Belgrove Distillery

Tasmania’s Belgrove Distillery is truly a special place, and Peter Bignell is a very special whisky maker. Bignell built the world’s greenest distillery in 2010, but what makes it the greenest in the world, you ask?

The distillery is zero waste and operates on a closed-loop system. In fact, the only thing that Bignell brings into the process is used cooking oil to make biofuel - but even that comes from the roadhouse just next-door to the distillery.

The biofuel plays a big part at Belgrove Distillery; it direct fires still, heats the water and also runs the tractors, forklift and other machinery on the property. Cooling water comes from the dam, and water waste is used for irrigation—often on the rye crop (of course he grows his own rye). And the spent mash is fed to the sheep.

Belgrove’s grain is grown on-site, and then it’s harvested and stored late in the summer. From there, the grain’s malted, mashed, fermented and double distilled in his handmade and repurposed equipment. Malting is done in a repurposed laundromat tumble dryer, and the 500-litre copper pot still was built by Peter himself.

For Bignell, making whisky is a hands-on process - one that requires the senses to manipulate every step of the way, as he monitors and tweaks according to his eye, nose and tastebuds.

A visit to Belgrove should be on every whisky-lovers bucket list, a remarkable distillery run by a remarkable man.