The hairs stood up on my neck when I first saw the two massive pot stills at Archie Rose’s new distillery in Bankmeadows. If five years ago you said to me that stills of that size would be up and running in Australia, I doubt I would’ve believed you. If you said that these stills would also be at the centre of a furore around what Archie Rose claim is a new style of whisky making, again, not buying it.
But that’s where we find ourselves, and perhaps it’s fitting in a year of such upheaval that we now have a groundbreaking new distillery to get our heads around.
Just before I arrived at Archie Rose over a week ago, I’d been at the remote Joadja Distillery south of Sydney, getting bitten by horse flies and watching out for brown snakes while walking through Joadja’s barley crop. The contrast was dizzying when I pulled up to the frenetic industrial park near Port Botany where Archie Rose’s high-tech operation is located, 15 minutes from the original distillery in Rosebery.
The new Archie Rose distillery in construction, now occupying the site at the top left – realestate.com
Everything about this new distillery runs counter to how Australian whisky has been made over the last 25 years. And when I pulled up, it was a hive of activity, with trucks and cars racing in and out of the complex.
To then enter the distillery, cameras and sign-in protocols had to be negotiated. When I eventually reached the level where Archie Rose’s team work – a bright hospitality space and bar that sits next to the control room for the distillery – I’d ventured into a different world. Next to that room, Dave Withers’ office, Archie’s head distiller.
The space felt a little tense as I greeted Dave. I know the patent issue has caused a lot of anxiety for the Archie team, and as one of the first journos to be allowed into the site at the heart of the issue, I felt like an outsider peaking through the curtains before the show starts.
Archie Rose gin stills
The distillery hasn’t been designed with visitors in mind, and I quickly found that out as Dave and I kitted ourselves up in high-viz to enter the distillery proper. Or maybe de-kitted is more appropriate – all phones, electronic equipment, even watches had to be discarded before stepping into this new powerhouse of Australian distilling.
The sound, the smell and the fury of the place immediately hits you: spicy grain notes, ferment esters, and a whole lotta noise from the tangle of pipes and tanks crammed into the space, reminding you this is still Sydney – every square metre costs.
The gin stills are the first thing you see, and I could write you a whole other piece on the engineering behind Archie Rose’s gin production. Another time.
Around the corner, you get your first sense of the cavernous scale of the place as it spreads deeper and higher over multiples floors. Above the gin stills sit the grain receivers for Archie Rose’s now infamous ‘individual malt stream’ process. This is where the vision starts, as the various malts and grains are processed into their separate streams.
Mashing at this new site is completely different to anything previously seen in Australian distilling. Similar to Midleton in Ireland and Teaninich and InchDairnie in Scotland, Archie Rose have installed a mash filter built by Meura, the Belgian pioneers of the technology. In a nutshell, the mash filter is a wort separation device used as an alternative to a traditional mash or lauter tun.
Meura mash filter
Conversion of starch in the grains to fermentable sugars starts in two mash tanks below. From there, the wort is then filtered and separated from the grain solids by being run through a series of fine filter plates (here’s a brilliant explanation of the process).
It’s a seriously expensive piece of kit, ideally suited to processing different malts and grains efficiently and quickly, particularly rye, which is why the team installed it. The technique also tends to create a brighter and cleaner wort, so it’ll be interesting to see how that affects Archie Rose’s whiskies down the track.
Once it’s through the filter, the wort can then be pumped into a crazy number of fermenters. This is where the scale of the permutations possible starts to come into focus. And when you consider how many different ferments will be running when the distillery is fully operational, it’s a mind-boggling view.
Upstairs from here is where Archie Rose’s two massive whisky stills are located. Built by Frilli in Italy, the two pots both have cooling jackets in the neck, so the team can make adjustments to the style of spirit they’re producing without needing different still profiles. The idea is that the set up allows the team to customise each spirit to the individual grain or malt or molasses being distilled (Withers is also a rum fanatic and an Archie Rose rum is in the pipeline).
Brandon Tai, one of Archie Rose’s engineers with the new stills
From here, spirit is then filled into cask in a large adjacent maturation space that Dave told me will soon be full once the distillery ramps up production.
That’s a very simple breakdown of what is a seriously complex facility, where the attention to detail engineered into every part of the process is obsessive to say the least. But the equipment, the ideas and the philosophy behind the new site are a fascinating mashup of distilleries from overseas.
Let’s be clear, the idea of creating different styles of whisky at the one site and then blending them at the final stage isn’t new. Similar ideas and techniques can be seen at Hiram Walker & Sons in Canada, Hakushu Distillery in Japan, and Diageo’s Roseile Distillery in Scotland, to name just a few. Each of these plants produce dozens of different styles of whisky and spirit, from mashing right through to maturation, which they then blend to create various products.
In a lot of ways, Archie Rose’s new site is a smaller version of the Hiram Walker & Sons distillery in Windsor. At Hiram Walker, corn, rye, a proprietary rye malt, barley, barley malt and even wheat are mashed, fermented, distilled and matured separately, giving the blenders scope to create a truly ridiculous array of whiskies. That facility is also capable of producing 55 million litres of spirit a year (much of that going into Canadian Club). Comparatively, Archie Rose will be capable of achieving a tenth of that amount, so while big for Australia, it’s not at the scale of the mammoth plants overseas.
Hiram Walker & Sons distillery – Windsor, Canada
What’s significant about the Archie Rose method is that they’ve taken the design principles of these distilleries and applied them specifically to single malt – a style that’s only recently had significant innovation thrown at it.
Numerous distilleries in the U.S., Australia and Europe have played around with different roasted and specialty malts, Westland Distillery most successfully. But those distilleries have stuck with a traditional single mash, whereas Archie Rose’s approach is much more fastidious and onerous. In that, it’s a particularly Australian achievement – bringing together influences and ideas from around the world to create an Australian take on an Old World style.
And even though a number of Australian (Backwoods, Corowa) and international whisky makers have played around with distilling different roasted and specialty malts separately, none of them, as far as I can see, have designed a single malt around that idea. And that’s the crucial bit, and where I can understand the patent.
On the success, validity or otherwise of the patent, that’s not my section chef. It’s been pointed out, most succinctly by Cameron Syme, a former lawyer and the vice president of the Australian Distillers Association (ADA), that patent law is a complex area. We all have to be patient and see what the outcome is, especially now that the ADA have tasked a legal team to look into the matter.
The individual tanks for Archie Rose’s gin distillates
What’s disappointing, is that the story behind Archie Rose’s achievement in advancing Australian whisky and spirits making has been overshadowed by the patent. A legal document was the first look we had at this fascinating creation, a horrible outcome considering the staggering amount of work that’s gone into bringing this project to life.
For that, Archie Rose has to accept some responsibility. I wonder if the team got on the front foot early and clearly communicated what the new distillery was about and what they were trying to create that if some of the mess could have been avoided. But the reaction to the patent from a number of quarters has also been overblown, with social media inflaming the confusion further, and maybe that would’ve been the outcome either way.
Cask filling bay – a rare sight in Australian whisky
Personally, I don’t think the patent will adversely affect what a number of smaller Australian distilleries are trying to achieve, or stymie their ability to innovate. I think the patent is aimed specifically at larger international drinks companies who might’ve thought about copying the process and bringing a similar product to market before Archie Rose’s original version hit the shelves.
Do I think that was likely to ever happen? Not really, and that’s where you wonder about the wisdom of letting lawyers get their teeth into this. But, you never know. I’ve seen much crazier things happen in the spirits industry.
This is just the beginning of what will become a long and complicated story. That was one of my biggest takeaways from the distillery visit: the new site is only just coming online, the product is years away, and this is a big roll of the dice on a process that hasn’t been tested yet. It’s daunting, it’s exciting and for everyone concerned, I hope it works.
