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31 March 2022
The Prohibition Era that Sparked a Gin Revolution
Adam Carpenter
Owner & Creative Director at Toolbox Graphic Design
Co-Founder & 'Bootlegger' at Prohibition Liquor Co.
Bachelor of Visual Communication: Graphic Design
Sitting in Prohibition Liquor Co. on Gilbert Street, it’s clear co-founder and ‘bootlegger’ Adam Carpenter’s design and branding talents have extended throughout the company’s distillery, bar and tasting room. The walls are lined with slick, bespoke-designed bottles of the handmade, craft liquor they are known for and, of course, their world-renowned gin distilled and bottled in Gilbert Street and distributed globally.
The feel is distinctly clandestine, harkening back to the days of the shadowy underground Prohibition era, with bottles of spirits, labels and merchandise to match. Paired with the modern and sophisticated small-batch artisan gin, they are making a name for themselves with.
A graphic designer by trade – his practice, which he still helms, is housed in the complex just over the next wall – Adam has led the Prohibition Liquor Co. team through their rapid growth, winning a slew of prestigious gin and design awards and an ever-expanding business footprint.
Ambitious and creatively minded, Adam began his career in graphic reproduction in a pre-computer world straight out of school, then returned to formal education at UniSA to complete a Bachelor of Visual Communication.
Following his degree, Adam honed his craft under famed graphic designer John Nowland, eventually starting his own practice in 2006, Toolbox Graphic Design, working out of a 150-year-old church in his backyard for nearly 12 years.
After establishing a solid working relationship with client Wes Heddles, the pair travelled the country and set up a fast-growing renewable energy brand’s retail presence across Australia; eventually, Adam and Wes decided to branch out and start their own business together.
“We threw around a bunch of different ideas… some as random as high-end gourmet cheese toasties – we just knew we wanted to work together,” Adam says.
“In early 2015 Wes’ step mum passed away. She was a gin drinker. We were sitting down talking about it, having her favourite drink, a gin and tonic one day, and Wes said, ‘Maybe we should make gin’. I looked at him and said, ‘Sure – we don't know the first thing about making it – but it sounds like fun.’
“Actually, one of the first things we did when had established Prohibition Gin and set up the bar here was make gourmet cheese toasties to serve.”
After years of building brands for clients – and experiencing the frustration when those brands undersold their potential or didn’t have the grit to keep going – the business began as an exercise in seeing how far they would go if they put in as much effort and motivation as possible.
First, though, came the gin.
The pair immediately dived into the design and packaging of the gin bottles. They had a clear idea of what the brand would look like and represent, with an ambitious goal of being on shelves by December of that year for the first day of Summer.
After a chance meeting with Brendan and Laura at Applewood Distillery, who recognised the pair as shrewd businessmen men, the team created an exceptional neat-drinking gin which is still produced today. In the two years of production, they made over 14,000 bottles from Adam’s garage.
On the December 1, the gin was created and filled into hand-labelled bottles, decorated with their iconic designs. After they were boxed, and ready to go, Adam and Wes looked at each other and said, “Now what?”
“At this point almost no one had tasted the product. We thought it was pretty good, but we had no idea what the market would think,” Adam says.
“We walked in to see Marcus at Hains and Co. as we wanted to pick someone who would be a bit of a hard nut to give us the low down. He saw us coming, walking down the laneway carrying boxes on our shoulders, and said, ‘What are you guys? A couple of bootleggers?’
“I handed over the business card I designed with our position title, still today saying ‘Bootlegger – well, we are actually.’”
Cracking a bottle for the experts behind the counter at Hains and Co., Wes and Adam knew they had a winner in their gin with their excited reactions. Marcus immediately made Prohibition Gin their ‘Gin of the Month’ and they were “off to a flying start”.
However, the team quickly worked out that the hard bit was not the design, marketing, bottling, or even all the manual labour. The hard part was, in fact, the distribution. They signed on with a SA distributor and then a national distributor within three months, and by six months, the product was in Dan Murphy’s, BWS, and many bars across the country.
Semi-trailers were coming and going, and nieces and nephews were helping out when the business ran out of Adam’s backyard; however, the product demand started growing exponentially, so this setup eventually became unsustainable.
The team started looking for a warehouse to keep up with production demands; they weren’t even looking for a shopfront, let alone a bar, as hospitality was never on the cards. But when the pair spotted the old mechanic’s workshop on Gilbert Street on the fringe of the Adelaide CBD, they decided to take the plunge into hospitality.
Beginning as a small cellar door and tasting room, with hopes to eventually place a still in the back, the expansion proved such a success, filled to the brim with patrons every weekend. As a result, Prohibition Liquor Co. kept growing, taking over the businesses and leases next door, and went from 350 square metres to 800. Recently, they expanded again to encompass a cocktail bar and coffee shop in the space.
Now, as an established Adelaide staple, Adam and Prohibition Liquor continue to build on this forward momentum, increasingly finding themselves as the go-to experts for the intersection of marketing and branding, hospitality, and spirits.
As the spirits industry in South Australia is particularly small and collaborative, Adam and Wes know all the distillers and liquor brands well, often helping them out as mates with branding and packaging design.
It’s also allowed them to advise, mentor and contract distillers for younger up-and-coming brands too, just like those more established in the industry did at the beginning of Prohibition Liquor Co. all those years ago.
