The Story
Cape Byron Distillery is located on the Brook farm about 10 minutes inland from Byron Bay. Pamela and Martin Brook bought the 96 acre property in 1988 when it was a rundown dairy farm and gradually set about regenerating the land that was once surrounded by the largest subtropical rainforest in Australia, the vast majority of which was destroyed within ten years of white settlement. But under the Brook’s, over 35,000 subtropical trees have been planted, completely transforming the site and reviving many of the native trees and plants that once spread across the ancient forest.
The distilling side of the equation came along with Pamela and Martin’s son, Eddie. Back in 2015, Eddie was the Australian brand manager for Bruichladdich whisky and Botanist Gin. As part of that gig, he organised a rockstar whisky tour across Australia and New Zealand for Bruichladdich’s Jim McEwan, one of the world’s most respected and admired distillers and a legend of the Scottish whisky industry. It was here that the two formed a close friendship.
‘One day, Jim asked about my parents, who we are as a family and what we do, and I told him about our farm,’ Eddie says. ‘I told him about how passionate we are about giving back to the land, about regenerating native vegetation and having a positive impact on our region.’
‘That was really where the idea for the distillery started. Jim turned to me at one point during the trip and said – Eddie, we were meant to meet and start a distillery. And that’s we did.’
The distillery was founded a year later, tucked into a hill that overlooks the stunning surrounding forest and macadamia farm the Brook’s have cultivated over three decades. In 2016, the first spirits out of the distillery door were Brookie’s Gin followed by a range of popular liqueurs featuring native botanicals, many local to the area and some even picked from the Brook property. In the background, Eddie and Jim got to work on the whisky side of the equation.
Single malt was always going to be the desired style and production started in early 2019. The whisky starts with wort supplied by Stone & Wood Brewery down the road, an interesting choice considering the Scottish requirement to brew onsite. But once the wash is double-distilled through Knapp Lewer pot stills from Tasmania, the vast majority of Cape Byron spirit goes straight into ex-Bourbon casks.
‘The basis of every good distillery is that ex-Bourbon release, because that’s where your spirit shines. And for us, we worked so hard on the quality of our spirit, we don’t want our spirit to be overly dominated by oak,’ says Eddie.
The first Cape Byron whiskies were released in August 2022 with Eddie and Jim hosting launch events and masterclasses across the country. The well-priced core range Cape Byron ‘The Original’ and ‘Chardonnay Cask’, both spirit and fruit-forward and utilising large format ex-Bourbon casks, are certainly closer in style to Scottish single malt, and mark a departure from the preference for cask-forward, local wine influenced whiskies that have dominated Australian whisky making over the last decade.
Considering Jim’s Islay roots, peat smoke is another element that the team are keen to inject into Cape Byron whiskies. Peated whisky has been laid down in cask using peated malt from Simpsons Malt in Scotland and is due for its inaugural release in 2023.
Eddie is also working on a fascinating new process to inject locally smoked flavours into Cape Byron whisky using ingredients from the Brook’s macadamia farm. Macadamia trees on the farm have been felled, air dried and then sent to Voyager Craft Malt where the wood will be used to smoke malting barley and create a uniquely Australian take on the peated whisky style.
The more you learn about the Cape Byron Distillery project, the more impressed you become by what Eddie, Jim and the entire team have achieved (Jim is also a part-owner). The whole business, which now holds a B Corp Certification, is a coming together of different knowledge bases, ingredients and distilling traditions, from the old world to the new, and there’s a refreshing sense of place and purpose driving it forward. As whisky production continues to grow and more bottlings are released, expect Cape Byron to feature as one of the whisky distilleries to watch from this part of the world.