A forgotten rum from 1933 has been brought back to life – and hatted restaurants can’t get it on their drinks lists fast enough.
After the plates are cleared at Eleven Barrack in Sydney, a mid-century Italian drinks trolley is rolled into the dining room, topped with a 20-litre bottle of amber liquid. It’s not whisky or cognac, but rum – specifically Red Mill Rum – which is drawn from the vessel with a copper pipette and carefully dropped into vintage glassware.
“It’s become a feature of the restaurant and part of the whole experience,” says Eleven Barrack co-owner and sommelier Nick Hildebrandt.
A decade ago, rum was unlikely to be something you’d sip at a top Sydney restaurant like Eleven Barrack. Queensland rum brands, such as Bundaberg and Beenleigh, dominated the local market, and the “sugarcane champagne” was more often mixed with cola or ginger beer and slugged from a can.
It was this perception that spurred David Fesq to revive his family’s 90-year-old brand, Red Mill Rum.
“It was obvious there was a gap in the market for a high-quality, authentic, Sydney rum – especially one with a real story behind it,” he says.
Since its relaunch in 2024, the spirit has been in high demand, finding its way onto more than 300 drinks lists across Sydney, including at multi-hatted restaurants such as Firedoor, Sixpenny and Bennelong.
“We’ve had people from every top restaurant and bar in town asking us to make something for them,” Fesq says.
One of those people was Hildebrandt. “I love the history of the product, and the story behind it. I also love the quality and the flavour profile – a lot of rums can be quite sweet, but this is on the savoury-dry side, it’s a bit more elegant.”
Hildebrandt requested a cuvee rum that was lighter in alcohol and suited to after-dinner drinking. The Eleven Barrack blend was born, with Fesq infusing his aged rum with botanicals including sage, licorice root, rocket and orange peel to create an amaro-like liqueur.
Another collaborator was chef and restaurateur Morgan McGlone who asked Fesq to create a coconut-and-pineapple rum, something “a bit Polynesian”, to serve as a digestif at his restaurant Bessie’s in Surry Hills.
McGlone also stocks Red Mill’s spiced rum to make Dark ‘n’ Stormys at Vin-Cenzo’s in Darlinghurst, while the classic expression is served over ice with lime at Surry Hills’ Bar Copains as an alternative to grappa and amaro. “I’m partial to a rum and coke, but this is definitely a bit more high-end,” says McGlone.
Red Mill Rum wasn’t always the refined product it is today. When David’s great-grandfather George Fesq first launched the label in 1933, the overproof rum was very much a working man’s drink. “It was a style more suited to the times –higher in alcohol, stronger in flavour, maybe a bit rougher in some ways,” says Fesq.
The character suited Sydney perfectly. By the ’50s, it had become the city’s biggest rum brand, selling more than 300,000 bottles a year. “It was local, it was authentic, it was bang for your buck,” he says.
Many still remember the ads plastered across buses and trains: a bloke, mouth wide open, yelling the brand’s iconic tagline, “Your Shout”.
By the late ’70s, however, demand had begun to taper off. When George sold his wine and spirit merchant business to William Grant & Sons in the mid ’80s, the new owners weren’t interested in the rum, “so it just disappeared,” says Fesq.
For decades, Red Mill lay forgotten, save for the odd piece of memorabilia lying around. It wasn’t until the COVID years, when Fesq felt he needed a change from working in wine sales, that he began thinking seriously about bringing the brand back to life.
In 2020 he started experimenting – blending, distilling and trialling different barrel finishes. Through his family’s wine-trade contacts, he secured rare and unusual casks, including sherry casks from Spain, Sauternes barrels from France and bourbon barrels from Kentucky, using them to mature the spirit and build flavour.
For a collaboration with The Dry Dock – a heritage pub in Balmain originally built for dockworkers – Fesq drew on the venue’s maritime history, ageing rum in casks from port cities including Porto and Madeira to add depth and complexity to the rum’s warm caramel and gingersnap profile.
Dry Dock co-owner James Ingram has devoted two pages of his drinks list to Red Mill Rum. “We were established in 1867 and Red Mill Rum in 1933, so it was highly likely that the original Red Mill Rum would have been sold here over the years,” he says.
“There’s a lot of synergy between what we’re both doing, which is reimagining heritage brands, paying respect and homage to their history, but also wanting to reimagine them for the next 100 years.”
The final piece of the puzzle was finding Red Mill Rum a permanent home. In early 2024, Fesq moved his distilling, bottling and screen printing equipment into an industrial warehouse in Rozelle once used by the Defence Force to manufacture steel parts. It’s such a perfect fit, many people mistake it for the original Pyrmont distillery, Fesq says.
Sydneysiders can explore the distillery when it opens for a Christmas market on Saturday, December 6. The full rum range will be on offer, including a new Christmas release infused with panettone, apricots and cranberries. “It’s a little lighter in alcohol. It’s something grandma can have, but it won’t put her to sleep,” says Fesq.
Otherwise, the distillery is only open for private tours, tastings and sales, but there are plans to launch a cellar door experience at the end of the summer.
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Erina Starkey – Erina is the Good Food App Editor for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Previously, Erina held a number of editing roles at delicious.com.au and writing roles at Broadsheet and Concrete Playground.
