The Story
Of all the distilleries that predate the recent boom in Australian whisky production, the Warrenheip Distillery (later Brind’s Distillery) is perhaps the most significant. When Warrenheip was built in 1863 by Robert Dunn, just outside the thriving gold town of Ballarat, it hailed the start of a new era of Australian whisky production.
Dunn had arrived in Ballarat from Ireland in 1852 and established himself as a wine and spirit merchant in the fledgling goldfields. He clearly ran a lucrative trade in grog, as evidenced by his purchase of 121 acres and the permanent spring behind Mount Warrenheip, regarded at the time as a great natural asset for the region.
J. H. Rennie, thought to be a Scot, was contracted to design the distillery, and he applied the same successful principles he would’ve encountered in his homeland to construct Warrenheip. His design took advantage of a natural spring water pond that filtered down through the basalt and scoria rocks of Mount Warrenheip, an inactive volcano. Rennie converted the pond into a 300,000 litre reservoir above the distillery which fulfilled the requirements of the entire site.
Nearly all of the distillery equipment was built locally. The three stills came from the Melbourne Copper Works on Flinders Lane, the largest constructed in Australia at the time. The Phoenix Foundry in Ballarat produced the vats and tanks needed, and the distillery buildings were built from local bluestone quarried nearby.
The first whisky distilled at Warrenheip in 1863 was from a mash of barley, oats and wheat in the Irish pure pot still tradition, and cases of Dunn’s ‘Colonial Whisky’ were soon being exhibited overseas in Ireland, Europe and the UK. Initially, a short maturation took place in four 2500 gallon wooden vats, but once a cooperage was constructed onsite, casks were then used to hold and transport Warrenheip malt whisky via the adjacent railway straight to Melbourne.
Along with the cooperage, Dunn built a grain store, engine house, bond store, stables and offices, and soon, most of the distillery’s grain requirements were supplied by surrounding farms. By the late 1860s, the operation was capable of producing 600,000 litres of whisky, brandy and gin a year, but problems lay ahead.
In 1869, drought stalled the progress of the enterprise, as grain crops failed and production was halted. Dunn’s Warrenheip business was still in debt and struggling to turn a profit amidst increasing local competition. In 1872, it was put up for auction and purchased by Henry Brind and four other investors for just £6000 (Dunn had spent £12,000 alone in building the distillery).
Brind was an English chemist who’d arrived in Australia in 1852 and settled in Ballarat to run a gold buying business. He had experience in the local distilling game before purchasing Warrenheip, helping to run a distillery in Ballarat on the banks of Lake Wendouree that was eventually converted into a maltings.
For Brind, the spring-fed Warrenheip was too good an opportunity to pass up, and he eventually built Warrenheip into Australia’s second largest whisky distillery. The onsite maltings supplied dozens of local breweries and helped to further establish Brind’s as one of the most significant operations in the region. By the 1890s, the distillery’s workforce were producing large amounts of whisky, gin (Brind’s Gin was highly sought-after) and other spirits, and Brind’s malt whisky was held up as the nation’s finest.
But in Melbourne, the competition was starting to catch up. Joshua Brothers’ Federal Distillery was producing enormous amounts of spirit by the early 1900s, and their Joshua Brothers malt whisky started to eat into Brind’s market share.
Victoria’s four major whisky producers then decided that an amalgamation was in their best interests. And in 1924, Henry Brind & Co., Federal Distillery, the Australian Distilling Company’s South Melbourne operation, and a distillery established by Breheny Bros & Kenna amalgamated to create Federal Distilleries Pty Ltd.
The decision was made to shut down distilling at Warrenheip and move production of Brind’s whisky and other spirits to Melbourne, angering the community around the distillery. In 1926, production briefly resumed, but a year later, the distilling side of the operation was again closed (although malting continued), following complaints from the local council that effluent from the distillery was contaminating a creek nearby.
Today, the old buildings are heritage listed as an outstanding relic of the history of distilling and malting in Australia. As the site never adapted Saladin tanks or modern germinating procedures, it’s considered the best surviving example of an early floor system of malt production in the country.
The site is currently owned by Slades Beverages, a soft drink manufacturing company, which continues to take advantage of the spring water that filters down the mountain nearly 160 years on.
Present-day site