The Story
As stories go, the founding of Corowa Distilling Co. is a corker. It starts with Dean Druce, his father Neil, and a disused flour mill in the border town of Corowa on the banks of the Murray.
In 2009, Dean and Neil somehow convinced the local council to sell them the derelict mill for a miserly $1 so they could turn it into a whisky distillery. The Druce family, longtime grain farmers in New South Wales, had experience with old mills. In the 1990s, Neil rescued the old Junee Flour Mill two hours north west of Corowa and turned it into a successful licorice and chocolate factory.
The heritage-listed Corowa Flour Mill, originally built in 1924, had been sitting there gathering dust since it was closed in the 1970s. But the Druces had a big vision. Consider that Corowa is surrounded by the Rutherglen wine region, home to some of the world’s top fortified wine makers, meaning plenty of barrels for whisky maturation, and that vision becomes clearer.
The area north is also a renowned grain growing region, but the Druces already knew that: Neil’s father Alan Druce is one of the foremost pioneers of organic grain farming in Australia through work done at the family property at Ardlethan in the Riverina.
The Druce’s then got to work converting the enormous Corowa mill into a working distillery and function centre. But they needed to figure out how to make whisky before they could really get things off the ground.
Like most, Dean and Neil headed straight to Tasmania, did the distilling course at Lark, and then visited every whisky producer in operation on the island at the time. But that didn’t quite quench their thirst for whisky knowledge. ‘Australian whisky was still in its infancy then,’ says Dean, ‘and we wanted to learn from the most experienced people in the business, get a point of difference.’
So off to Scotland they went. In 2012, they headed straight for Islay, and ended up staying with John MacLellan, the highly respected manager of Kilchoman Distillery, who’d also previously worked at Bunnahabhain for 21 years (MacLellan sadly passed away in 2016).
With Islay learnings under their belts, they returned to Corowa to get their distillery in the mill up and running. The aim was to keep things local, so they contracted Burns Welding, two hours north in Griffith, to build their two pot stills, and then hired Corowa local Beau Schilg to become their head distiller.
Sourcing grains was pretty simple. Since the 1960s, the Druce family have been organically farming oats, spelt, wheat and, you guessed it, barley. They still try to use grain from their own farm for whisky-making where possible, and if they don’t have enough they source from farms nearby.
The distillery finally became operational in March 2016 when single malt spirit was laid down for the first time and the site was opened to the public. Two and a half years later, in August 2018, 320 bottles of Corowa’s ‘First Drop’ was released and the distillery officially launched.
Since then, a huge array of single cask bottlings have emerged, with whisky matured in ex-shiraz, tawny, muscat, pedro ximenez and ex-Bourbon casks. There’s a semblance of a core range in the Bosque Verde, Quicks Courage and ‘Mad Dog’ Morgan bottlings. Corowa ‘The Characters’ was released in late 2019 – a more affordable core range offering matured in red wine casks – while the first peated Corowa whisky came online in Feburary 2020.
The distillery itself has become one of the most popular whisky destinations in the country, welcoming tens of thousands of visitors each year. And as Corowa whisky continues to mature and gather complexity, the Druces have their sights set on becoming one of the country’s leading centres for whisky production and tourism.