Since moving into our Banksmeadow distillery, the Archie Rose team has been busy experimenting with new ways to create truly innovative spirits. With the help of a world-class production facility that allows us to trial new botanicals, discover new blends and really push the boundaries when it comes to the way we work with spirits, we’ve been able to get started on creating some wonderful—and wonderfully weird—products that we’re really proud of. In fact, we’re so excited about what we’ve produced that we don’t want to keep it to ourselves anymore.

Working hard on our white spirits

Thanks to our new distillery’s copper pot and column hybrid vacuum stills, we’ve been able to transition to using cold distilled botanicals in our white spirits. Utilising the reduced boiling points created by drawing a vacuum within the stills means eliminating the damaging impact of heat on delicate botanicals to extract the very best flavour. As the stills are also capable of more than twelve different configurations, we’ve been able to experiment with extracting new botanicals, too. The result? Even better blends for our core range, plus a new dry gin and botanical vodka on the horizon. Watch this space.

Spotlight On Homegrown Heroes

Here’s something to buzz about: the space our new site has bestowed upon us has allowed us to set up our own urban beehives here in Banksmeadow. Yep, our small distillery honey farm produces the goods you sip in spirit form in the likes of our Distiller’s Strength Gin, which just took home a double gold medal at the San Francisco World Spirit Awards. We’ll also be releasing our next Harvest gin later in the year—that’s our vintage series that celebrates the diversity of Australia’s annual harvest. Following on from our inaugural Poorman’s Orange Harvest Gin, we can’t wait to reveal the bounty of local produce we’re highlighting next.

Rum is coming your way

We’ve always been keen to honour the rich history of rum production in Australia—we even began work on a bold molasses spirit before we moved to Banksmeadow. It’s been quietly aging, and we’ve been patiently waiting, but the wait is finally over because the finished product is due to launch next month. This is only the beginning of our rum journey. Now that we can produce it at scale and have built a dedicated R&D lab to ramp up our research efforts, you can bet we’ll be pushing the boundaries of traditional rum production techniques for many years to come.

Inside the new Archie Rose distillery

Continuing to collaborate

Collaboration and innovation continue to lie at the heart of Archie Rose, which is why we’ve been messing with two of the purest forms of liquid: coffee and whisky. We use the word messing in the best possible way because we believe the result of this unholy union is truly incredible. And while we’re not producing our own Archie Rose coffee—that’s where the collaboration comes in—this is just one example of our capacity to create unconventional blends. Let those imaginations run wild, we say!

Exploring the Wide world of Whisky

Speaking of whisky, our new home has given us the tools necessary to cement our long-term vision of creating exceptional Australian whisky. Having moved to a mash filter setup, we are able to process and extract flavour from each of Archie Rose’s seven characterful malts, including specialty roasted local malts and heritage varieties that have been grown exclusively for us. We’re also tailoring every step of production to each specific malt by keeping each malt stream separate throughout the entire process, from milling to blending. Aside from amplifying production of our core range Single Malt Whisky and Rye Malt Whisky, we’re excited to dive into trialling speciality malts that will one day forge a new range of limited-edition whiskies.