“Salt And Lime”: $24M Bowen Agave Distillery Gets Brewing

The Eden Lassie station agave farm south of Bowen has welcomed local government’s tick of approval to move forward with its $25 million planned distillery.

The Top Shelf International farm, located on former grazing land received unanimous approval from Whitsunday Regional Council to construct a distillery, production facility, and visitor centre on site.

Agave is one of the primary components in the distillation process of tequila and mezcal spirits – which Australia is the third biggest consumer of in the world behind the United States and Mexico.

Whitsunday Acting Mayor Mike Brunker said Top Shelf had been planting at the farm for the past 12 months and were “good to go” for their next step.

“It will be unbelievable,” Mayor Brunker said.

“With this and the cruise ship industry’s return, it could potentially bring in tours of people eager to taste our Whitsunday spirit.”

Councillor John Collins was more attuned to the alcoholic incentives, rather than the economic.

“Give them a ring and ask if they have enough salt and lime for us up there,” he said.

Purchased in December 2020 by the Melbourne-based vodka and whiskey distiller, the Australian Agave Spirit Farm lauds a potential $100 million turnover export business according to its advocates.

Due to laws like those around champagne, the Whitsunday spirit produced at the Bowen farm legally cannot be called tequila but instead will be agave spirit – and brand naming has yet to be decided, with the first bottles potentially arriving in the Aussie market in September.

Currently, the farm houses roughly 538,000 agave plants, making it the largest in the country.

Director Commercial and Agave at Top Shelf International, Michael Hennessy said the farm was looking to begin construction as soon as possible within the next few months.

“It’s great to show the people of the Whitsundays the progress that we’ve been talking about for the last couple of years. This is another step forward to starting construction and moving forward,” Mr Hennessy said.

“We’d like to start as soon as possible, and we’re looking to be in production of the spirit by mid-2023.”

Mr Hennessy said they were looking for local contractors to complete the build and that, once complete, the distillery would support up to 20 jobs with more for the visitor experience.

“We’ve been blown away by the support we’ve had from the local community, local council and local groups and we’re looking forward to repaying that faith,” he said.

Aside from its “tequila” venture, the farm has also expressed interest in hydrogen technology, with a potential resource recovery through agave biomass, and hopes to run the farm at carbon neutral.

The “Eden Lassie distillery” could be a major boon to the region’s agriculture output, with the plan to have one million plants by 2024.

With that number the company could rocket to the top 25 producers in the world of agave spirit, cultivating three million litres annually – one and a half million bottles.

“We’ve had very positive response to our trial batches,” Mr Hennessy said.

“What we’ve produced so far, we’ve been thrilled to bits with and we’re looking forward to improving on that recipe continually to achieve one of the world’s best agave spirits.”

The United States industry is worth $10 billion a year and agave spirit is being hailed as the “rising star of hard liquor”.

A render of the proposed Top Shelf International's agave farm distillery stage one south of Bowen

he Melbourne-based company have already made test batches of their new agave spirit

Contributed Top Shelf International

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