Belgrade Distillery

One of the most unique distilleries in Australia, if not the world…

Belgrove Distillery, located around 45 minutes north of Hobart, does things a little differently.

Not only is it home to Australia’s first (and only) 100% rye whisky, but distiller and owner Peter Bignell also grows his own rye corn on the same farmland that is home to his distillery – producing his whisky on a copper still that he built from scratch, no less.

In short, it’s a ‘closed loop’ operation: the still is direct fired by cooking oil recycled from a roadhouse down the road, water for brewing and diluting is harvested from the roof, yeast is often reused, and Bignell feeds the spent mash to his sheep. Talk about sustainable.

“The two main products we sell would be the Rye Whisky, which is a vatting of a number of different barrels, and the other we sell a lot of is a coffee liqueur we call Black Rye,” Bignell told BARS&clubs.

Other, even smaller batch whiskies produced by Belgrove include a peated rye (with the peat sourced from a bog behind his brother’s house), an oat whisky, and a rather unique, soon to be released liquid by the name of Wholly Shit – a rye whisky smoked with sheep dung.

And his hard work is paying dividends; Bignell lists the 94.5 ‘Liquid Gold’ rating he received for his Rye Whisky from Jim Murray, and his recent success at the Australian Icons of Whisky Awards – where, among other accolades, Belgrove was named Craft Producer of the Year – as his proudest achievements.

As for serving suggestions? “I always say if people really want to taste what it is I produce, you really need to sip it at room temperature with maybe a little bit of water, and that’s it,” says Bignell. “But really, however people like it – have it that way.”