Beenleigh Distillery
Beenleigh was founded in 1884, as a legal brand born from the ashes of SS Walrus, a clandestine Australian brand that distilled at sea, on a boat, to escape the police. The boat still was used to open the distillery, which thrived during the 20th century, outselling its rival brand Bundaberg in the 1960s and 1970s. The following decades were less favourable, however, as it lost its market share amid a series of ownership changes. The discontinued Beenleigh brand was however resurrected by Stuart Gilbert in 2000, and when he sold it to VOK Beverages in 2012, they also bought the old distillery, reuniting the two and ushering in a second era of Beenleigh rum production. Beenleigh is an Australian rum, produced at Beenleigh Distillery, the oldest registered distillery in Australia. It is bottled as part of the Transcontinental Rum Line series, by La Maison du Whisky. Despite having a long history of rum production and sugarcane cultivation, Australia is a corner of the rum world that has so far been rarely explored. Beenleigh Distillery has been producing rum since 1884, currently under the stewardship of Steve Magarry. The distillery operates a continuous column still installed in 1981 and a copper pot still dating from 1887.
