A winemaking couple in an old apple cold store.

Applewood Distillery is based in Gumeracha, a town in the northern Adelaide Hills of South Australia. It was started by Brendan Carter and his wife Laura Carter, who also make wine under the Unico Zelo label, and the two businesses grew up under one roof: the Old Gumeracha Cold Stores, which the drinks site Gourmantic described in May 2016 as built in the 1920s for the cold storage of apples. In a February 2020 profile in Australian Bartender, the company said the Carters “started Applewood in 2015 in our little winery,” set in a former cold store in the town.

The dates depend on which beginning is counted. Speaking to Cocktails & Bars in April 2019, Brendan Carter said the couple acquired their still in late 2011 and “started distilling formally in 2012,” the year he said they started a business called Ochre Nation in the northern Adelaide Hills. The profile of Carter published by the Tasting Australia festival also gives 2012 as the year the Carters founded Unico Zelo and Applewood. The Adelaide Review, in January 2017, reported that Applewood had launched in late 2015. The sources therefore give 2011–2012 for the still and the start of distilling, and late 2015 for the launch of the Applewood gin.

Carter described Ochre Nation in 2019 as a “producer-enclave of Australian-centric beverages,” grouping gin under the Applewood name, a bitter amaro called Økar, and liqueurs including Carter’s Original and a limoncello. Gourmantic in 2016 and Australian Bartender in 2017 both named Brendan and Laura Carter as the distillery’s owners. In 2026 the company’s website credits Brendan Carter as founder and links to Økar and Unico Zelo as “Friends of Applewood.”

Grape spirit and native botanicals.

Applewood’s gin is built on grape-based spirit, according to the product description Australian Bartender carried in February 2017 and to Gourmantic’s 2016 account. The 2017 description said the gin was “inspired by Spring-time in the Adelaide Hills” and listed among its botanicals juniper, coriander seed, angelica root, ginger root, lemon myrtle and Earl Grey tea. Gourmantic also described a Salt and Sake Gin made with saltbush foraged from Aldinga beach on the Fleurieu Peninsula.

Native Australian ingredients are the thread the company itself pulls on. In the 2020 profile its team said the aim was to showcase native ingredients across its gins, bitters and liqueurs, and argued that making money from them could encourage more farmers to plant them because, they said, such species use far less water than many introduced ones. Carter had made a similar point to The Adelaide Review in 2017, saying his work could help to “normalise indigenous botanicals” and make them more familiar to drinkers. In 2017 Brendan Carter told Australian Bartender that the core range was gin and two amari, Økar and Red Økar, and mentioned recycling heat off the still. By 2020 the range included a Navy Gin, released in November 2019, the Økar Island Bitter — described by the company as its take on classic aperitifs made from Australian botanicals — and a coffee liqueur made with coffee roasted in Gumeracha.

The distillery has also made spirit for others. The Adelaide Review reported in 2017 that Applewood distilled under contract for labels including Ounce, Prohibition and Barossa Distilling, and that a young spirit called Baby Malt was a prelude to its upcoming releases. Carter told the paper that most distillers start with gin because it “represents really good cash flow,” with a turnaround that can be as short as a couple of days, and estimated that, counting limited releases, Applewood had put out a new gin every fortnight since its launch. On its website in 2026 the company says its gin “is distilled at Gumeracha,” and lists a Signature Gin alongside Coral, Alpine and Navy, with a page called The Museum for past limited editions and collaborations.

Who makes it, and where.

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 certified B Corporation in the hills.

The business has made its practices part of its public face. Tasting Australia’s profile of Brendan Carter says the Carters were certified as a B Corporation in 2019. The festival profile also says Carter trained in Australia, France and Italy, worked with S.C. Pannell, Jacob’s Creek and G.D. Vajra, and that the Carters set up a grape growers’ cooperative and a loan scheme for planting climate-appropriate vineyards.

The website places the distillery on Peramangk Country, quotes Carter describing “a distillery that sits within its agricultural landscape, not on top of it,” and names a cellar door in Gumeracha, Bottle Shock, which it says opens Friday to Monday. The distillery’s website is applewooddistillery.com.au; the similarly named applewood.com.au belongs to an unrelated retirement village in Melbourne.

For a design guide, Applewood shows how a small distillery can tie its identity to a building, a region and a list of native botanicals. Compare Four Pillars, the Yarra Valley gin distillery, and Never Never, another South Australian gin maker. For this guide we use gum-leaf green, ochre and lemon-myrtle cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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