{"id":107603,"date":"2025-07-03T09:14:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T07:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/?p=107603"},"modified":"2025-07-03T09:57:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T07:57:12","slug":"the-winding-road-distilling-co-by-its-co-founder-mark-awad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/the-winding-road-distilling-co-by-its-co-founder-mark-awad\/","title":{"rendered":"The Winding Road Distilling Co by its co-founder, Mark Awad"},"content":{"rendered":"

In this interview, Mark Awad introduces us to Winding Road Distilling Co. an Australian family distillery where each stage of the process is based on carefully considered choices, combining craftsmanship, respect for the product and attachment to the land.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Winding<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can you introduce the Winding Road Distilling Co?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Winding Road Distilling Co. is a small family distillery located in Tintenbar, New South Wales. My wife Camille and I chose the name Winding Road because it really illustrates our shared history.<\/p>\n

We’ve never taken the \u201cstraight and easy\u201d route in our lives together, always choosing the more challenging one that brings plenty of twists and turns and adventure! This has really influenced our approach to distillation, where we’ve blazed our own trail to create beautiful, unique Australian expressions.<\/p>\n

Our production started in 2018 and we’ve stayed small, only producing around 10,000 litres of all expressions combined per year. We’re a bit unique in that we focus on both rum and whisky, as well as gin.<\/p>\n

At the moment our team consists of the two of us, our son Sebastian and our wonderful staff members Lis and Elias. We intend to grow a bit over the next couple of years, but we always want to stay small, family-orientated and focused on premium expressions.<\/p>\n

What types of rum do you produce?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most of our rum is made from freshly squeezed cane juice (we’re in a sugar cane growing region). We absolutely love the influence of our local climate, soil, air, water and the variety of cane on the spirit it produces!<\/p>\n

Although our production methods are somewhat similar to those of an agricultural rum, they are different. We focus on creating a distinct Australian expression and achieve this through a long fermentation followed by a resting period and the use of an iron still, among other differences.<\/p>\n

Over the past two years we’ve also experimented with fermenting and distilling evaporated cane juice. We really enjoyed working with that too! It produces a very different spirit, but just as beautiful, with strong floral and vanilla notes.<\/p>\n

\"Winding<\/strong><\/p>\n

What is the production process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

As we mainly use fresh juice, we can only produce our rum during the cane harvest season, which runs from around June to December here in Australia. Shortly after crushing, we inoculate the cane juice with our yeast.<\/p>\n

Although fermentation is largely complete within two days, we allow for an extended rest period before distillation. Using our 1,250-litre copper still, we carry out \u201ceffacement\u201d distillations followed by a \u201cspirits\u201d distillation. If we use evaporated cane juice, we first have to dilute it from around 65-70 brix to around 16-18 brix.<\/p>\n

From there, the process is the same. Although we reserve a large proportion of our production for bottling as a \u201cfresh\u201d unaged expression (white), most of what we produce is then filled into casks for maturation.<\/p>\n

We’ve used a number of different types of cask, from those that once contained sherry and port, to red wine and bourbon. Most of our casks, however, are new American oak, which we love for the sweet vanilla and spice notes that wood imparts to the rum!<\/p>\n

What are your main markets?<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the moment, we’re mainly focused on our market here in Australia. That said, we’d love to introduce our fine rums to the European market (particularly France, as your country has a great understanding and appreciation of premium rums) and we’re certainly open to discussions with interested parties!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this interview, Mark Awad introduces us to Winding Road Distilling Co. an Australian family distillery where each stage of the process is based on carefully considered choices, combining craftsmanship, respect for the product and attachment to the land. Can you introduce the Winding Road Distilling Co? Winding Road Distilling Co. is a small family…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":677,"featured_media":107593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9540,5482],"tags":[7061,9495],"class_list":["post-107603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australian-rum","category-news","tag-australia","tag-winding-road-distilling-co-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107603"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107603\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/107593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rumporter.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}