People find us by searching for a rum distillery in Brisbane, then notice that the bottle says cane spirit. Here is why, in plain terms.

The rule

In Australia, the Food Standards Code says a spirit can only be sold as rum if it has been matured in wood for at least two years. The same two-year rule applies to whisky and brandy. It does not matter what the spirit is made from or how good it is: no two years in a barrel, no word rum on the label.

What we make

First Rain is distilled from Queensland molasses in our column still, rested briefly and bottled clear. It is made the way a silver rum is made, and it is sold as silver cane spirit because it has not spent two years in wood. Stormy Skies is the same base spirit rested on charred bourbon, tawny and shiraz staves for colour and depth. Again, months rather than years, so it is dark cane spirit. Rising Sun and our Spiced Cane Spirit start from the same place and carry coffee or citrus and spice.

We think that is the honest way to sell a young spirit from molasses. A silver rum from the Caribbean is usually young too; the label there is a matter of local law, not of quality.

When we do say rum

Our Inaugural Three Year Old was blended with Hope and Anchor and spent three years in first-fill ex-bourbon casks, so it is rum, and the label says so. Stock laid down in the shed now will be rum when it reaches two years, and we will say so then and not before.

The name on the door

The original Milton Distillery, started in 1873 on the Milton reach of the Brisbane River, was one of the larger rum producers in the colony until the flood of 1890 finished it. When we started again in 2018 we traded as Milton Rum Distillery, and that name still turns up on older labels, awards and listings. Today we are Milton Distillery, because the range is wider than rum: cane spirits, an agave spirit, a grain spirit, A’peel vodka and gin made from fruit peel, and whisky collaborations.

How to use it

Anywhere a recipe calls for white rum, First Rain does the job: the daiquiri it was built for, a mojito, a Hurricane. Anywhere it calls for dark rum, Stormy Skies: a Dark and Stormy, or neat over ice. If a venue lists us as rum on the back bar, the bartender is not wrong about what is in the glass, only about what the law lets us print.

The range is online with shipping within Australia, and the stockists page lists where to find it by the glass.