Place. The Provenance of Husk Rum
Our Place : The Caldera Coast
While you can make rum from molasses anywhere in the world all year round, you can only make cultivated rum where sugar cane grows and then only during the harvest season. In Australia, that means along the 2,100km coastal plain from Grafton, NSW to Mossman in north Queensland.
So in 2009 after returning from the Caribbean with a dream of creating an Australian Agricole rum, Paul and wife Mandaley were strongly drawn to the Tweed Valley, northern NSW with its stunning landscape, flourishing cane industry, rural lifestyle and close proximity to great surf beaches, bars and restaurants.
The sugarcane fields of the Tweed Valley.
Growing up just across the border and completing his thesis on the volcanoes of eastern Australia, the geologist in Paul saw something about this place, that he knew so well from his childhood, that just made so much sense when it came to making rum with terroir.
The farm they chose at Tumbulgum is situated in the eroded core of the once mighty Tweed Shield Volcano; where 23 million years ago a giant edifice rose 2 km above the coastal plain at its focal point Mt Warning/Wollumbin.
The eroded core of the Tweed Shield volcano as seen from above. Husk Farm Distillery is nestled into this incredible landscape.
Its vast flank stretched from Mt Tamborine in the north to Ballina in the south, west to Beaudesert, Canungra, down the Border Ranges to Kyogle, Casino and Lismore.
Red hot lavas flowed into the sea creating some of the world’s most fabled surf breaks at Burleigh, Kirra, Point Danger/Snapper Rocks, to Fingal, Cape Byron and Lennox Heads.
23 million years of erosion had carved out the deepest caldera in the southern hemisphere – the fertile Tweed River Valley.
The headlands from Ballina to Burleigh Heads were formed during the lava flow of the Tweed Shield volcano.
Paul knew that this place had all the elements to produce a truly fine rum.
Ten years later and plenty of blood, sweat and tears later, Husk Rum is the spirit of this caldera coast. This is our provenance.