WHEN Maria Schuler and Louise Foster bought a parcel of land on Milbrodale Road, Fordwich, in 2016, all they wanted was a peaceful tree change.
Foster, 50, had retired four years earlier from a 23-year police force career that left her with chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from her days on the beat, then as a prosecutor.
Schuler, meanwhile, was keen to sell her Beaumont Street, Hamilton, tobacco business King of The Pack, which she bought in 2007, and catch up on some shut-eye after years of rising at 5am and working 13-hour days.
What happened next can be blamed squarely on the power of the world wide web.
"I'm Google, she's YouTube," Schuler jokes of the online research that led them them to build Kawal Rock Distillery.
"We had no business plan and zero experience. I said to Louise, 'If it doesn't work, we just sell and go home to Newcastle. The only thing wasted is our time and effort, so let's give it a crack.'"
Rewind to June, 2016, and the couple, together for 16 years after meeting at the then Gateway Hotel in Hamilton, stood on the biggest of three properties put up for sale by John Tulloch, uncle to Keith.
"It has a big mountain with a huge rock on it, and I said to the real estate agent, 'Look, I can see where the property is, but where's the rest of it?'" Schuler remembers. "They just pointed to the mountain and beyond."
The pair had planned to travel by motorhome around Australia in their retirement. When they realised the expense, Foster suggested buying a rural getaway.
"I Googled 'country properties for sale", and this came up," Schuler says, grinning again.
When they bought their 500 acres, there was almost nothing there. Just 10 acres of grapes (six acres of muscat, some verdelho and chardonnay) and the sentry rock looming above. They bought a caravan and stayed on weekends, inviting friends to join them, alongside the eagles above.
The Wonnarua people are the traditional custodians of the land and their name for the eagle is Ka-Wal. Legend has it that the twin wedge-tailed eagles that live on the rock and circle the vineyard are ancient protectors of the land.
In her shop counter downtime, Schuler researched how they could use the muscat grapes, planted 60 years ago.
"I Googled, 'What else can you make from muscat apart from moscato and muscat?' and brandy came up. I found a site regarding how the French make it," she recalls.
"I was excited. I said to Louise, 'No-one else makes brandy here because it takes too long to make'. It has to be barrelled for a minimum of two years."
Further keyboard research revealed the use of an alembic still in making brandy. In 2019, while Foster travelled to Adelaide then Tasmania to complete distilling courses, Schuler sorted the liquor licence paperwork and bought their $58,000 copper still. Council approval to build the their cellar door followed.
As rain rolls over Kawal Rock Distillery on a humid spring day, Schuler and Foster stand in the rustic cellar door they built over two-and-a-half years and opened in October, 2021.
Recycled wine barrel panels line the interior walls, adding warmth to the cavernous space where they run their tastings bar. On one wall, 20 barrels of brandy, maturing since 2020, are stacked. An earlier batch, now bottled, was made from a 2019 barrel of semillon.
"Brandy is pretty misunderstood in Australia, our concept of it is one of cognac, which is really quite expensive, or something that your nanna puts in the Christmas pudding," says Foster. "There's nothing really in between."
The still arrived in 2020, not long after the horror bushfires that ripped through the Hunter in the 2019 summer, ruining crops for wine growers.
By then, the pair had deemed their muscat grapes were too good to distill, deciding to use their harvest for moscato. Instead, they bought the bush fire smoke-tainted grapes from nearby vineyards, to then turn into wine, to then distill twice to make their brandy. "We paid for the picking and gave them a certain amount per tonnage, and they gave it to their winemaker to do a basic fermentation of the wine. It ended up being 50,000 litres, it cost $70,000, that's all we could afford," Schuler says.
Foster took four months to distill 50,000 litres into 5000 litres of brandy.
"That was my apprenticeship, it sent me a bit troppo because I was doing three [spirit] runs a day and I'd be there at 2am," she says with a laugh.
Gleaming at the back of the shed, the still is also used by Foster to produce their small range of gin, traditionally made from a grape spirit and distilled three times.
"Gin is made from a neutral spirit, so is vodka. We assume vodka is made from potato but it can be made from anything, you just want the mouth feel. A lot of distilleries will buy their spirit in, so a grain spirit from Malandra or a grape spirit from Tarac. There's only 20 per cent that make it from scratch," explains Foster.
Made from scratch, adds Schuler, means distilling wine that turns it into the pure spirit base, distilling it a second time (at which point Foster picks the best part of the distillate), then distilling it a third time with botanicals. Foster doesn't add any artificial colours or flavours.
The distillery sources fermented wine that would otherwise end in landfill and sends the bottles for recycling as road base.
"It's wine that is already bottled and on pallets. If it hasn't been sold it becomes an issue for a winery, it will get dumped and go into landfill. There's nothing wrong with it, it's OK to distill," Foster says.
Adds Schuler: "We after quality, not quantity, and you'll discover that when you taste it."
Their first gin was the 2021 Girls On The Hill Signature Gin, with fresh bush lemon peel botanicals.
"When we first started work, excavating and concreting and building, we became known as 'the girls on the hill', because people would go past and say 'What are those girls on the hill doing?'. They were excited to see what business was coming this way to help them, too," explains Schuler.
In March, 2022, came the Pink Diamond Gin, named after the muscat grapes that are macerated into the completed gin. Next came the Itchy Wombat, in honour of their encounter with one that wandered close to their car to give its stout body a rub.
Their moscato is made by Lovedale winemaker Dan Binet.
"Normally moscato is sweet but ours is an off dry, it's very moreish," says Schuler.
They use it in their now trademarked cocktail: the Gincato is made with ice, strawberries, a COVID nip (extra large) and moscato.
The couple designed their property to be eco-friendly, using recycled items including bricks for paving and installing solar.
"The stilling process uses a lot of electricity so we wanted to minimise our impact significantly," says Foster.
Their eco ethos has seen Kawal Rock Distillery nominated as a finalist in the Hunter Manufacturing Awards, October 28.
The business was tracking upwards before the March floods, which swamped some of their vines.
"It's been a tough growing season," says Schuler.
They recently planted 2250 nero di troia vines (replacing the verdelho and chardonnay) upon the recommendation of John Tulloch.
The pair joke that they hope to one day turn a profit. For now, they have money in the bank to pay for their outlays.
Theirs is an enterprise that goes deeper than finance.
"This place really saved my life, if you want to get into the whole PTSD ... it's an insidious thing," says Foster of the chronic disorder she and other first responders commonly face.
On the beat, she sustained physical injuries. Her prosecutor role added more pressure.
"People don't understand the role. You deal with every criminal charge or Apprehended Violence Order that the police have taken out that week," she says.
"On the truck, you are confronted with violence. As the prosecutor you have the weight of everything: finalising all of that and getting results for people. And it's tricky with domestic violence and AVOs - you get every victim or person in need of protection, and you are dealing with them face-to-face in an environment where they don't understand the process. It's high pressure and quick."
When she and Schuler bought their land, her therapy began with the purchase of chooks.
"I felt obliged to feed them, and there was just that peacefulness," she says. "Then I had 18 months of mowing therapy - I am sure it releases dopamine because you can instantly turn and see the results."
The positive feedback Foster and Schuler have received about their venture is reaffirming.
So too their discussions with Wonnarua women about a bush tucker garden project.
"Our discussions with them was along the lines of how in life, if you want to change a path of where you are going, if you are walking along a path and it seems easy, then that is the right one to take," Foster says.
"The whole concept that you have to fight and struggle for what you want may not necessarily be the path you should be going down. The mental state I was in ... I wasn't up for a fight. Everything has moved along this path and it's been easy, enjoyable and seems to flow."
WHAT DO YOU THINK? We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on the Newcastle Herald website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. Sign up for a subscription here.
