About
One of Australia's oldest operating whisky distilleries. Classic, Peated, Double Wood, and Cask Strength expressions. Named after Eureka Stockade rebellion site. David Baker is a founding father of Australian whisky alongside Bill Lark.
Production Details
The Bakery Hill Tale
In the outer reaches of Melbourne, where suburban Bayswater North gives way to the rolling hills of the Yarra Valley, David Baker made a decision that would help reshape Australian whisky. The year was 1999, and while the world prepared for Y2K, Baker was laying foundations for something far more enduring.
He chose the name deliberately—Bakery Hill, echoing the site of the Eureka Stockade rebellion of 1854, where miners stood against authority and declared their independence. It was fitting symbolism for what Baker was attempting: a rebellion against the notion that great whisky could only come from Scotland or Ireland.
The location speaks to Baker's understanding of terroir. Here, the Yarra Valley water that feeds his stills carries the mineral memory of ancient volcanic soils, the same waters that nourish the valley's renowned vineyards. This is water shaped by a landscape that knows both fire and time, flowing down from ranges that catch Pacific moisture and filter it through granite and clay.
Baker stands among the founding fathers of modern Australian whisky, working alongside Tasmania's Bill Lark to prove that this southern continent could craft spirits worthy of global attention. While others talked about possibility, Baker built reality—copper and steam and the patient alchemy of grain transformed.
In his stillhouse, the extremes of Australian climate become an ally rather than an obstacle. Melbourne's notorious four-seasons-in-a-day weather creates constant expansion and contraction in the barrels, forcing spirit and wood into intimate conversation. What might take a decade in the Scottish Highlands happens with startling intensity under the Southern Cross.
From these stills flow expressions that span the whisky spectrum—classic and peated, double wood and cask strength—each one a testament to the distillery's refusal to be constrained by convention. Baker's rebellion has succeeded; his whisky now stands confidently beside any in the world.
The Yarra Valley water continues its ancient flow, but now it carries something new—the spirit of Australian whisky, born from rebellion and shaped by a land that demands respect. In Bayswater North, independence tastes like liquid gold.