Backwoods Distilling Co.

In the folds of Victoria's High Country, where the Murray River begins its long journey to the sea, Bree and Leigh Attwood found their calling among the granite outcrops and snow gum forests of Yackandandah. The old gold rush town, its name rolling off the tongue like distant thunder, had seen fortunes rise and fall since the 1850s. In 2017, the Attwoods added whisky to its legacy.

The water tells the first chapter of their story. High Country water, filtered through ancient bedrock and mountain streams, carries the essence of alpine seasons—snow melt and summer storms, the patience of stone and the urgency of spring floods. It flows into their stills with a clarity that speaks of elevation and isolation, of a landscape that demands respect from those who would call it home.

Their choice to work with Australian-grown grains marks them as part of the new wave of distillers refusing to bow to Scottish or American traditions. Here, native ingredients find their way into the mash bills—botanicals that grew in this soil long before European settlement, flavors that couldn't exist anywhere else on earth. The High Country's extreme temperature swings, from frost-sharp winters to blazing summers, drive their whisky's maturation with an intensity that telescopes years into months.

The awards followed inevitably: World Whiskies Awards recognizing their single malt as Australia's finest in 2022 and again in 2025, their rye claiming global category honors twice over. Champion Victorian Distiller in 2024. Each accolade a validation not just of their craft, but of Australia's emergence as a whisky nation that no longer apologizes for its youth.

At the Yack Station Precinct, visitors taste the marriage of old-world technique and new-world audacity. The tasting room windows frame the same peaks that feed their water source, the same valleys where their grain grows. Every glass holds the story of a continent learning to distill its own character, one drop at a time.

The Attwoods work in the shadow of mountains that have watched empires rise and fall, crafting spirits that taste of nowhere else but here.