compound; the company’s initials, DCL, can be seen in cracked and fading red paint on the gateposts. I wanted to get closer, to take a photo of the old distillery, and as I walked through the gap where the fence once was and crossed the lawn towards the building, I saw that one of its doors had been left open. So, feeling more like an investigative journalist than a booze hack, I went inside.
There have been various attempts since Corio closed down in the 80s to utilise the huge spaces inside, with parts of it turned at various times into an arts centre, and offices. Luckily, there was no-one there the day I sneaked in. Just silence, the smell of dust, and, sitting facing each other in the atrium, two huge copper pot stills that had once churned out vast quantities of spirit. A few empty Corio-branded barrels had been stacked around the stills for show. Behind them, the empty warehouse floors, where millions of litres of whisky once sat maturing, stretched away into the gloom.
As the scale of the building shows, whisky was hugely popular in Australia in the 1920s. Not only was this country the world’s biggest market for Scotch, but – thanks in part to high tariffs on the imported product introduced in 1925 – we also developed a thirst for the locally made spirit, particularly in Victoria, where 40 per cent of the whisky consumed was Australian. That’s why the huge Scottish firm DCL decided to build an ambitious operation on this flat stretch of land north of Geelong, on the rail line, close to ports. The first product, Corio Old Special Whisky, was launched in 1934, and by the 1956 Olympics, when the distillery released its 5 Star Extra Matured Old Whisky brand, aimed at the international market, it was selling millions of bottles a year.
The first whisky we try at Bad Frankie is a bottle of Corio 5 Star that dates from the 1960s. It’s very good: punchy, almost sherry-like, nutty, smoky aromas, and a bright, warm, linseed-oil-like richness on the tongue. It has a time-travel quality to it: smells and flavours that make you feel like you’re not here and now but somewhere else, in another era.
The second Corio bottle we try, the one from the 1980s, is nowhere near as good. It’s lighter, simpler, less interesting. A nice sipping whisky, but nothing more. Its mediocre flavour tells the second half of the Corio story: by the 1970s, the whisky wasn’t being made with as much care and had developed a terrible reputation. Luke McCarthy explains this was done deliberately: ‘After high tariffs on imported spirits were removed in the 1960s, DCL decided that the [Corio] distillery should be producing whisky as quickly and as cheaply as possible so as not to compete with the premium imports.’
There’s another reason for Corio’s decline. In the early 1950s, the Shell oil company began constructing a huge refinery right next door. The refinery is still there, a sprawling complex of pipes and tanks and chimneys, spewing flames and steam into the sky, dwarfing the old red-brick distillery.
‘Just imagine,’ says Seb. ‘When the distillery was first built, it was surrounded by paddocks. Big flat areas of long grass, the buildings looking out across the bay, a train line that brought barley in and carried whisky away. It must have been so impressive. A mythical place. And then, by the 1960s and 70s, after the refinery was built, people thought they were just drinking petrol.’
This is the image of Australian whisky, the legacy of Corio, the grand dream turned sour, that Bill Lark was up against when in 1989 he famously became the first person in Tasmania to obtain a distilling licence since spirits production had been banned 150 years before. Lark wasn’t the only person who established a small distillery in Australia at the time, but the quality of his whiskies and his support for other emerging producers – his recognition that there is strength in numbers – helped kickstart a craft spirits renaissance.
For the first couple of decades of that renaissance, most of the distilleries that opened were smaller, family-run businesses, selling direct to bars and restaurants and through cellar doors. Since around 2015, though, the industry has grown rapidly, and there are now some bigger distilleries that, if not yet quite at the production level of a Federal or Corio, certainly have grand ambitions.
One of those is Starward, based in Port Melbourne. Founded in 2008, for the first few years, like most other Australian whisky makers, it specialised in single malt, which is a costly style to produce. Then in 2018 the distillery launched a much more competitively priced, larger-volume whisky called Two-Fold that is a blend of cheaper grain spirit made from wheat and more expensive malt spirit made from barley, matured in wine barrels. It was the first time since Corio closed that an Australian blended whisky had hit the market.
We finish the tasting at Bad Frankie with a glass of Two-Fold, and it’s delicious: aromas of fresh toast, some dried fig, a hint of ripe banana, then a soft, pretty, creamy vanilla texture on the tongue, finishing with a little tannic grip and savoury complexity. A whisky that anchors you in the here-and-now. As good as it is, though, Seb is still buzzing from finally getting to open the old Corio bottles after all these years, and tasting them alongside the next generation of Australian whisky:
What I love about tasting side-by-side like this is that you get to see the evolution of the industry. You can see the cultural differences. You taste that 1960s Corio and you can imagine old men in a pub, smoking a thousand darts while drinking it. Then you taste the 1980s Corio and you know the distillery was just smashing it out in huge volume, didn’t care about quality – and everyone was busy doing aerobics anyway. And now, with the Two-Fold, we’ve come back to people wanting to drink spirits with heaps of flavour and character. It’s really exciting.
Seb’s right. There has never been a better time to be a spirit drinker in Australia. In the last ten years, hundreds of small, new distillers have emerged, with many producing outstanding gin, vodka, rum and liqueurs, as well as excellent small-batch whisky. Some are even producing baijiu, modelled on China’s strong white spirit.
Baijiu (pronounced ‘bye-j’yoh’) is traditionally made from grains such as rice and sorghum fermented using a starter-culture mix of yeast and bacteria called qū (pronounced ‘chew’), then distilled. It is the most widely drunk spirit in China. But it is almost completely unfamiliar to most Australians – unless they have spent time in China, on business. And those who have come across the drink there invariably shudder when recalling their first encounter: epic late-night drinking sessions in restaurant after restaurant, endless toasts, downing shots of baijiu, one after another. They warn me about how strong the drink is, 50 per cent alcohol or more, and how rough it tastes. Firewater. Something to be endured, not enjoyed. So why would any Australian distiller want to make it?
‘It’s my passion,’ says James Mylne when I catch up with him at his tiny East Coast Baijiu distillery in Brisbane. ‘When I die, I want to be known as the white guy who makes awesome baijiu.’
The young distiller learned how to make the spirit, and how to appreciate its finer points, working for a distillery in Taiwan. This inspired him to return to Australia in 2017 and set up his own brand. Like the Chinese distillers making arrack in Java in the 17th and 18th century, James uses a combination of techniques from various different cultures to produce his baijiu. When he started, he tried making a super-clean, fruity style of spirit to appeal to Australian drinkers, but his Taiwanese and Chinese friends and colleagues weren’t impressed. So now he sources qū culture from China to ensure his baijiu has an authentic flavour profile.
‘I want to appeal to Chinese palates,’ he says. ‘China and the West are so different, culturally, when it comes to food and alcohol. I see my market as mainly China and Chinese-Australian people. I’m sure there is a small market for white guys drinking baijiu. But it’s not something I’d bet my house on.’
I can see why. My first taste
