One Shed, A Hundred Years of Work
Before it filled bottles, our shed cut timber, sorted apples and spun honey. This is the story of the land we're on — and the family that's worked it for more than a century.
Bell's Line is marked
Nineteen-year-old Archibald Bell Jr. crossed from Richmond to Mount Tomah along a route long known to the Darug people. Surveyor Robert Hoddle marked it out that same year — the Bells Line of Road, the second road across the Blue Mountains, runs past our gate to this day.
The mountain apple country
Bell reported rich basalt soil at Bilpin and Berambing, and settlers followed with fruit trees. The cool air and fertile ground made this strip of the mountains famous for apples — and it still is.
The family arrives
Our family settled at Berambing more than 120 years ago, on the 120 acres we still work today. Five generations of the same family, on the same ground.
The shed goes up — as a sawmill
The shed was built to mill local timber, and spent its first working decades as a sawmill. It's now heritage listed — same bones, same iron, same spot beside the Bells Line of Road.
Apples and honey
As the orchards grew, the shed turned with the times — an apple sorting shed in picking season, a honey extraction shed as the hives came in. Nearly a hundred years of hard, honest work under one roof.
The Old Shed Distillery
The fifth generation — brothers Joe and the family — put a copper still where the saw bench used to be. The apples, blueberries and native botanicals in our spirits grow on the same property, and the rain falls on the same mountains it always has.
The distillery outgrows the shed
The distillery soon outgrew the old shed, and the boys moved the cellar door down the road to Bilpin. The shed itself remains heritage listed — standing as a reminder of the decades of hard work under its roof, and put to one last quiet job: ageing our fine whiskys. The cellar door is open Thursday to Sunday.