The Story

The Archie Rose Distillery opened its doors to the public on Wednesday 18 March, 2015, marking a watershed moment for the Australian distilling industry. It became the first legal distillery to open in Sydney in decades, and yet the driving force behind Archie Rose came from an unlikely source.

Will Edwards was working as a management consultant for a top professional services firm when he saw urban distilleries taking off in New York and London and decided Sydney was due for a shakeup. Only in his mid-twenties, he gathered together some serious investors, and some serious moolah, and constructed Archie Rose Distilling Co. in the inner-city suburb of Rosebery.

The distillery perfectly encapsulated prevailing trends, with a focus on provenance, craft, small-batches, and an impressive adjoining bar which has won multiple design awards.

Joe Dinsmoor, who’d spent years at Lark Distillery in Tasmania, was brought on board to create spirits of both white and dark persuasions. Initially, Archie Rose released a gin, a vodka, a white unaged rye spirit, and a host of experimental one-off batches.

But the question that kept cropping up in those early days was – what will Archie Rose become known for? White spirits? Dark spirits? Will Archie Rose be a gin producer, a whisky producer? A rum maker?

Incredibly, the team’s answer to those questions has become: we do everything. What might’ve initially seemed like bluster quickly turned into a series of achievements, as nearly every type of spirit the team released took out major international awards.

‘I don’t really think that spirits are mutually exclusive,’ says Dave Withers, Archie Rose’s renowned head distiller, who took the reins in 2017 after an initial stint as production manager.

‘A lot of distilleries become dedicated to one style, but… if you talk to some of the great wineries, they don’t just make one wine. I think in the spirits world we kind of believe one distillery should only focus on one product, whereas I think there’s a lot to be gained from letting different traditions inform the production of a spirit.’

Under Withers and Will Edwards, this multi-spirit approach has paid dividends. Alongside numerous gin and other spirits bottlings, the first whisky Archie Rose released was the Chocolate Rye Malt Whisky in June 2019. The core range Rye Malt Whisky followed in August of the same year.

Specialty malts feature in all of Archie Rose’s whiskies, helped along by their partnership with Voyager Craft Malt. Voyager’s staggering Whitton Malt House facility has become a major supplier, hinting at Archie Rose’s future whisky program.

In March 2020, Archie Rose’s took out World’s Best Rye Whiskey at the World Whiskies Awards in London. At the same time, rumours of a substantial new production distillery began to surface.

Then came the inaugural single malt, which was launched in September 2020, with the 3000 bottles in the first batch instantly selling out.

The distillery’s ‘six malt approach’ then became clearer as details of the new Banksmeadow facility were officially announced in late 2020. The ground-breaking, high-tech site would turn Archie Rose into Australia’s largest whisky producer.

But controversy followed the distillery reveal, when it was discovered that an Innovation Patent had been certified by IP Australia in January 2020 on the production of what Archie Rose claimed was a new method of whisky production developed for the site.

Subsequently, the Australian Distillers Association (ADA) tasked a legal team to look into the patent, as a number of distillers argued that it would infringe on practices they already had in place.

Cameron Syme, the founder of WA’s Great Southern Distilling Company, and vice-president of the ADA, then mounted a challenge against the controversial patent, arguing that Archie Rose’s ‘individual malt stream’ blending process was commonplace long before the distillery initiated the patent process in May 2018. The challenge is currently being examined by IP Australia.

The controversy surrounding the patent has done nothing to halt the momentum of this Sydney powerhouse.

In July 2021, Archie Rose became the first Australian whisky to be bottled by The Scotch Malt Whisky Society with 147.1 Jacaranda Jam, a two year old single malt first-fill apera cask.

Alongside more conventional whisky releases, the distillery has also released a range of bottled cocktails and experimental aged spirits, the latest being Archie Rose X St. Ali Blasphemy Coffee Whisky.

The rate of growth and progress has been colossal considering the relative youth of the Archie Rose story. But with the new distillery now ramping up production, and exports on the horizon, Archie Rose is gearing up to join the ranks of the world’s top spirits producers.