In the Adelaide Hills, the age-old craft of whiskey-making is joining with some of Australia's ancient bush foods to create a thoroughly modern drop.

Key points: A distiller in the Adelaide Hills is producing wattle seed whiskey for its unique Australian flavour

A distiller in the Adelaide Hills is producing wattle seed whiskey for its unique Australian flavour The whiskey and gin distilling boom is so popular that there is a long waiting list for copper stills

The whiskey and gin distilling boom is so popular that there is a long waiting list for copper stills An academic in wine science says courses in distilling are becoming more popular as the interest in whiskey and gin-making grows

Adelaide Hills Distillery wanted to create uniquely Australian-flavoured craft spirits and their latest project has taken wattle seed and turned it into whiskey.

It was distiller Sacha La Forgia's idea to combine the native Australian flavours with whiskey.

Mr La Forgia's Italian heritage meant from a young age he saw how beer and wine was made.

"I love to play with flavours and fermenting things," Mr La Forgia said.

That led to a career in winemaking for about 10 years before he decided to turn his hand to making spirits — and his first foray was into gin making.

"At the moment there's a craft distilling boom, a renaissance of distilling happening, and globally the first thing to take off was gin," he said.

"So we did gin firstly because we love gin and secondly because the market was there."

Bottling time at Adelaide Hills Distillery. ( Supplied: Adelaide Hills Distillery )

Mr La Forgia's gin featured Australian bush foods and it was something he was keen to replicate when he turned his hand to whiskey-making.

"Up until now, the whiskey industry in Australia has been striving to be the most Scottish, but we thought since we live in Australia we should try to be the most Australian — we should use what grows naturally."

So they went through a process of trying to find native grains suitable for making whiskey to discover what whiskey would look like if it developed in Australia.

"We found that there used to be a grain belt that ran through the middle of the country, which was kind of destroyed by colonial settlement, and some of it was wattle seed and kangaroo paw among others but the only commercially viable one was wattle seed," Mr La Forgia said.

Wattle seed is roasted, ground and incorporated into the barley malt mash as part of the whiskey-making process.

"So it's an Australian-tinged whiskey," he said.

Mr La Forgia said it tasted like a whiskey but with a coffee-type flavour due to the roasting of the wattle seed, as well as peachy, stone fruit flavours.

"The long-term plan is to make whiskey with 100 per cent native Australian grains, so not European at all," he said.

"But since native foods haven't had the research and development that European foods have had they're still quite expensive, they're hard to farm, hard to automate, so they're very expensive."

Australian native wattle seed is being used to form part of an Australian native-flavoured whiskey. ( ABC Rural: Jessica Schremmer )

Mr La Forgia believed the future of his whiskey and the future of the Australian whiskey industry were one in the same.

"The craft spirits boom hasn't just happened in Australia, so there's an ocean of whiskey out there in the world," he said.

"For us in Australia if we can use the things that grow here and nowhere else when we try to sell it internationally it will be really easy."

Skills and taste revival

It's not just the ancient distilling skills that are being brought into the 21st century.

Graham Jones is an Adjunct Associate Professor in Wine Science at the University of Adelaide, and he too has had a lifelong love of creating alcohol and distilling flavours.

There is a huge demand for the wine course, both degree and short courses, driven by the increasing interest in boutique distilling.

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Mr Jones said distilling required the right equipment, including the copper stills used for distillation, with demand reviving old trades.

"It's nice gleaming copper," he said speaking of the still at the university.

"It's the kind of copper work that manufacturers in Australia are learning how to do and certainly in the past did very well, the skills are being recreated."

This particular still was created in Italy, a country well known for its premium copper work.

"In fact, there is such a demand for these copper stills that the coppersmiths here in Australia have a backlog of orders," Mr Jones said.

"It's very difficult to get a copper still without waiting a considerable time.

"Of course the more interest and the greater the demand for these copper stills, the more trades people are being employed to make them."

The wine industry has seen a premiumisation where people are drinking less wine but of better quality, and Mr Jones believed the same was being seen in spirit consumption as well.

"I believe people's tastes are becoming more discerning," he said.

"The alcopops have been supplanted by a rich pallet of people and another factor is the opportunity for small distilleries to be set up and this is because of changes to the Australian taxation law.

"I think there's a vast array of possibilities out there, people are always looking for something different, exciting, that challenges the sensory abilities we have."