2020 Husk Rum Harvest

The 2020 agricultural rum season is finally upon us. After a 2 week delay due to high rainfall in the valley, it looks like next week we’ll be firing up the harvester and taking to the fields to cut the first of the 2020 cane crop.

This is a very exciting (and exhausting!) time of year for us.

As Australia’s only agricultural rum distillery, we are farmers as well as distillers.

We spend years preparing the paddocks, selecting cane varieties, planting the crop and watching it grow.

Harvest season for us is a brief 6 month window, during which time we are at the mercy of the weather. Too much rain, as we’ve seen in the last few weeks, and we can’t drive the trailer through the paddocks and the rest of the season is pushed back.

Over the coming months we plan to cut ~430 tonnes of cane, produce 240,000L of juice and complete 52 distillation runs in our Forsyth still Fat Bastard.

Harvest always comes with dramas - our 30 year old old harvester is bound to blow a few hoses and have a few tantrums.

Harvesting is hard, physical and messy work, but we know that the results are well worth the work.

Why?

Because making rum with fresh sugar cane juice is the only way to impart real provenance in the end product.

The 2020 harvest will yield unique terroir specific to this year. With a long dry period at the end of 2019, followed by a big wet and a small flood in early 2020, this season is looking to be a bumper crop and we can’t wait to get into it.