The site of Auld Farm Distillery has been growing grain since 1883.
Long before there was a distillery here, there was a farm.
Grain has been grown on this land since 1883, in a quiet corner of Southland at the bottom of New Zealand. Remote, fertile and shaped by the seasons, it is a place where farming has always required patience, observation and a willingness to work with what the land gives you.
The Auld family's connection to this place began in 1924, when Bert Auld purchased the farm. A century later, the family is still here, still farming the same land and still growing grain.
What has changed is what we have learned to do with it.
Auld family farm since 1924.
When Bert Auld arrived here in 1924, he began a family connection with this land that has now passed through three generations.
Three generations of the family - all named Robert - have farmed here, each leaving their own mark while passing the farm on to the next.
Today, Rob and Toni Auld live and work here with their three boys. The farm remains a working family farm, growing grain and running livestock alongside Auld Farm Distillery.
For us, looking ahead has always meant understanding what came before. The decisions we make today are about making sure this land, and the opportunities it creates, are here for another generation.
We thought, "what if...?"
Farming teaches you to pay attention - to the land, the seasons and the small differences that can change a harvest.
Over time, that curiosity led us to ask a different question. What if we took the grain we were already growing here and explored what else it could become?
We began experimenting with distilling on the kitchen bench in 2015. In 2017, Auld Farm Distillery was established on the family farm.
The idea was simple: grow the grain ourselves, understand exactly where it came from, distil it here on the farm, and see just how much of this place we could carry through into the spirit.
That question still drives much of what we do today.
From our paddocks to your glass.
Today we grow nine different grains on the Auld family farm and use them across our whisky, gin and curious spirits.
We grow and harvest the grain here. We distil it here. The spring water used by the distillery rises from The Boohai on the farm. And our whisky is matured here in Southland.
Knowing where our ingredients come from allows us to explore the differences between grains, harvests and seasons in a way that would not be possible if the farm and distillery existed separately.
We call it Seed-to-Sip.
For us, it isn't simply a description of where something is made. It is the connection between the land, the grain, the people growing it and the spirit that eventually reaches your glass.
Still a family farm.
Auld Farm Distillery is run by us, Rob and Toni Auld, alongside the same working farm our family has called home for more than a century.
Our three boys are growing up here too - surrounded by paddocks, machinery, animals, grain, barrels and all the organised chaos that comes with combining a farm and distillery.
We don't know what they will choose to do with it one day, and that's entirely up to them.
What matters to us is leaving them something worth choosing.
That was part of the reason Auld Farm Distillery began in the first place - finding another way for this land to support our family while creating something distinctly of this place.
A century after Bert arrived, we're still farming, still learning and still asking what might be possible next.
