You are in very good hands here. Head by for a South Sydney Side that reminds us of the mysterious flavour of 7-Up and a banana whisky Martini that was all sugar and no punch.
Harriet, Archie Rose opened in 2015, which feels like a while in Sydney years. How has the scene changed for distillers?
It’s so funny to hear we’ve been around for a little while, because it feels like we’re very much new kids on the block. But the whole industry is very young. When we started, I think there were 30 Australian distilleries – there are now 200.
What drew you to Rosebery in the first place?
We wanted to build an urban distillery as close to the city as possible. Back then, the rent still wasn’t astronomical, it’s gone up a lot now. Rosebery’s also a cool little suburb. It’s not been ‘discovered’ yet, so there are lots of secret gems.
Tell us a bit about the Archie Rose bar.
The bar came secondary to the distillery. But Will Edwards, our founder, is a real booze nerd. We’re all massive booze fans, which is why we’ve got 400 spirits at the back bar that aren’t Archie Rose, and collected from all over the world, instead of all of the usual suspects. We also do gin blending classes and Sydney gin flights here. It’s not just our gins that we pour, we also pour Poor Tom’s or Noble Cut – because we’re big fans of the guys in the industry. And we’ve all got to support each other.
What are your favourite spots to hang out at the Cannery?
Three Blue Ducks do some beautiful food and also have a little bar that they’ve just opened, so you can go and just drink. There’s also Frenchies Bistro and Brewery, who are our brothers in booze. Those guys make sensational beers, they’ve also got a really cool restaurant. And we just love them because they’re just as into yeast as we are. Next door to them is the Drink Hive, which in my opinion is one of the best bottle shops in the city. Across the road, is the Messina Headquarters, where they do all their research and development. On Friday and Saturday nights, they do ‘Messina Eats’ in their car park, where restaurants from all over the country are invited here to do pop-ups. The next one they’re doing is with Beccofino – a pizza and pasta place from Brisbane. Stanton and Co has an amazing balcony upstairs and a really good place to sit in the sun in the afternoon. We’re doing some Archie Rose cocktails with them as well.
Do you do many collaborative projects together?
We’ve just done a collaboration with Three Blue Ducks where we melted giant ice cubes in their wood-fired oven and made a smoked water. We used it to make a smoked gin for a new rage called Concepts. It’s tiny and there are only 900 bottles left. In fact, we’re going to start a quarterly bar crawl between us, the Three Blue Ducks and Messina, where people can start here for a cocktail, go to Three Blue Ducks for a barbecue in the garden, and then go to Messina for dessert. That’s one of the best things about Rosebery – because we’re such a small area, everyone works together. It’s very neighbourly.
Rosebery is a bit of a food hub, do you recommend any gourmet stores?
I love Red Spoon, which is a specialist cooking equipment shop. You can go there and buy utensils, and lots of chemicals and powders that you would use in spherification or cake-making – it’s like cooking porn. There’s also a cooking school next door called Vive Cooking School. There’ll be celebrity chefs teaching kids how to make pasta one weekend, or Chris Thé from Black Star Pastry would teach people how to make their watermelon cake. There are vegan classes, too. It’s all really interesting. Outside the Cannery, I love Adamo’s Pasta, which is a wholesale pasta producer. But you can also order takeaways. They make a really great ravioli.
Any other local gems?
The Newmarket Hotel. It’s like the most South-Sydney-[Rabbitohs]-till-I-die-place. I took my team there for a staff party once. I don’t remember the end of it – but it was really fun. And there’s a massive ’70s old-school bowling alley in it if you want to do some bowling.
Where do you see Rosebery’s nightlife headed?
Right now, the City of Sydney is reviewing its late-night trading development control plans, which is interesting. They’re going through a consultation stage with nighttime businesses and the community. The city has changed – it’s all part of looking at the way we treat our city and the way we eat and drink and where we go to do things. At the moment, Rosebery is still zoned as mainly residential, even though there are now things to do at night… Hopefully in the next year or so, when more people move in and they need more places to drink, venues might be able to apply for licences that they weren’t able to apply for previously. And other people who want to open at night, can.
