Australia and New Zealand , both former British colonies, have spirits industries whose histories are coextensive with British colonization. While small quantities of palm arrack were brought to Indigenous communities in northern Australia by Makassan traders prior to British colonization, those traders did not bring distilling technology with them, and the first European explorers of New Zealand noted a complete absence of alcoholic beverages in Māori life as they encountered it.
In Australia, rum played a significant role in the colony’s foundation and early years (1788–1808). In the absence of quantities of British currency, “rum”—in the New South Wales colony, a catch-all term for distilled spirits—functioned as a trading and bartering medium, which, in the words of New South Wales governor William Bligh, “added to its pernicious effects … beyond all conception.” The military body charged with maintaining order in the colony, the New South Wales Corps, held a de facto monopoly on the importation and illicit production of spirits; the “Rum Corps,” as they became known, resisted Bligh’s attempts to curb this corrupt trade. This internecine conflict culminated in an 1808 rebellion that would later come to be known as the “Rum Rebellion”—the only successful armed insurrection in Australia’s history.
Bligh’s successor, Lachlan Macquarie, legalized the distilling of spirits in Australia, and by the late 1820s and early 1830s distilleries operated throughout the colonies: whisky distilleries in Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), rum distilleries in Queensland, and gin and grape brandy distilleries in New South Wales. See whisky; rum; gin; and brandy, grape. Each of these nascent industries experienced vicissitudes of fortune: in 1839, Van Diemen’s Land governor John Franklin outlawed distilling on the island; rum production boomed with the expansion of Queensland’s sugar cane industry (which in turn owed much of its success to enslaved Kanaka laborers brought to Australia by so-called blackbirders); brandy production grew alongside the growth of the nascent Australian wine industry in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia in the 1840s and 1850s, particularly for use in fortified wines; and in 1830 colonial newspaper The Australian lamented that gin distiller Robert Cooper had ceased production “in consequence of the very little encouragement given to his laudable exertions by the publicans and the public.”
The federation of Australia’s colonial states into the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 saw the establishment of uniform federal laws regarding distilling; these laws demanded that a licensed distiller be capable of exhausting at least 150 imperial gallons (680 liters) of wash in an hour. This legal restriction ensured that throughout most of the twentieth century Australian distilling was the sole province of large industrial operations such as Bundaberg Rum, Château Tanunda Brandy, and Corio Whisky. Hefty tariffs on imported spirits protected this local industry until the trade liberalization reforms of the 1970s. These reforms created a crisis in the industry; cheaper imports saw Australian consumers disdaining local brands, which started to compete on price rather than quality. According to a report by the Australian Government’s Industries Assistance Commission, whisky production in Australia had effectively ceased by 1977, and the commission temporarily imposed stiff tariffs on imported brandies in an unsuccessful attempt to stimulate demand for local brandy.
In the early 1990s Tasmanian distiller Bill Lark successfully lobbied the Australian government to ease the still size requirements of the 1901 Distillation Act; several craft distillers soon followed in Lark’s footsteps, producing highly regarded spirits such as Tasmanian whiskies (including Sullivans Cove French Oak single cask whisky, which was awarded World’s Best Single Malt Whisky at the 2014 World Whisky Awards), boutique rums, a wide variety of gins (including several that feature native Australian botanicals), vodkas, and other oddities such as Italian-style aperitivo bitters flavored with native Australian plants. See vodka and bitters. Economies of scale and Australia’s taxation regime ensure that these spirits are often significantly more expensive than their mass-produced or imported competitors; the Australian craft spirit industry’s strategy is, for the most part, to ensure that their products’ quality justifies their prices.
New Zealand’s spirits industry is, by comparison to Australia’s, underdeveloped; craft distilling remains something of a cottage industry, albeit one with pleasing prospects. Scots immigrants in the South Island’s Southland area, particularly in the Hokonui Hills around Gore, brought with them a tradition of moonshining that prevailed throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. New Zealand’s twentieth century spirits industry mirrored Australia’s in many ways: a small number of industrial distillers dominated, although these fared less well than their Australian counterparts. New Zealand’s last large-scale whisky distillery, Willowbank, shut down in 1997, not long after legislative changes made the possession of stills for home use legal and kickstarted a small craft distilling industry. Aside from the commercial vodka behemoth 42 Below, New Zealand’s current craft distilling scene favors inventiveness and novelty; products from the country include a gunpowder-infused rum, a gin flavored with native horopito flowers, and a liqueur flavored with native tītoki berries.
Brady, Maggie. First Taste: How Indigenous Australians Learned about Grog, vol. 3, Strong Spirits from Southeast Asia. Deakin, Australia: Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation, 2008.Gately, Iain. Drink: A Cultural History of Alcohol. New York: Gotham, 2008.
Hutt, Marten. Maori and Alcohol: A History. Wellington: Health Services Research Centre for Kaunihera Whakatupato Waipiro o Aotearoa / Alcohol Advisory Council of New Zealand, 1999.
McCarthy, Luke. The Australian Spirits Guide. Richmond: Hardie Grant Books Australia, 2016.
By: Chad Parkhill