When stars align: How Amber Lane connected the dots between whisky and cognac

"I just backed myself and thought, how hard can this be really? I mean, distillation is a medieval process." This is what Rod Berry told Whisky Magazine Australia when asked about taking the path less travelled at the fork in the road nearly 10 years back. 

“The most important thing setting out to establish a new distillery is to set the parameters of what you're doing and why it will work. For us, that was big barrels, slow maturation, humid warehousing, and then building an understanding of the Cognac idea – how that works and implementing that into our processes.” 

Scottish-French heritage

We will explain what Amber Lane's Cognac influence looks like in practice a bit further down, but before that, it’s worth noting what it means to Rod Berry on a personal level.

“On my mother's side, we're Ross from Scotland, the Ross clan,” he explains. “And on my father's side, some generations ago, we came from central France. Berry is actually a region of France – Indre and Cher are the two regions now, which together are known as Berry.” 

Although it is perhaps not obvious in any of Amber Lane’s formal brand communications, Rod Berry believes this joint heritage has played a pivotal role in helping open the door to the fusion of philosophies Amber Lane is striving to embody in its range of limited-edition whiskies – including its recent second-fill Chartreuse cask release, Rue de la Liqueur.

“I've got this weird combination of Scottish and French, and it's nice that I'm making a style of whisky that is very much inspired by the Scottish tradition, but also has this wonderful interaction with French ideas,” he says.

The other important founding story is the one more widely shared of Phil and Rod's bond over a love of astronomy.

"It was when we were on an astronomy holiday with our families up near Coonabarabran that we visited Blackgate Distillery, and we came up with the idea of the distillery," notes Rod.

Stargazing with fresh eyes

The Cognac influence is evident both in Amber Lane’s approach to distilling and ageing as well as in the language it uses to communicate its range. 

Examples include its use of smaller stills than what are traditionally used in Australian whisky, along with employing an “initial burst” in virgin French oak at the start of its ageing process. Despite being a hard to justify decision financially, this proces imparts more oil from the wood that isn’t present in older seasoned barrels, leading to the structured mouthfeel Amber Lane is known for. As Rod puts it, “we want the whisky to coat your mouth and not just come and go.”

Amber Lane is also planning on adopting the language used in Cognac's ageing system – something that will become increasingly relevant as its ageing stock reaches maturity.

Rod Berry explains: “Like all businesses, there is a process of growth and maturing, and [looking ahead] I would like us to have an ultra-premium product, which is the Amber Lane XO, ten years plus. It might end up being XXO – a 20 year old product. Because we're now using the Cognac ideas for long-term maturation, we're not limited to time.” 

The logic behind Amber Lane’s affinity for methods usually associated with premium brandy is simple and rather irrefutable: “The climate of Cognac is very similar to the climate of the Yarramalong Valley where I am … Cognac has some frost in winter and has 40-degree days in summer and yet they are able to age their eau de vie in barrels for up to 80 years, and they don't have that issue that we have in Australia.” 

He continues: “Early on, Australian whisky was too oak-forward and poorly structured and just not a refined experience. The Cognac tradition is 450 years old – it's as old as the Scottish whiskey tradition – and yet, remarkably, they've developed a way of combating the climate and using it to their advantage to create this really wonderful sublime spirit.”

This links back to where we started in that Amber Lane was designed, developed and launched with a clear idea of what it was hoping to achieve:

What is Amber Lane’s mission? 

This is an easy question for Rod to answer. “Amber is the whisky and Lane is the journey. We're on a journey to try and redefine the way that Australian whisky is produced to a way that is better suited to the Australian climate." 

Answering this question through a slightly less philosophical lens, he tells me the whisky he wants to produce can be summed up in one word: elegant. “For me, it's all about elegance,” he says. “I want people to associate Amber Lane with elegant whisky, the sort of whisky that you associate with special occasions and something that stands tall as a memorable whiskey style. I don't need it to be the best whisky in Australia, although I think that we're well on the way.” 

Although the Amber Lane journey is ongoing, Rod says he is “very pleasantly surprised” by how good the whisky is already. “I had expected it would take a lot longer to get that quality up – it was a fairly serendipitous thing that I discovered the Cognac maturation idea when I did.” 

The Amber Lane Distillery (credit: Central Coast Makers’ Trail)

What do the stars say of its future? 

Now into its fourth year of having bottles on the shelf, Rod Berry is confident in Amber Lane’s long-term future. 

One of the reasons he uses to explain why is the impressively full and shiny trophy cabinet from both domestic and international whisky competitions. This includes awards such as the top-available Champion Spirit of Show title at last year's Royal Australian Spirits Awards.

Another is his own personal desire – verging on obsession – to constantly improve his craft.

“It's not a competitive thing with others, it's more to be satisfied within myself that I've done everything I can to produce as elegant a whisky as possible,” Rod Berry says. “My biggest critic is myself, and I am constantly pushing the boundaries of what more we can do to make it better."

He concludes by saying that the Amber Lane story is one that may never have a proper end.

“It doesn't feel like it's a process that will ever reach its conclusion, it will just keep evolving and improving. And I think age will be a very significant factor in that," Rod Berry said.