Instructions for Patience: Sam Lowe and the Long Weather of Kinglake Distillery.

There are places that seem to alter one’s understanding of chronology. Not by making time move faster or slower, but by restoring it to a scale more commensurate with the natural world. A mountain does this. So does a forest. Occasionally, a distillery does as well.

Kinglake Distillery, set among fifty acres of bushland in Victoria’s High Country, belongs to this latter and rather uncommon category. To describe it simply as a producer of single malt would be accurate, but incomplete. What is being cultivated here is not merely whisky, but a particular relationship to duration - an insistence that flavour, like character, is something that ought to be allowed to arrive in its own time.

The Australian landscape has long been associated with velocity and improvisation. Its mythology tends to favour the provisional and the resourceful - the corrugated shed, the outback track, the frontier enterprise assembled with admirable haste. Kinglake offers a subtle counterpoint. Its sensibility is less colonial than geological. It thinks in strata rather than seasons, in foundations rather than launches.

This disposition is perhaps most clearly expressed in the distillery’s underground dunnage warehouse, where casks rest beneath the earth in cool, humid stillness while the bush above continues its annual liturgy of heat, frost, rain and eucalyptus-scented wind. The image has a certain Tarkovskian quality: matter left undisturbed long enough for time itself to become visible.

Most whisky discussions reduce maturation to variables - oak species, prior fills, years in cask. Useful considerations, certainly, but only part of the story. At Kinglake, maturation is treated less as management than as environmental design. The question is not how to accelerate extraction, but how to create conditions in which spirit and wood can enter into something more akin to conversation.

Gaston Bachelard, in The Poetics of Space, writes of cellars as the deepest and most instinctive part of the house - places where matter and imagination converge in the dark. Kinglake’s dunnage feels precisely like this: the subconscious of the distillery, where whisky is left to absorb not only oak, but atmosphere, silence and the measured pulse of the surrounding landscape.

This attentiveness to place runs through every aspect of the operation. Spring water drawn from the property forms the distillate’s first principle. Open fermentation welcomes a degree of natural variability that larger operations often engineer away. Cuts are made deep into the feints to preserve heavier congeners and the dense, slightly unruly complexity that gives great traditional malts their weight. Even the occasional use of Australian red gum casks feels less like novelty than an acknowledgement that the country has its own vocabulary to contribute.

The spiritual north star is clearly Springbank Distillers, not in the sense of imitation, but in shared conviction. The enduring lesson of the finest Scotch has always been that whisky is most compelling when it carries the unmistakable accent of its origin. Place is not an adornment to flavour. It is flavour.

Kinglake’s young whiskies already exhibit this quality. They possess an unusual composure - textured and characterful, yet never overworked; expressive without resorting to theatrical cask influence. They suggest a distillery more interested in building a lasting house style than in chasing immediate impact.

Some men build distilleries. Others bury time and wait.

There is something almost Benedictine in this approach. The medieval monasteries understood that meaningful work was not separate from contemplation, but another form of it. Stone was laid not for immediate utility, but for structures intended to outlast their makers. Kinglake seems animated by a similar faith: that some projects justify a horizon extending well beyond the present generation.

That belief gives the distillery a distinctive emotional cadence. Being family-owned allows decisions to be guided by provenance and patience rather than purely by quarterly imperatives. The underground warehouse, the restrained approach to growth, the willingness to lay down casks intended for release decades hence - these are acts of stewardship as much as entrepreneurship.

Perhaps that is what makes Kinglake Distillery so compelling within the broader Australian whisky landscape. It embodies a paradox increasingly rare in contemporary culture: ambition expressed through restraint. In a world that often mistakes acceleration for progress, Kinglake is making a more measured argument - that the deepest character, whether in spirits or institutions, tends to emerge when one stops trying to hurry it.

If a distillery can be said to have a philosophy, Kinglake’s might be this: that time is not an obstacle to overcome, but the most exacting collaborator one could hope for.

It was with this in mind that we spoke with Sam Lowe about underground maturation, Scottish influences, the Victorian bush, and the peculiar optimism required to build something intended to reveal its fullest meaning decades from now.

Most distilleries talk about barrels as storage. The way you speak about the underground dunnage, though, makes it sound closer to ecology - almost like creating a habitat for whisky rather than a warehouse for it. At what point did you realise maturation is less about controlling spirit and more about designing the conditions for it to evolve on its own terms?

Sam Lowe: Rather than simply storage, it’s often said that up to 60% of a whisky’s flavour comes from the cask. Here at Kinglake, we aim for more of a balance between spirit and barrel, but cask influence remains an integral part of the finished single malt.

Interest in cask ageing is often focused on what was previously held in the barrel and how long the whisky remains inside it. Another critical factor, however, is the ambient conditions in which the cask is matured - particularly humidity and temperature.

At Kinglake, we try to incorporate local conditions into every aspect of the whisky-making process, from the natural spring water foundation through to open fermentation. The underground dunnage is the final piece of the puzzle. Rather than simply creating a temperature-controlled environment - something that could have been achieved more easily above ground using refrigeration and heating - we’ve aimed to create an environment unique to Kinglake Distillery: one that encourages slower maturation for older whiskies while remaining deeply connected to the surrounding landscape and local conditions.

Australia tends to reward immediacy - brighter flavours, younger releases, faster outcomes. Building something intended for whisky that may not peak for another thirty years feels almost culturally defiant. Do you ever feel like you’re making decisions for a future Australian whisky audience that does not quite exist yet?

Sam Lowe: Absolutely - the Australian single malt scene is still relatively young, and naturally that creates a focus on immediacy: younger, vibrant whiskies with bigger cask influence and bold early character. There’s also the commercial reality that many distilleries simply can’t afford to wait decades before releasing mature malt. We’re incredibly proud of our core range, much of which is still under five years old, and we’re confident putting these whiskies alongside 10-year-old Scotches.

But for us, part of the excitement is trying to also build something with a longer horizon. Some whiskies are brilliant young. Others only really begin to reveal themselves after extended time in oak, particularly in a more restrained maturation environment. We felt there was room in Australia for someone to explore that slower path seriously.

So yes, at times it probably does feel slightly culturally defiant - but not in opposition to Australian whisky. More an extension of where we think it could go. We’re trying to create whiskies that still speak clearly of Kinglake after ten, fifteen, even twenty-plus years in cask, rather than simply becoming dominated by oak. Whether the audience fully exists yet or not, we suspect it will. And if it doesn’t immediately, that’s probably alright too - because the whiskies themselves will still benefit from the patience.

The Victorian bush has a very particular sensory language to it: eucalyptus oil in the air, dry heat one day and deep cold the next, the smell of wet earth after rain. Are there moments where you taste a maturing cask and think, this could not have happened anywhere outside Kinglake?

Sam Lowe: This is really the crux of what we’re trying to achieve.

I have always been a huge fan of Springbank whisky. Its real sense of place and corresponding maritime character are exemplary of what I think sits at the heart of single malt’s appeal. I love the depth of flavour in the spirit that many refer to as the “Springbank funk” - a slightly wild, oily, wet-earth, farmyard character that drinkers strongly associate with Springbank whiskies. It’s a dense, old-school style of complexity that gives the whisky a real sense of weight and authenticity.

A big reason Springbank developed this profile is that they still do many things the old way, with relatively little industrial standardisation and a very manual approach to distillation. The “funk” is really a concentration of congeners and heavier flavour compounds created during fermentation and then deliberately preserved through distillation. Many modern distilleries clean these elements out in pursuit of consistency. Springbank largely doesn’t.

We felt this was an approach we could not only replicate here, but really lean into, given our small-scale production and bush location. Using the character of our exceptional environment - our own spring water, unique microclimate, and open fermentation - we aim to create a deeply complex wash before distilling deep into the feints to retain as much character as possible.

Hopefully the result is a distinctive spirit with an old-school, slightly wild distillery character rooted firmly in the Victorian High-Country bush.

A lot of contemporary whisky culture has become highly analytical - cask specs, ppm levels, yeast strains, finish types. Yet some of the most memorable whiskies feel emotional before they feel technical. When you’re developing a Kinglake whisky, are you thinking in flavour, or are you thinking in atmosphere?

Sam Lowe: Although, perhaps due to the small size of many Australian distilleries, we don’t yet have the scale or data capture to become overly analytical, there is often a strong impetus here to do something different, to innovate, to create a uniquely Australian style or new approach to single malt.

However, we tend to look at things a little differently. A love of Scotch is the reason we’re here in the first place, and by emulating the incredible sense of place and well-honed approaches that great Scotch distilleries use to create distinctive house character, we believe it’s possible to make an exceptional Australian single malt without resorting to novelty.

We actually relish some of the hands-on inefficiencies and natural variabilities within our processes. To us, the foundations of great single malt, whether made in Scotland or Australia, remain much the same as they have always been: working in harmony with the distillery’s location to create a distinctive spirit character, then building the whisky from that foundation.

The only time we allow ourselves a little innovative latitude is with our \use of Red Gum cask finishing, something we simply couldn’t resist once we discovered the remarkable character it could bring to the whisky.

Visiting Scotland seems to have reinforced the value of slowness for you, but I’m curious whether it also changed your understanding of ambition. Did seeing centuries-old warehouses alter what success looks like when you’re building an Australian distillery from the ground up?

Sam Lowe: It’s hard not to feel humbled by the history, depth, and stories behind the great Scottish whisky distilleries.

When we started Kinglake Distillery, I don’t think we fully appreciated just how long it takes to build a genuine distillery character and story. Even when you know what you want to create and roughly how to get there, you can’t rush a distillery’s personality. You must live alongside the whisky and the story for long enough to allow it to reveal how it wants to be told.

All the elements of Kinglake Distillery have always been there, but it’s only in more recent years that they’ve really started to come together into something cohesive, a compelling foundation we can continue building on into the future.

I often quote the proverb: “The best time to plant a tree was a century ago. The next best time is today.”

You simply keep moving forward, building one step at a time. In some ways, growing slowly, largely through retained profit, has been a real advantage. It means every step is considered, there’s time to pivot when needed, and far less risk of charging too quickly down the wrong path as we build the distillery.

There is something almost cinematic about the idea of casks sleeping underground beneath the forest for decades while the landscape above continues changing season after season. Does the passage of time itself become part of the spirit’s identity in a more tangible way when you mature whisky this slowly?

Sam Lowe: As part of studying History, I once stayed at a Cistercian monastery. The monks lived in total silence, attending church seven times a day, through day and night, and one monk had done so without leaving the monastery for seventy years. Over time, it felt as though the monks themselves had stopped being separate from the monastery and surrounding landscape, becoming part of it like the trees or stone walls.

At the end of each service came the words: “Per omnia saecula saeculorum” - “As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.”

That idea of existing outside normal time has always stayed with me. That is how I’d like the barrels in the dunnage to feel, slowly absorbing not just oak and age, but the atmosphere and rhythm of the landscape around them over decades.

In some ways, I am just as excited about them just being there, as I am about the eventual resulting whisky!

The dunnage warehouse feels like an act of optimism, but also restraint - choosing not to accelerate, intervene, or industrialise more than necessary. In an era obsessed with scalability, have you found yourselves becoming more selective about what growth should actually mean for Kinglake?

Sam Lowe: We received a lot of early advice warning against positioning ourselves in the “valley of doom” — neither large enough to benefit from economies of scale, nor small enough to survive comfortably as a true cottage business. To some extent, we chose to ignore that advice, and in hindsight I think it has benefited us by placing Kinglake in a far less crowded space.

We’ve remained intentionally lean in terms of staffing, ageing stock, and on-site hospitality, while focusing heavily on building brand provenance, long-term customer loyalty, and strong wholesaler relationships.

So yes, over the last year especially, our idea of growth has probably changed. We’ve become less obsessed with unit sales targets and more focused on building a distillery with a strong enough identity and story that people have an ongoing reason to return to it over decades, not just purchase it once. The dunnage is really an extension of that philosophy - slower, more restrained, but hopefully more enduring.

Family-run distilleries often carry a different emotional cadence because decisions are tied to memory, risk, and shared history rather than purely commercial logic. Are there aspects of Kinglake that only exist because it is family-owned - choices a larger operation probably would not have made?

Sam Lowe: Absolutely. I think being family-owned gives you the freedom to make decisions that don’t necessarily make immediate commercial sense but feel right for the long-term character of the distillery. There’s probably a stronger emotional attachment to what you’re building because you’re not just creating a product - you’re shaping something your family and community will hopefully still be associated with decades from now.

The dunnage is a good example of that. From a purely commercial perspective, there are easier and more efficient ways to mature whisky. But we wanted to create something that felt genuinely connected to Kinglake and capable of producing better older whisky over the long term, even if the payoff may not fully arrive for many years.

I also think it changes your relationship with growth. We’ve never been particularly interested in building Kinglake purely to sell it. That gives us a much longer strategic horizon and allows us to prioritise things like provenance, atmosphere, environmental integration, and patience in maturation - decisions a larger or more financially-driven operation might struggle to justify.

Australian whisky still carries a certain frontier energy, where many producers are trying to define themselves as they go. Yet your approach increasingly feels archival - as though you’re already thinking about what future generations will inherit from today’s decisions. Does legacy ever weigh on the way you make whisky now?

Sam Lowe: It probably goes back to the earlier question. Regardless of where it’s made, I think single malt ultimately must be about patience, calm, and a genuine sense of place. There are no real shortcuts in whisky. You can innovate around the edges, but you can’t build lasting credibility purely through branding or acceleration.

Australian whisky is still young, and in some respects it will naturally take decades to catch Scotch in terms of maturity and depth of story. Accepting that is actually quite freeing. Rather than looking for ways to cheat time, we’d rather keep our heads down and slowly build something authentic for future generations to continue developing - while also making the best young, vibrant whisky we possibly can today.

If someone were to open one of your underground-matured casks twenty-five years from now, what would make you feel that the experiment truly worked? Not in terms of awards or scores, but in terms of what the whisky says about Kinglake, about Australia, and about the patience required to build something lasting?

Sam Lowe: What has always appealed to me about building a whisky distillery is the potential for longevity and for it to become something that can be carried forward across generations. It feels perfectly acceptable to spend five or even ten years simply laying foundations if you hope what you’re building on them might last hundreds.

Our beautiful 50-acre bushland site gives us both the serenity and the physical space to build slowly and think long term. The underground dunnage is really part of that mindset, an acceptance that some things are worth taking time over.

I’d like to think that if someone opens one of these casks in twenty-five years and the experiment has truly worked, the whisky will still feel unmistakably like Kinglake: calm, balanced, grounded in place, and not rushed. But beyond the whisky itself, success would probably mean that we’re still here having the same conversation, not about how quickly we can grow, but about how far we might continue to go over the next fifty years.

I think the further you travel down the road with a business like this, the further into the distance you’re able to see. Patience gradually stops feeling like a sacrifice and starts becoming part of the identity of the distillery itself.

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Words and questions by AW.

Answers courtesy of Sam Lowe.

Photo courtesy of Kinglake Distillery.