Husk Rum has a farm-to-bottle philosophy which is all about offering the trade and consumers a quintessentially Australian rum. A rum that talks to the provenance of the maker and the terroir of where they are located.
Part of this philosophy is building and protecting Australian Cultivated Rum, which ultimately, as Husk’s Head Distiller Quentin Brival told Bars and Clubs, is about using the best ingredients and the best processes along every step of making rum to make the best rum possible.
“What we have really pioneered in Australia is juice rum, also known as Agricole when it is made in French Caribbean Islands,” Quentin said.
“In making this style of rum there is influence from the French Caribbean, from Martinique, which is where I am from. But it is definitely made as an Australian expression of that style, with a true sense of provenance. That provenance is, for us, Tumbulgum and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, in that deep Caldera with the volcano that erupted 23 million years ago.
“For us it was important to do a few things to protect that style of rum, and the main reason for that was the consumers – so that they know when they buy a bottle of Cultivated Rum they know what they are buying. They are buying a rum that has been made in the cane growing region of Australia. That rum is going to be made with fresh cane juice, the best juice possible, the best cane possible to make the best rum possible.
“That is what Australian Cultivated Rum stands for, it stands for rum that was made in this cane region, that was made from 100 per cent cane juice and we really wanted to protect the ACR term and educate the consumer.”
The rules for ACR are making rum from fresh cane juice and being based in the cane growing region, which ostensibly stretches from the Northern Rivers of New South Wales to northern Queensland. Cane has been growing in Australia for around 150 years, so there is a very rich culture around Australian sugar cane growing in this ocean region.
“ACR is a rum that is really pure, and for all the ACR rums that we release we don’t add any sugar, we don’t add any colour – all that you see is from the process from the sugar cane,” Quentin said.
Husk not only describes its rums under the ACR trademark but also refers to the process as fresh juice, rather than Agricole and Quentin explained to Bars and Clubs that is mainly because there is EU legislation that states Agricole Rum can only be made on the French Caribbean Islands and the island of Maderia.
“We could use the name here and no-one would chase us up,” Quentin said, “but we could not sell it in France, but also out of respect we didn’t want to use the name.”
One of the things that many people talk about within rum is that it is the terroir spirit, because it is generally made in certain regions that use local ingredients to suit their style of rum it speaks to regionality. Rum terroir can even drill down further, and as Quentin explained you can see different flavour profiles coming from Australian sugar cane because of the size of that region stretching from northern NSW up to northern Queensland.
“Growing good sugar cane means that you are going to plant varieties that suit the specific climate you are in. Martinique, for instance, is tiny, it is only 80km long, 30km wide, but even within Martinique you have got a few different micro-climates. And with the cane if you speak to distillers, they will tell you there are suitable variations between the north of the island and the south of the island. Now, think about Australia. You have got full-on tropical climate in the north and then in northern NSW the sub-tropical climates, so the type of cane we are going to get is very different, the way it is going to grow is very different, and the varieties are going to be different.
“We, at Husk respected that, and we decided to plant varieties that were based on what would grow best in our region. The cane we grow the most is called Q2-40 and it grows really well, it’s a strong cane with a lot of sugar – it’s really nice.
Another key aspect of the Husk philosophy is farm-to-bottle, as Quentin explained: “This is about us really wanting to do things right. We have got a 150-acre farm, we grow sugar cane, we have almost tripled the amount of cane that we have got in the paddock this year.
“Our paddock is only about 150-metres from our sugar mill, which we upgraded a couple of years ago, and so this means it can take as little as 30 minutes for the cane to be cut, then into the mill and then into the fermenters for the fermentation to start. The process is very quick and that is important because if you wait too long it is going to spoil, you are going to get natural fermentation starting – sometimes this is good, but more often it is not so good.”
The Tweed Caldera climate also helps Husk in terms of its ageing process, its angel’s share and the influence the climate has on the liquid in barrels.
“Husk is in a sub-tropical climate, so we have got humid and very summers, and we have got cold and dry winters. And I like to call that a dynamic ageing, where the liquid is going to expand and contract over the different seasons and that intensifies the exchanges with the wood and the oxygen is going to get into the wood as well, and so we get a very intense ageing.”
And when it comes to the barrels Husk uses Quentin said: “We are using mainly ex-wine barrels, at first we used brand new oak barrels and we started to experiment with ex-Bourbon barrels, which are widely used. But I was not happy with that for a couple of reasons, first, it is extremely expensive to get them here, and the big attraction of the Bourbon barrel is that they are meant to be cheap, but shipping to Australia becomes the biggest cost. In addition to the cost we’d bring over around 70 barrels at a time and then 10 or 12 of them would be completely unusable.
“The Husk style of rum is all about provenance and being anchored in Australian terroir, and one thing that really struck me when I first came to Australia, is that it is a big wine country. So I thought ‘there are great barrels here and they are some much better than ex-Bourbon barrels, so why not use them. We found some cooperages that work with some great wine brands, like Penfolds for example, and we were able to get good wines barrels that we could shave and re-toast to our specifications and they pretty much act like new barrels.
“Now it is tricky to work with wine barrels, it took us a few years to work through the wineries and regions that work best for our style of rum. We have got there in the end and so we have a unique barrel that works well with our products and that has got the Australian history. We do use some other barrels as well, but the main focus is Australian wine barrels.”
Quentin has now been at Husk for eight years and in describing the changes he has seen in that time, he said: “We always had the idea to scale the business. We are a craft distillery, but now we are a medium-sized business and our mission is to disrupt the rum market. We have products like Rare Blend that retails for around $70, and we do have some super-premium rums selling for a few hundred dollars. The bulk of what we are trying to do is disrupt the market and get people on-board with that. So we have really scaled up the business and doing things at scale is really hard, but we are focused on keeping the quality high and really building the brand with consumers, listening to them and create a product that matches the provenance of where you make them.”
