Anne Gigney

Anne believes education is the key to unlocking further global opportunity for the already impressive Australian distilling industry, and has seen first hand how connecting new distillers with high quality training and skills development allows them to move from good to great and to extend their opportunities.

Anne has been working as a training provider in the distilling industry since 2015, when the number of distilleries was below 30 in Australia and there was no formal pathway for learning for the distilling industry. After completing a workforce assessment for the Tasmanian industry in 2015, Anne visited the Irish Whiskey Academy and brought home the concept of an introductory course to help people navigate the path to opening a distillery.

Anne has supported more than 1000 Australian and New Zealand distillers on their journey to open or work in a distillery and seen the Australian industry grow to more than 600 distilleries. Many of the people who have done the training have becomes the greats of the industry and Anne says it is gratifying to see their successes.

Anne is a Board Director for the Institute of Brewing and Distilling Asia Pacific, delivers the IBD technical courses in the Asia-Pacific region and has co-built The Distillers Institute to help people new to the industry to build safe and sustainable businesses.

Her Churchill Fellowship is a deep dive into what characterises great training in distilling and how can these be delivered for working businesses. She is considering both traditional brewing and distilling avenues as well as exploring contemporary industries emerging in northern Europe.

Her hope is to help the Australian industry continue to build gold-standard training for the distilling industry, to build useful connections and help Australian businesses build the skills and knowledge to continue to impress on the world stage.