From a management consultant’s idea to a bar and stills in Rosebery.

Archie Rose Distilling Co. was founded in Sydney in 2014 by Will Edwards. Whisky Magazine reported in October 2022 that Edwards started the business after leaving a job in management consulting, and the trade title Food & Drink Business wrote in November 2016 that he conceived it after a visit to New York, where new inner-city distilleries were opening.

The first home was in Rosebery, a few kilometres south of the city centre. According to Food & Drink Business, the distillery opened in March 2015 in a vacant 550-square-metre shed at The Cannery, the former Rosella soup factory. The company says its Bar & Cellar Door opened on the same site that month. The fit-out was by the Sydney design practice Acme & Co, which set stainless-steel tanks and copper equipment among materials kept from the old building.

The stills were made by hand. English Wikipedia, citing the Australian Financial Review and Business Insider Australia in 2016, says Edwards commissioned the craftsman Peter Bailly to build three copper pot stills, a job Food & Drink Business said took nearly a year. The launch range, English Wikipedia says, was a Signature Dry Gin, an Original Vodka and a White Rye, while rye and single malt whisky was laid down in cask for later; the first Archie Rose whiskies were released in 2019 and 2020.

A studio, a function-led label and a run of collaborations.

The look came from one studio. Food & Drink Business named the Sydney branding company Squad Ink, led by its owner and creative director Matthew Squadrito, as the agency behind the Archie Rose brand. Packaging News reported in April 2017 that Squad Ink had described its labels as honouring a “function-led aesthetic,” and that designing them required a close understanding of how the spirits were produced and what went into them.

Limited editions became a second register. In March 2017 Packaging News described Archie Rose X Horisumi, a rare-gin series planned as four seasonal releases with artwork drawn by hand by the tattoo artist Horisumi. Squad Ink designed the labels, which were printed by Multi-Color Corporation Australia on a stock chosen to mimic watercolour paper and stamped in gold foil, and the first 200 bottles of the Autumn release came wrapped in a numbered furoshiki cloth. The magazine explained that the wrap nodded to Japanese gift-giving and also covered the tattoo art, in keeping with Japanese conventions about showing tattoos in public.

In September 2019 the same magazine reported on Outside Gin and Inside Gin, a twin release made with the Sydney Opera House. Squad Ink drew a new geometric mark from Jørn Utzon’s original plans for the building’s sails; the Outside label used silver foil and a die-cut, embossed front, while the Inside label turned to deep blue and purple with rainbow foil. Packaging News said the labels were printed digitally by LabelHouse Victoria, with embossed grain, matte varnish and variable data overprinted on each bottle, and that the bottles themselves were custom Archie Rose bottles.

A second, simpler range followed. English Wikipedia, citing the trade title Drinks Trade in October 2022, describes a Fundamental Spirits range including True Cut Vodka, Double Malt Whisky and Straight Dry Gin, alongside a Signature Range of gins, vodka and whiskies.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all Australian gin and craft-spirits names: Archie Rose, Never Never, Brookie’s, Manly Spirits, Ink Gin, Poor Toms and Applewood. They sit at different points in the trade, from small distilleries that still carry a founder’s name or a home town to brands that have taken outside investment or now belong to larger drinks companies, and a single gin can be sold at a cellar door, in a bottle shop and over a cocktail bar.

A gin’s identity is usually carried less by the liquid than by a bottle, a label, a name and the place it promises, and in Australian gin that place is often spelled out through native botanicals and a named region or suburb. The company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its distilling or grown far beyond the shed or warehouse where it started, which makes the plain questions worth asking: who started it, who owns it now, and where its spirit is actually distilled and bottled.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its spirits are made and how its bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A bigger distillery, local malt and a new co-owner.

In 2020 production moved. English Wikipedia, citing The Shout of November 2020, says Archie Rose moved its distilling to a new site that year, and Whisky Magazine described the site in 2022 as its second distillery, in Banksmeadow, often called the Botany Distillery, designed from the ground up by Edwards and the master distiller Dave Withers. Whisky Magazine said the team uses Australian-farmed grain and mashes, ferments, distils and matures each malt in its recipe separately before blending. English Wikipedia says the original Rosebery distillery became an event space, and the company still runs its bar there.

Ownership changed in 2026. In a release published on 25 August 2026 the company said the actor Chris Hemsworth had joined as a co-owner alongside Edwards, that the business remained privately owned by Edwards and his family, and that Hemsworth had co-created three whiskies due to launch in Asia and New Zealand late in 2026, with the United Kingdom and European Union to follow in 2027. English Wikipedia, citing the Australian Financial Review, says the stake was taken ahead of a push into the United States, and, citing Australian Bartender, that Archie Rose gained B Corp certification in August 2026.

The company’s own site is archierose.com.au.

For a design guide, Archie Rose shows how a working distillery’s process can become its label language, and how one studio can stretch a plain, function-led system to carry tattoo art, an Opera House mark and a cheaper everyday range. Compare Four Pillars, the Yarra Valley gin distillery, and Starward, the Melbourne whisky maker. For this guide we use still copper, label black and cream with a grotesque sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Archie Rose’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.