The Gospel – the rye specialist

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of The Gospel Straight Rye Whisky.

The Gospel – the rye specialist
Melbourne, Victoria.
ABV: 45% (Straight Rye, 700ml, $100; 100% unmalted Murray Mallee rye, new American oak, double-distilled, aged 2+ years).

Melbourne's The Gospel is the purest statement of the case that rye is Australia's to claim. Melbourne's The Gospel makes nothing but rye, and its Straight Rye is Australia's first whiskey legally labelled 100% Straight – meeting the strict distillation and maturation rules that define the classic American style, then doing it with Australian grain. And the grain is the whole point: 100% unmalted rye from a single farm in the Murray Mallee, one of the driest corners of the driest inhabited continent, where the harsh country yields a small, dense, intensely flavoured grain you can't get anywhere else. This is a genuine rye terroir. This rye whisky is aged in heavily toasted new American oak from a single Kentucky forest, and has become one of the most decorated Australian whiskies: it’s won gold at the International Wine & Spirits Competition three times over (2023, 2024 and 2026) and gold at the 2022 San Francisco World Spirits Competition. At around AU$100, it's also one of the more attainable ways to taste why Australian rye matters.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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