Reed & Co Distillery

Hatted chefs Hamish Nugent and Rachel Reed swapped fine-dining kitchens for a still in 2016, setting up in Bright at the foot of Victoria's High Country ski country. The distillery's calling card is koji, the same fungus used in sake and miso, worked into spirits alongside a wood-fire grill that turns out an Aussie-chicken-shop-meets-izakaya menu next door at Koji Bird. Gin remains the backbone: their NEO New World Gin, distilled with yuzu grown nearby at Eurobin, was named Champion Victorian Gin in 2025. On Wills Street the operation splits across three rooms: the Spirit Lab for bottles and tasting flights, a bar pouring shochu-based cocktails and canned ready-to-drinks, and the restaurant itself. It reads as a High Country institution built on unlikely pairings — sommelier training applied to distilling, Japanese fermentation applied to Alpine Valleys produce, and a gin list that keeps taking trophies against distilleries with a fraction of the kitchen pedigree behind them.