McGregor & Young distillery is about to open in a new location with a cellar door in the heart of Port Adelaide.

The idea for the McGregor & Young distillery came about in 2017, when co-owners Scott McGregor and Chris Young wanted to open their own cocktail bar after travelling around Europe.

“So we started researching cocktail bars by going to a lot of them,” Scott says.

“We were going to do it in Latvia originally and then it seemed a little impractical, so we decided instead ‘oh, let’s try distilling’.”

Upon their first release, Scott says they wanted to make sure the first product was something they were “really happy with early on”. This is because “[they’re] not very good salespeople” so they wanted a product they enjoyed to make this process easier.

“And that took six years, which was much longer than I expected, and now there are over 700 distilleries in Australia and things have really boomed,” Scott says.

“But it’s meant that, once we have released, we’re really happy with what we’ve put together with the two gins to start with and a limited-edition series we started doing as well.”

Their first gin, titled Temperance, was released in September 2023, and then Misery was released in June this year with plans for the brand to branch out into rum in the future.

Inside the future McGregor & Young space

Scott says that the distillery, set to open this November, is the “next iteration” of McGregor & Young.

“This is a bit of a jump. We’ve been trying to get into Port Adelaide for ages, which we found difficult to do, so when this came up, it’s a little bit outside our price range, I suppose, but that’s part of the risk. It was just a good opportunity to finally get in and move our space,” Scott says.

“So where our distillery was detached previously and it’s not really in a location where we can set it up as a venue.

“This means that we can move our distillery here and finally open like a cellar door, tasting room.”

As the distillery is large in space, Scott is keen to potentially host live bands and simple food options to make it more of a destination.

“We’ve got a very large warehouse area here. It’s over 500 metres square, where we can play around with a lot – I mean, you could play indoor cricket here at the moment,” he says.

“In the other [outdoor] section, we’ll do the events area, and that’s where we can have music or art spaces or things like that.

“Then in the smaller area, the space out the front – once a plant shop, and before and after that, an office – that’s where we’ll set up the bar as just what would feel to people like a cellar door experience from a winery.”

Scott says that Sam Wright, creative Port placemaking officer at Port Adelaide Council, sees the future of the area as a “living city”.

“As a place you can walk around from venue to venue, and there are different things – so opportunities like New Found Sound festival have come up, or MELTFest that just went,” Scott says.

Scott has a “similar vision with [the McGregor & Young distillery] longer term”.

“I’d love to be able to just have music here, opportunities for arts and stuff, where we can put stuff on, but we’re not trying to keep everyone here,” Scott says.

“There’s another venue going across the road. You’ve got Pirate Life, right there. Milledge, just there. 10 Gallon Hat is another great venue.

“So if we can turn Port Adelaide into a place where you’d be able to come on the new train line and then bounce around different venues and have different experiences, I think you could create something really unique in the region here.”

The original Temperance gin

Scott says that their approach to distilling is “subtle and clean”.

“That came out of us drinking it straight, which isn’t the most common way to drink gin,” Scott says.

“Traditionally, gin, you obviously have with tonic, and that means you need to have big enough flavours to take over tonic.

“Ours are slightly different in that the flavours are quite subtle, and so to appreciate them, a really light tonic, a soda or a just on its own, or in a martini or something like that means that way you can appreciate the different elements of the fresh ingredients.”

Scott says these ingredients that McGregor & Young use are “a lot of fresh fruit”.

“So we use local strawberries, local cucumber, local oranges. If we can’t get it from a local supplier, then we’ll get it from a market that gets either steeped or vapour, depending on the ingredient,” he says.

“And then very distilled, and that’s where you infuse the botanicals in the gin.”

McGregor & Young is located at 312 St Vincent Street, Port Adelaide and is slated to open in November.

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