Photo: Archie Rose.
An Australian whisky’s identity can begin long before a cask is filled. It might begin with a rye variety whose stalks bend toward the ground, a malt chosen for its character rather than its yield, or a winemaker willing to set aside the right barrels. At Sydney’s Archie Rose, those choices determine how the spirit is made.
It plans to enter the United States in late 2026, with Chris Hemsworth joining founder Will Edwards as a co-owner. His involvement brings a familiar face to a distillery founded in 2014. Behind the bottles is Master Distiller Dave Withers and a production system designed to give Australian grain more room to express itself.
Keeping the malts separate
Archie Rose’s production method grew out of experiments with Australian brewers malt, which was more readily available than distillers malt when the company began distilling in 2014, Withers says. Archie Rose’s own history dates its first distilling and cask filling to that year, before the March 2015 launch of its unaged White Rye. Working with brewers malt brought barley variety, origin and malting technique into focus, prompting the team to explore how differently those choices could express themselves in spirit.
When designing the new distillery in 2017, Archie Rose developed that thinking into what Withers calls its individual malt stream process. He describes six malted barley styles and three malted rye styles, with milling, mashing, fermentation, distillation and maturation tailored to the streams. A malt may be processed separately or alongside a base malt, he notes; the aim is to tailor production to its character. The streams provide components for different expressions. The six barley and three rye styles describe the production system, rather than a fixed mash bill used in every bottle.
The production team moved to the Botany distillery in 2020, after three years of construction. The purpose-built facility allowed the team to put the individual-stream approach into practice. Across the program, the team uses five types of yeast, different fermentation times, varying barreling strengths and several cask types.
Together, those decisions produce more than 15 individual malt whisky spirits, each with its own production recipe.
The blending room
The individual spirits meet in the blending room. Fruitier pale malt spirits can bring brightness, while crystal malt spirits contribute depth, Withers explains. Drawing on those components lets the team maintain consistency or develop a different profile without having to put every malt through the same process.
Each spirit is carefully managed through maturation to best express the character of its grain and processing
Dave describes the process as labor-intensive. Each stream needs its own production decisions and maturation management before the team can judge how it will work in a blend. That leaves room to adjust the finished whisky’s character using the spirits already available.
The people behind the next chapter
Edwards founded Archie Rose in 2014. Withers has been there from the beginning, leading production and operations. Hemsworth now joins them as a co-owner involved in product creation, as the distillery prepares to take its whisky into another market.
Hemsworth joined Archie Rose in 2026. He has worked with the team to co-create three whiskies announced for Asia and New Zealand release, with an EU and UK rollout to follow in 2027. The US launch expressions are currently undisclosed.
A rye variety with a harvesting problem
Vampire rye presents a problem before it reaches the distillery. Its long stalks, low yields and tendency toward lodging, when the stalk bends and the grain reaches the ground, make it difficult to harvest.
The response has been to use windrowing, an older harvesting technique in which the grain is gathered and left to dry in the field. Withers describes the resulting spirit as having a character somewhere between green pepper and ginger. He also leaves an important question open to your palate: whether that character comes from the rye variety, the harvesting method, or a combination of the two.
Cape malt offers another reason to work with a demanding grain. Withers describes it as a variety grown in Australia in the 1800s, with substantially lower yields than conventional barley. The teamuses it for the distinct flavor it brings to the spirit. Archie Rose sources its malts locally and works with Australian farmers on custom and heritage varieties of barley and rye. A grain’s influence on whisky is similar to grape variety’s influence on wine: how it is grown, harvested, malted and brewed establishes possibilities that later stages can develop.
What local casks make possible
Australian fortified-wine producers supply casks as well as a chance to influence how those casks are prepared. Withers, who works nearby, describes the process involved in securing them and building relationships with local winemakers, managing the quality of the wine and wood, along with cask treatment.
He associates that process with savory-nut and dried-fruit flavors in the whisky. Across the wider production program, he describes using casks ranging from ex-malted rye to Australian apera and sherry, with different filling strengths and maturation decisions for the individual spirits.
Archie Rose also obtained a small number of historic red gum casks from a winery in New South Wales, believed to date to the 1930s. Withers says these casks sit outside the core range. Their scarcity gave the team a limited opportunity to work with a distinctly Australian maturation vessel.
Rather than fill the scarce casks with its usual new make, the team chose the malt and made a spirit specifically for that wood. The cask’s character therefore shaped the whisky before maturation had begun.
A floor-malted barley from a small craft maltster in central Victoria was selected, and a spirit was produced specifically for those casks. Withers describes red gum as behaving differently from conventional oak, interacting more delicately with the spirit and requiring time to develop. His account of the resulting whisky includes incense and bush honey.
Three ways to introduce smoke
Their three methods introduce smoke at different points: through dilution water, through malt, and through the cask. Withers says the team ultimately brought them together using native stringybark. Smoking the malt and cask gave the distillery ways to build smoke into production before the whisky reached bottling strength. Red gum can enter the production process in different ways. A cask made from the wood matures the spirit; malt smoked with the timber carries smoke into distillation. Archie Rose’s experiments with native timber have also taken smoke beyond the malt.
He traces the smoke program through several experiments. They initially wanted to smoke malt using Australian wood, but couldn’t find an Australian malt house willing or equipped to do it at the time. An alternative was to smoke water with native ironbark, then use that water to reduce cask-strength rye malt whisky to bottling strength.
That became Ironbark Smoked Rye Malt Whisky, one of the early limited releases. It introduced smoke through the dilution water, after the spirit had already matured.
Later, a craft maltster installed a dedicated smoking unit, allowing trials with grain smoked using native timber. Withers links that work to the Red Gum Smoked Single Malt and Stringybark Smoked Single Malt releases. The team then explored smoking the cask itself, experimenting with materials including wattleseed, lavender, cinnamon and juniper.
Meeting Archie Rose in America
Hemsworth’s co-ownership brings another public face to Archie Rose as it prepares for release into America. The whisky behind that introduction rests on less visible work: growing a difficult rye variety, securing local wine casks, and making production decisions for each individual malt. Those decisions give the blending team a varied set of ingredients. Pale malt can bring brightness; crystal malt can add depth. How they combine them shapes the expression, but the possibilities begin much earlier, with the grain in the field.
More Archie Rose stories will follow in Whiskey Scene ahead of the distillery’s cover feature.
