Backwoods Distilling Co. is a craft whisky distillery, located in the Victorian High Country. You can visit their distillery and cellar door located at Yackandandah, VIC, where they produce delicious Aussie whisky and spirits in small batches.

• Tell us a little about your distillery, where did the idea of Backwoods Distilling Co. come from? 

Bree: We were both enjoying exploring the world of whisky and at the time and after we moved to Yackandandah from Melbourne in 2016, it kick-started the desire to change up our lives a bit and look for something new to do. Being surrounded by wineries and craft breweries, it made sense that a distillery would also work in the region.

Leigh: We started getting into trying different whiskies together and eventually it transformed from ‘I wonder how you make it’ to ‘I can totally make it!’, so we decided to get serious about it and I took a distilling and brewing course and spent two years mapping out what we wanted to ultimately make.

• Where did your passion for whisky and gins start?

Bree: As we got older and started a family, we were going out less and so spending more on good quality booze to enjoy at home. Drinking less but drinking better! We love the stories behind the products and the quality ingredients that Aussie craft distillers are utilising.

Leigh: We were really inspired by what was happening in the Australian whisky industry and seeing people able to make whisky in just their backyards. Meeting Peter Bignell from Belgrove was a huge inspiration as well, when I got back from Tasmania I said to Bree “I think we can do this”.

• What spirits are you producing? (I understand you're making whisky, rye and gin currently, is anything else?) and do you have any plans for any others in the future?

Bree: We’ve always got other projects happening. There’s some barrels of brandy in the bond store and we’re about to distill some fermented local honey!

Leigh: There’s plans for some other spirits in the works too. Some will be just for the cellar door to see how they go.

• Tell us about your Rye whisky? A lot of Aussie whisky distilleries are only focusing on single malt, how come you've chosen to explore making rye?

Leigh: Rye is my passion and I love making it, I really want to champion it and I think it’s such a fantastic grain. More people should drink it! I’m looking forward to seeing what people think of the cask strength version of our Rye that we’re bottling for Whisky Lovers Australia. 

Bree: We just enjoyed drinking rye whisky, so we wanted to make our own. And when we discovered the heritage rye grain from Voyager Craft Malt, it has such an interesting story that we knew we wanted to use it. Rye is certainly more challenging to produce so we know a few distilleries who have tried but given up. And we don’t blame them! But we are proud to have pushed through the challenging mash days to make rye a Backwoods favourite!

• Tell us a little about your whisky production process.  From the wash to hand-bottling? Is it all done on site?

Bree: When we started back in 2017, all production was done from the shed on our property. The shed was also our bond store, and we would bring out the trestle table for bottling! We moved into the new site in 2021, so all mashing, fermenting, and distilling happens there. The shed site is now our bond store, with about 170 casks of whisky maturing. We also have a permanent bottling station set up now. No more trestle tables!

• You use Voyager Malt as your supply of grains, can you tell us a little about which grains make up your mashbill and why you settled on them?

Bree: We use Atlas, Voodoo and Veloria malts in our single malt. And we use heritage rye, winter wheat and a malted barley and chocolate malt in the rye whisky. 

Leigh: Our Rye grain is super cool, it’s a heritage variety that was used hundreds of years ago and it was forgotten about and replaced with crops that gave a higher yield. But then it was found growing wild in a paddock near the Murrumbidgee, which is why the first release was called ‘Wild Rye’.

Rye is such a hardy plant, and it grows anywhere but these grains look very different to modern rye, they’re half the size and it’s got so much flavour packed in that little grain. It’s really hard to process and distill (not for the faint of heart!), so we make the Single Malt for half of the year, and then the Rye for the other half so that we have 6 months of less stressful production! The story and flavour of our rye grain is so special, it makes it all worth it.

• You both grew up in Myrtleford, was that part of the reason why you decided to build your distillery in that part of Victoria?

Leigh: Both our families are still near Myrtleford, so we were looking to move around there after years of living in Melbourne. But we didn’t want to be based too close! And Yack was always in our minds for the distillery, there’s plenty of visitors coming through but it still has a small-town vibe.

• I also understand you first started distilling on your own property before securing your distillery site and cellar door. When did you move into the new site and how is the new location going? 

Leigh: We opened here February 2021, but we had the place for a year before we moved in. I was going to quit my day job teaching, but everything was put on pause with Covid. It wasn’t until November of 2020 that we started getting it ready.

• You have 2 stills currently - Stillvester and Stillvia - what was the inspiration of their fantastic names, and what are their specs? Which still does what job?

Bree: Stillvester was named by a friend when we posted for suggestions on social media back in 2017! He is 1250L and he makes our rye and single malt whisky. I can’t remember how we named Stillvia, possibly social media or Leigh would have thought of it! She’s a 500L still and makes all our gins.

Leigh: Stillvia isn’t really named after anyone, I just thought it suited. We wanted it to be kind of a husband-and-wife team of stills, so we consider her Stillvia Still-onne.

• Do you work with any other local industry in your production? We mentioned Voyager already as a source of grains, how about your barrels? 

Bree: We use a range of sources for barrels – it depends on who can get us the ones we’re after. We do often source directly from local wineries now that we’ve had a few years of building local relationships. 

Leigh: We’ve also developed relationships with local wineries and breweries. We’ve made some fun things with Rolly from Scion Wines in Rutherglen, and we have a great relationship with the guys at Bright Brewing. We’ve been distilling some of their Imperial Stout and we plan to have a release bottled each year moving forward.

We tend to use a lot of French oak barrels, it works well with the Rye, and some fortified casks we use for finishing as well like in the WLA release. There are also some ex-bourbon casks planned for future releases.

• How did your business fare during Covid and are you seeing a return or growth of new visitors?

Bree: In 2020, we both kept our day jobs and continued to run the distillery part-time from our shed. It was a bit of a holding pattern while the pandemic played out. We did manage to have a successful first release of our whiskies in August 2020, thanks to virtual events and lots of online shopping!

We opened our tasting room venue in February 2021, so obviously the first 12 months were spent opening and closing again! So far in 2022, we’ve had a smooth run of being open so we can’t really compare this year with last year, ask me again in 12 months!

• Tell us about your red gum casks, why did you choose to work with what some other distilleries refer to as the notorious wood? 

Bree: Our red gum casks have been carefully crafted from decades-old red gum timber. This is the key! We’ve been lucky enough to source such old, air-dried wood to use and our cooper is very experienced.

We had the idea when we discovered a local winery making a delicious red-gum matured wine. Lots of research and development went into our red gum project, so by the time we had our first casks made we were confident they’d produce some really interesting whiskies.

Leigh: I thought the red gum had enough familiar character and straight away I knew the flavour was going to work. Young Red gum timber is a bit trickier and more tannic to work with, so we try to source as much older wood as possible. There’s not a steady supply though so we’re using it while we can.

• Any other exciting news to share of upcoming releases or distillery announcements?

Leigh: We’ve got the Whisky Lovers Australia release coming out, we sourced a great local Tawny cask to finish it in and being our first cask strength Rye bottling it’s very exciting. 

Bree: We’re also about to hit our 5th birthday this August! We think by the end of this year, we’ll have narrowed down more of a core range for our whiskies. And we hope to have a more consistent supply (both online and from the distillery). We’ve been juggling supply and demand since we released our first whiskies, so it’ll be nice to always have whisky available whenever anyone wants to restock their Backwoods bottles!

• Now the most important question of them all - are you open for visitors? 

Bree: Yep! We’re open Thursday – Monday every week. Visit our website for hours and to book a table in the tasting room.

That's a wrap.

Thanks again to Bree & Leigh for the chat. If you are ever in their part of the world, do stop by and add their whiskies on your MUST TRY lists.

Visit their website here: www.backwoodsdistilling.com.au

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