From the founder

The Story

Why I started Grand Cellar Spirits, and what I wanted it to be that nothing else already was

In the owner's words

Why I started this

I started Grand Cellar Spirits because I kept running into the same gap, and nobody seemed interested in closing it.

On one side there were bottles that no longer exist. Distilleries that closed in 1983 and never reopened. A Korean grain soju made before the practice was banned outright. An amaro under a capsule nobody has used since before the war. These changed hands quietly, between people who already knew each other, at prices nobody published. You could not buy into that world unless you were already in it.

On the other side there was everything being made right now, sold in bright shops with no sense that any of it came from anywhere or was made by anyone. Two halves of one trade, kept in separate rooms.

Neither half makes complete sense alone, and that is the thing I wanted to fix. A closed distillery only means something once you understand what it was doing while it was still open. A distillery founded in 2005 is only interesting once you know what fell silent on that same coast before it. So I built one place where the past and the present sit together, and where the line running between them is the point rather than an accident of stock.

The second thing I wanted was to bring the high end of this trade to the people buying from us, rather than keeping it behind a door. Rare spirits have been sold for a very long time as though asking the price were bad manners. Everything here carries a price, a strength, a fill level and a plain account of its condition. If a bottle has a fault we put it in the listing. If we cannot trace where it has been, we say that too, and we say where the trail stopped.

That is the whole brand. Connect the past to the present, and make the top of this trade something a buyer can actually walk into.

Founder, Grand Cellar Spirits

What that looks like in practice

Six pairs from the catalogue. On the left what we hold, on the right what the same house is bottling now. This is the connection the brand exists to make, in bottles rather than in words.

Japan
In the vault
Hakuryu 1984
Full term mizunara cask, A$31,500
On the shelf now
Hakuryu 2016
Mizunara finish, A$210
The same house and the same wood. What separates them is how long the spirit sat in it, and thirty two years of the world deciding it wanted Japanese whisky.
South Korea
In the vault
Cheonggang 1961
Distilled before the 1965 ban, A$7,400
On the shelf now
Cheonggang 2019
Distilled after the ban lifted, A$68
Fifty eight years apart, and for thirty four of them this house was not permitted to distil from grain at all. The gap in the middle is the reason the older bottle costs what it costs.
England
In the vault
Fenwick Malt 1998
English single malt, first fill, A$2,400
On the shelf now
Fenwick Reserve 2018
English single malt, A$78
England had no single malt distilleries between the wars and 2006. Twenty years in, the same house is making something you can afford to drink on a Tuesday.
Italy
In the vault
Amaro Certosino 1938
Pre war, original capsule, A$3,700
On the shelf now
Amaro Certosino 2015
Current bottling, A$54
Still the infirmary recipe, still bitter enough to argue about. Italy is the one origin where the modern bottle and the pre war bottle are recognisably the same drink.
Netherlands
In the vault
Beemster Korenwijn 1968
Korenwijn, cask aged, A$1,780
On the shelf now
Beemster Jonge 2019
Jonge genever, A$42
One house, two styles. Oude keeps a high proportion of malt wine and the cask time that goes with it; jonge keeps neither, which is most of the difference in the price.
Scotland
In the vault
Craigduin 1966
Silent since 1983, A$22,400
On the shelf now
Cnoc Dubh 2014
Distillery founded 2005, A$95
Not the same house, and that is the point. One went silent in 1983 during the closures that made this vault possible. The other opened on the same coast in 2005.