The Story

Chief’s Son Distillery was founded by Stuart and Naomi McIntosh in 2016. The idea for the operation was sparked by a Chivas Regal competition for a Scottish whisky trip. The competition asked entrants to submit 25 words on why they should win, and Stuart and his father Alasdair entered with the following:

‘My grandparents passed the love of whisky through my parents to me and I want to make sure my children pass it onto their children.’

Fortunately for Australian whisky fans, they won. Stuart subsequently found the winning trip so inspiring that he decided to open a whisky distillery with his wife Naomi near their home in Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne.

The distillery was completed in 2016 and named Chief’s Son after the Scottish Gaelic name for McIintosh, Mhic an Tòisich, or ‘son of the chief’. Stuart says the McIntosh name traces back some 900 years, hence the 900 Standard core expression, which is also released in batches of 900 bottles.

Holding pride of place at the centre of the distillery is a 4000 litre pot still built by Burns Welding and Fabrication in Griffith. For its size, the still is unusually heated with electric elements, and these possibly contribute some of the caramel, maillard characters to Chief’s Son’s new make.

All of Chief’s Son single malt whiskies start with wash ordered in from nearby Mornington Peninsula Brewery. But there’s no standard pale malt wash here. Instead, three unique washes are used to produce different styles of spirit for the core range.

The 900 Standard, the core bottling, starts with a mash of specialty malts, a portion of which is Scottish peated malt. The Sweet Peat spirit is similar, except there’s a higher percentage of peated malt added for extra smokiness and grunge. Then there’s the Pure Malt, the most intriguing of the three, where darker roasted malts replace the peated portion.

But there’s an additional twist to the Pure Malt. Fores and feints from previous runs aren’t added to the low wines for the second ‘Pure Malt’ distillation – one of the only distilleries in the world to do this, as fores and feints are believed to add a huge amount of flavour and texture to subsequent distillates. The technique has created a very light and clean whisky, which differs quite a bit to the thicker and heavier 900 Standard and Sweet Peat.

Maturation at Chief’s Son is more traditional, with the vast majority of their distillates matured in fortified wine casks from Seppeltsfield, coopered at SA Cooperage. An ex-Bourbon cask whisky has also been released, along with a stout and porter cask finish. Other wine cask whiskies might also be on the cards in future, and Stuart and Naomi are hoping to steadily increase production in coming years.