Best Australian rye whiskies
It’s late summer in the Mallee. Endless fields covered in the blonde stubble of harvested grain bake under a huge, white-blue sky. This farming region that straddles the northern part of the Victoria-South Australia border is the last arable land before you hit the big dry. Out here on the edge of the desert, when the soil wanes from fertile earth to dusty sand, they plant rye.
Making the long drive up from Melbourne to the Mallee is Andrew Fitzgerald, co-founder of The Gospel distillery, to visit the farmer who grows the rye grain he turns into a uniquely Australian whisky. He’s emphatic that his rye reflects this landscape. “I really love the connection from the finished product through to the land,” he says. “Whatever the soil and the climate produces is intrinsic to the product we put out.”
Australia’s small but significant local craft whisky industry, which has seen rapid growth over the past decade, is largely focused on malt whisky. Made from malted barley, a grain that Australia grows in abundance, this is the style the Scots are best known for. As such, Australia has struggled to define itself as a whisky-producing nation.
What does Australian rye whisky taste like?
Enter rye whisky. While made by only a handful of producers, the ryes here in Australia have a distinct character from the better-known versions made in the US and Canada. “Australian rye whisky is often more cereal-forward and spirit-driven than American and Canadian rye,” says writer Luke McCarthy, who has tasted perhaps more Australian whisky than anyone in the world for his website Oz Whisky Review.
“Here, producers tend to rely less on new American oak, as is more common in the US,” he says. “You get less wood-forward whiskies as a result: less of the dill pickle, coconut and raspberry notes and more of a savoury, dark rye bread and farm shed character.” But even when Australian rye whisky makers use new American oak, as The Gospel does, the grains are so different that the whisky comes out nothing like its North American cousins.
Australian rye suppliers
Corey Blacksell, owner and farmer at Blacksell Grains, which supplies rye for The Gospel, eeks these grains out of remarkably dry and sandy soil in the Mallee. “We grow rye in non-fertile soil that won’t grow anything else,” he says. “Rye has a massive root system, so it’ll grow in the bare, sandy dunes out here.” Comparing this to the wet, cold, four-season cycles of North America and Northern Europe where most of the world’s rye is grown, it’s hard to imagine a more different climate.
Another key element of Australian rye’s unique character is its lack of commodification. In Europe and North America, rye is a large-scale cash crop which is constantly being bred for yield. But in Australia, with little demand for the grain, rye is allowed to grow wild and adapt naturally to its environment. “There’s a commercial driver for wheat and barley,” explains Corey. “There’s not for rye. So there’s no one doing any breeding or trialling of new varieties. It’s just doing what it does naturally in the soil.”
World’s Best Rye
In 2020, Aussie rye stormed onto the international stage when Sydney’s Archie Rose Distillery won ‘World’s Best Rye’ at the World Whiskies Awards, the world’s biggest and most prestigious whisky competition. Archie Rose Rye Malt is a sort of rye/single malt hybrid that’s a perfect gateway for people used to drinking malt whisky. Made primarily from rye grown in the marginal dry land of western NSW, it’s also a steal at $120 a bottle.
Stuart Whytcross of Voyager Craft Malts works with local growers and processes the malted rye Archie Rose turns into whisky. The unique qualities of Australian rye, he says, come from the land. “Aussie rye grain is really intense in its character and spiciness,” he says. “The varieties we have tend to grow in the hot and dry areas where it survives better than wheat and barley. We get quite a small grain size and yields aren’t massive. But that’s how you get intensity of flavour.”
The idea of terroir in whisky is something marketing departments and craft producers have been pushing for a while now. But in the case of most whiskies, it’s a long bow to draw. Unlike wine, where micro-climates are key to regional styles, whisky is largely made from grains grown and traded all over the world. Drinking Japanese whisky? It’s likely made from Ukranian or Scottish barley. Canadian whisky? Probably corn from the USA. Even for the handful of whiskies made from exclusively local barley, it can be hard to find any discernible difference once it’s been malted, milled, fermented, distilled and matured.
Archie Rose Rye Malt Whisky
But, says Ev Liong, spirits blender at Archie Rose, “Rye whisky is very expressive, be it American or Australian. A spirit made from rye grain can offer a clear expression of terroir that distinguishes one area from another.” Andrew Fitzgerald from The Gospel concurs. “There’s a real argument for terroir in rye whisky because the environment shapes the grain,” he says. Thus, much like Aussie shiraz is recognised globally due to our unique growing conditions, Australian rye is just different.
Our homegrown wine and beer only gained widespread international attention when we leaned into local climate and technique. In the realm of whisky, rye is perhaps the clearest opportunity for Australian products to gain the international recognition they deserve. “If people say they want a rye whiskey, I’m gonna show them an Aussie one that’ll blow them away,” Andrew says.
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