🥃 AUSSIE DISTILLERS 2024-2025 CALENDAR 🥃
As most people know, the Australian Spirits excise rate is at an all-time high, with distilleries being charged $101.85 per litre from the 5th of February 2024. This year, the Nip of Courage team have curated an ‘Aussie Distillers 2024-2025 Calendar’ by collaborating with these producers – men and women – who are putting their bodies on the line to raise awareness for the increase in excise tax. The Calendar features 13 unreserved, body-confident Australian Distillers, with the cover Distiller being Mick Sheard from Imbue Distillery, Victoria.
Mick said that “time on set was absolutely wild! I mean, just think about having 13 naked distillers on set sharing a dram or two – chaos! At one point, it was so cold that the photography crew had to go out and hire heaters for the set.” He continued, “Bloody hell I was amazed to be selected to be on the cover of the calendar – my wife, Mel, was too – she has about fifty calendars plastered on the walls around the house… some in the bathroom, too… After the shoot, I totally pigged out and went back to what I was before the strict fitness regime.”
All of the distillers on set were surprised by who took their clothes off first. Surprisingly, it was a retired, high-profile, bearded distiller from Tasmania, who will not be named.
Mick’s six-week intensive diet and hardcore training regime is not for the faint hearted, his meals consisted of only carrots, celery sticks, and mayonnaise soup as a treat, and his workouts revolved around lifting 100L barrels of whisky 90 times daily! Mel, his wife said that “Mick also shaved the hair on his chest, and it is growing back all prickly, and I don’t like it! It feels like a cactus. Fans of Imbue Distillery’s Instagram page saw a lot of Mick’s intense fitness regime, and asked if they could workout at the distillery and lift the whisky barrels with him.” Mel and Mick Sheard are now looking for approval from the local council to start a whisky cross-fit gym.
Kathleen Davies, Founder of Nip of Courage said that “if you genuinely want to get to know a distiller intimately, buy a calendar.”
Paul McLeay CEO of the Australian Distillers Association praised the concept and insiders say they saw him leaving the Nip of Courage warehouse with almost a hundred copies to hand out to politicians in Canberra to raise awareness for spirit excise reform.
Calendars can be purchased on the Nip of Courage shop for $101.85. Then from August 1st 2024, the price of the calendars will increase in line with excise.
