Hickson House Distilling Co.
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Heritage warehouse distillery originally beneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge in the historic Metcalfe Bond Stores, The Rocks. Run by renowned distiller Tim Stones (formerly of Manly Spirits Co.). Produces premium gin and whisky using locally sourced, natural Australian ingredients. Awarded Best Distillery Bar 2022 and #1 Australian Spirit (Hickson Rd Australian Dry Gin) by Australian Bartender Magazine. From the team behind The Barbershop and The Duke of Clarence. Currently relocating distilling operations to Marrickville due to building fire safety compliance at the original heritage site.
Production Details
The Hickson House Distilling Co. Tale
Beneath the steel arch of Sydney Harbour Bridge, where sandstone warehouses once stored wool and wheat from the colony's interior, Tim Stones found his calling in 2021. The Metcalfe Bond Stores in The Rocks had sheltered cargo for more than a century—now they would shelter copper and grain.
Stones arrived with reputation preceding him, his years at Manly Spirits Co. having taught him the particular alchemy of Australian distilling. Here, in chambers carved from the living rock of Sydney Cove, he began crafting spirits that spoke of this harbour city's character. The heritage walls absorbed the rhythm of his work—the slow bubble of fermentation, the patient hiss of distillation.
Sydney's municipal water, drawn from catchments stretching west into the Blue Mountains, became his foundation. Not the pristine streams of Tasmania, but water that had nourished this sprawling metropolis for generations. In Stones' hands, it carried the essence of a city built on ambition.
The warehouse distillery embodied Australia's whisky renaissance—young, bold, unbound by centuries of tradition. While Scotland counted its heritage in millennia, Australian distillers like Stones measured theirs in moments of inspiration. Each batch became an experiment in what this continent's ingredients could become.
The copper stills caught morning light filtering through heritage windows, their surfaces reflecting both harbour glimpses and the distiller's careful attention. This was craft distilling in miniature—intimate, precise, personal. Every decision from grain to glass passed through one man's vision.
Then came the reckoning that faces all who work within heritage walls. Fire safety compliance—the modern world's demands upon old stones—forced a choice. The romantic harbour setting gave way to practical necessity, and operations shifted south to Marrickville, where industrial spaces offered room to grow.
Yet something essential traveled with those copper stills. The same hands that had worked beneath the bridge now work beneath suburban skies. The same water flows. The same vision drives each distillation. Hickson House Distilling Co. continues its young journey, proof that in Australia's whisky story, place matters less than purpose, and heritage can be built one careful batch at a time.