300 g, 6 serves
• Lychee Sweet Chilli Sauce, 290 g, 14 serves
• Lychee Sweet Sauce, 290 g, 9 serves
• Lychee Cordial, 250 mL, 12 serves
• Lychee Balsamic Vinegar, 250 mL, 25 serves
• Lychee Blossom Honey, 330 g, 16 serves
• Creamed Honey, 290 g, 14 serves
• Wildflower Honey, 500 g or 1 kg

Both, and the distinction matters more than most labels let on. 'Made in Australia' only requires the last processing step to happen here, and says nothing about where the ingredients came from. Our lychees are grown on our own orchard near Rockhampton, and most of the range is made here too. Our produce is Australian Grown and Made.

On the lychee chutney, 4,825 g of every 4,875 g in the pot is Australian. The rest is pectin, citric acid and a few spices (cardamom, pepper, coriander seed, chilli) that aren't grown here at commercial scale.

Our pantry range is fruit, sugar, vinegar and spices. There's no dairy, no egg, no nuts and no animal-derived ingredient anywhere in it.

One thing people ask about specifically is sugar. In some countries cane sugar is filtered through bone char, which is why some vegans avoid it. Australian sugar isn't. The industry moved to a coal-derived activated carbon around 1990.

The honey is the exception, and it isn't vegan. Bees made it.

Our pantry products contain no gluten ingredients. They are, however, made on equipment that has also been used for products containing gluten.

Rather than imply something we haven't tested for, we'd rather tell you what's in the jar, which is on every label, and let you decide. The four ingredients worth checking are spices, xanthan gum, citric acid and ascorbic acid.

None of our own products carry a declarable Australian allergen, and we don't add sulphites.

Sulphites usually creep in through bought-in ingredients rather than anything a maker adds. We've been through the range to design them out.

One thing worth knowing: our chutneys and relish contain mustard seed, which isn't a declarable allergen here but is in the EU, UK and Canada.

Because it's real fruit and there's no added colour. Lychees vary by season, by block and by how the year has treated the trees, and small batches will never be identical to the one before.

We think that's a feature, not a fault. Perfect uniformity in a jar of fruit usually means something has been added to make it that way.

Usually not. Here's how to tell.

• Darkening over months is natural oxidation in a product with no added colour. Perfectly fine.
• A little liquid separating in a chunky relish is normal. Give it a stir.
• A thin white film on a newly opened jar is usually set cooking foam, not mould.
• Sugar crystals in jam come with age and temperature swings. Harmless, just slightly grainy.

What is not fine: fuzzy or coloured mould, a lid that has lost its seal or bulges, fizzing on opening, or a fermented smell. Don't eat it, and please send us a photo and the batch code. If there is mould, discard the whole jar rather than scraping it off, and we'll look after you.

Only a few, and we write them in plain English rather than hiding them behind numbers: Food Acid (Citric Acid), Gelling Agent (Citrus Pectin), Thickener (Xanthan Gum), Antioxidant (Ascorbic Acid).

Each is doing a job you'd want done. Citric acid balances flavour and holds the pH where the product is safe without preservatives. Citrus pectin sets jam. Xanthan gum is a fraction of a percent in the sweet sauce and sweet chilli so they don't separate. Ascorbic acid is vitamin C, protecting colour.

In anything we make ourselves there are no artificial colours, artificial flavours or preservatives. The exception is our balsamic, made for us under contract, which carries a caramel colour the way commercial balsamics normally do. We'd rather say so than let you find it on the label.

Please do. We'd love to see it. Jam into thumbprint biscuits and cake fillings, chutney and relish stirred into gravies or glazed onto roast meat, sweet sauce swirled through mousse or cheesecake, sweet chilli into a stir fry, cordial as a cake soak or a sorbet base. Be sure to check out our recipe collection for more ideas.

Yes, glass, kerbside recyclable everywhere in Australia. Rinse and pop the lid in with your metals. Or better, wash it and use it: our jars are a standard 250 ml and are perfect for your own preserves, spices or a small posy.

Mixed packs are our most popular gift, particularly at Christmas. A jar of something savoury, something sweet and a bottle of something to pour is a very good way to introduce someone to lychees.

We also put together recipes for different occasions using a few products from the range at once. Have a look for some ideas.

Yes, we'd love to talk. We supply wholesale and food service, and several of our products were developed with chefs and bar teams in mind. Email us at hello@lushlychees.com.au and let us know where you'd like to see our products.

The vodka is the drier, cleaner one, a spirit carrying lychee, made in partnership with Reef Distillers. It's the bottle to reach for if you want to build a cocktail and control the sweetness yourself.

The liqueur is sweeter, and more lychee-forward. It's lovely sipped over ice, and it's the one that does the flavouring work in a spritz or a martini.

Plenty of people end up with both. They do genuinely different jobs.

The Lychee Vodka is 38% ABV. The Lychee Liqueur is 20% ABV

No. A schnapps is usually a distilled fruit spirit, often drier and higher in strength. A liqueur is a spirit base that's been sweetened and flavoured. Ours is a liqueur.

Yes. Our own, from our own Lychee trees. That's the whole reason this product exists. Most lychee liqueurs on the market are built from flavourings, ours starts as fruit we grew at South Yaamba.

It's also part of the answer to a problem we had: beautiful fruit that didn't meet the cosmetic grade for the fresh market, and nowhere good for it to go.

No added colours at all. Our spirits carry a slight yellow hue, which is simply the natural colour of the lychees.

Worth saying, because the best-known commercial lychee liqueur is famously bright pink and that colour is added.

The liqueur is sweet, as a liqueur should be, but finishes clean rather than syrupy. The vodka is not sweet.

Our Lychee Liqueur won Silver and our Lychee Vodka won Bronze at the Melbourne Royal Australian International Spirits Awards 2026. Medals are ranked Gold, Silver and Bronze.

Judging is blind and done by category. A mixed panel of distillers, spirits writers, bar owners and retailers score each spirit against a standard for quality and trueness to type, rather than ranking entrants against each other. So a medal means the panel judged it a high-quality example of what it's meant to be, on its own merits.

If you only remember one: 45 ml of the liqueur over ice, topped with tonic or soda, with a wedge of lime. It takes ten seconds and it's excellent.

Beyond that:

• Lychee Martini: 45 ml vodka, 15 ml liqueur, a splash of lychee juice, shaken hard and strained into a chilled glass, garnished with a lychee
• Lychee Spritz: 30 ml liqueur, topped with prosecco and a splash of soda over ice
• Lychee Bellini: a measure of liqueur in a flute, topped gently with prosecco

The liqueur is also very good poured over vanilla ice cream, or with our Lychee Sweet Sauce in the base of the glass. Check out our recipe collection for more recipe ideas.

Our Lychee Cordial gives you the same flavour with no alcohol at all, soda water, ice and lime, and you've got a lychee spritz that anyone at the table can have.

The Lychee Vodka at 38% ABV is about 15 standard drinks in a 500 ml bottle, or about 6 in a 200 ml.

The Lychee Liqueur at 20% ABV is about 7.9 standard drinks in a 500 ml bottle, or about 3.2 in a 200 ml.

The figure printed on each label is the one that counts.

At a standard 30 to 45 ml pour, a 500 ml bottle makes roughly 11 to 16 drinks and a 200 ml bottle roughly 4 to 6.

The 200 ml is our gift and try-it size. It slips neatly into a hamper, makes a lovely wedding or corporate favour, and is a low-commitment way to find out whether you're a lychee liqueur person. The 500 ml is the bottle you keep in the drinks cabinet.

It doesn't have to be. But you can keep the liqueur in the fridge once open. It preserves the fresh fruit character and it's better served cold anyway. The vodka is fine in the cupboard or the freezer.

No. A liqueur made from real fruit can throw a light sediment or show a slight haze, particularly if it's been stored cold. It's natural fruit solids, decant or strain if it bothers you.

Not in a food-safety sense. The alcohol takes care of that. But aroma and flavour do fade with air and light exposure, so an opened bottle is at its best within 12 months. Keep it upright, capped, and out of the sun.

Yes, through the right services and with the right packaging. Our bottles travel in purpose-made protective packaging designed to survive the courier network.

Yes. Alcohol deliveries must be handed to a person aged 18 or over, who may be asked to sign and show identification. It cannot be left unattended at the door.

Most locations in Australia.

No, we don't ship internationally at the moment. Each country has its own rules, and for now we are happy that our Australian customers can enjoy it.

In checked luggage, yes, subject to the destination country's own allowances, a 200 ml or 500 ml bottle is too large for carry-on under liquid rules. Coming back into Australia, travellers aged 18 and over have a duty-free allowance of 2.25 litres of alcohol.

Yes, we will work with Reef Distillers to make them available at the farm gate during our harvest open days. Reef Distillers also have a tasting room on the Capricorn Coast if you'd like to visit them and try their whole range.

Currently they are available via our website to Reef Distillers, our distilling partners and at the Reef Distillers tasting rooms at Yeppoon.

Photograph the parcel and the bottle before you unpack any further and contact us at hello@lushlychees.com.au within 24 hours. We'll replace it or refund you. Please don't handle broken glass any more than you need to.