The Story

Dan Woolley is one of Australia’s most influential whisky ambassadors. A whisky collector and former bar owner, Woolley has worked with numerous whisky brands for well over a decade, training thousands of bartenders and educating droves of whisky fans in the process.

He got his start in bars and pubs, going on to open and manage multiple whisky venues in Sydney and Bryon Bay (he now resides just outside the latter). As a brand ambassador, he’s also worked for retailers and distributors like World of Whisky, but he’s best known for his role as the former national ambassador for Beam Suntory’s whisky brands. His obsession with whisky, particularly Laphroaig, had him working stints at distilleries around the world and then sharing what he’d learnt back in Australia.

When his time as a brand ambassador came to an end in 2019, a new whisky project was always in the works. But instead of developing a mammoth venture befitting the scale of brands he’d previously represented – Laphroaig, Auchentoshan, Bowmore, Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark, Yamazaki, to name a few – Woolley created Highwayman, a range of limited independent bottlings with whisky sourced and matured from distilleries across Australia.

‘The brand is my life,’ Woolley says. ‘This is me in a bottle. Every single batch tells a story and is completely different. And every batch has made its way into Byron Bay on the highways of Australia to be aged, bottled and labelled by my own hands.’

The first Highwayman bottling began its life in three separate casks: two 20 litre apera casks and one 20 litre tawny cask. When each cask reached around two years in barrel, they were then married together and given an additional maturation in a 50 litre French oak ex-red wine cask that had received a ‘super’ heavy char. The coopering and heavy charring of these red wine barrels is an ongoing project with Andrew Young from SA Cooperage. Killara Distillery’s Kristy Lark and Craig Field from Craft Works Distillery are also working with them.

All of the first five Highwayman releases, sold through the Australian Whisky Appreciation Society, featured some ex-red wine maturation, while a dozen different cask types with spirit from NSW, Tasmanian and South Australian distilleries are also in barrel.

Alongside this label, Woolley has been mashing, fermenting and distilling his own whisky at Lord Byron Distillery, and his first wholly Byron Bay distilled and matured Highwayman whisky was released in June 2021. Woolley then opened the Highwayman-HQ cellar door in late 2021, where he hosts masterclasses for the public. He’s also planning to open his own distillery outside Byron Bay with wife Billie-Jean Woolley, who’s set to launch her own gin brand.

Even when the new distillery gets off the ground, production will continue to be small-scale, at less than 200 bottles a week.