Long Story Short
Address
3/40 First Street, Brompton, 5007
@longstoryshort.bar
@storytellersdistillery
Website
storytellersdistillery.com.au
Once upon a time, three lifelong mates joined forces with a Sydney-based cocktail bartender to create a destination craft distillery and cocktail bar in industrial Brompton.
The bar, which launched in November 2021, is called Long Story Short and is where bartender and distiller Lachlan Gunner gets to showcase his creations as Head Distiller of Storytellers Distillery, a fledgling artisanal South Australian spirit brand that shares the Brompton space with the boutique Cocktail bar.
Located across the road from Simon Bryant’s Dirty Depot on industrial First Street, the newly opened cocktail bar features a rotating menu of delicious snacks from the celebrated chef including his Mushroom Pâté with port juniper glaze and spent lavosh, Chicken Terrine with sourdough, pickled onion and cucumber, Organic Hereford Potted Beef with sourdough and Nice pickles, and Sardine Toast with Port Lincoln sardines and olive oil.
Visitors to Long Story Short can enjoy gin-based cocktails, all their favourite classics and snacks while seated at the concrete countertop bar. There they can admire the impressive 500L copper pot still that takes pride of place in the distillery as well as the hundreds of Storytellers bottles that hang from the floating shelves behind the bar.
All Long Story Short’s cocktails feature the distillery’s hyper-seasonal and main-range gins created by Lachlan, who worked at award winning Sydney venues before returning home to Brompton from Sydney; becoming Head Distiller of Storytellers.
“With my background in cocktail bartending, it’s always been a dream of mine to open a bar,” Lachlan says. “This was an amazing opportunity to open a distillery and a bar. You need a place to showcase your product as a distillery and I want to make sure we have the best representation of that with Long Story Short.”
Stories and yarns are integral to Long Story Short and Storytellers Distillery. All Storytellers bottle tops have ‘once upon a time’ printed on top of the cork while each label shares a story about the gin.
Storytellers’ first release, Volume 1: Australian Dry Gin, which won a gold and two silver medals at the Tasting Australia Spirit Awards and the Australian Gin Awards, label states: “Over generations, storytelling has been at the heart of all Australians. From bedtime stories to campfire yarns, it’s in our blood. As part of this heritage, it’s our goal to carry these traditions forward through sustainably crafted spirits … Welcome to Storytellers Distillery and this, our first story, is up to you...”
The inaugural release showcases Tableland Strawberry Gum and is complemented by 10 traditional and native botanicals.
“We source as much as we can locally, rather than purchasing from interstate or overseas,” Lachlan says. “We want to push a sustainability focus, which makes sense since South Australia is making such good products that you almost don’t need to go anywhere else for anything. If we want a bitter aperitif, we aren’t limited to Campari, we can just go up the Adelaide Hills to source it.”
Lachlan, who finished in the top 20 at Diageo’s World Class Cocktail Competition in 2019, uses Australian Dry Gin Volume 1 in Long Story Short’s Chevre Martini while you can sample Storytellers’ hyperseasonal gins in Lachlan’s cocktails Cut the Red Grape (featuring the hyperseasonal gin of the same name) and Good-Chai Fizz (featuring the limited release Good-Chai, Cruel World).
“We want to be known as place you can go and not have to have the distillery as the focus, you go there for the drinks, you go there for the bartenders,” Lachlan says.
Opening Hours
Thursday-Friday: 5pm-11pm
Saturday-Sunday: 12pm-11pm
Thursday-Friday: 5pm-11pm
Saturday-Sunday: 12pm-11pm
