Mother Sippy: Pienaar & Son

Welcome to Mother Sippy, where we shine a light on the talented winemakers, brewers, distillers and mixologists that make sure the Mother City never goes thirsty! From new wine releases to taprooms pouring perfect pints, Mother Sippy is your guide to all that’s good and great in Cape Town’s world of drinks.

There is no shortage of craft breweries and taprooms in Cape Town, and from Woodstock to Noordhoek, you are never far from a pint of Pale Ale.

Wine? Urban cellars are dotted about, with Duncan Savage perhaps being the most notable, and there are even a handful of gin distilleries to visit if you look closely enough.

But whiskey? Nope, there’s only one place in the city distilling and ageing uisge beatha in the heart of Cape Town.

You’ll find Pienaar & Son in Maker’s Landing, the incubator hub in the V&A Waterfront, close to Time Out Market Cape Town. And it’s not hard to miss, with its gleaming column still and racks of oak barrels hinting at the creativity within.

Pienaar & Son first made a name for itself when the craft gin revolution was kicking off, and their duo of signature gins – Empire, all lemon and cucumber, and Orient, a nod to the spice trade around the Cape of Good Hope – remain hugely popular with gin aficionados and mixologists alike.

But it’s whiskey where Pienaar & Son truly stands out, as the Mother City’s sole whiskey distillery. Their Tiny Batch whiskies blend hand-crafted creativity with a touch of cheeky street sass. Time Out Cape Town sat down with Andre Pienaar to discover more about this hand-crafted collection of Cape-inspired spirits.

Pour us a tale. How did Pienaar & Son get started?

The journey began around 2013 or 2014. I was composing music for film and advertising, but I began to feel burnt out. At the time, everyone was brewing beer in their garages, and I had studied chemistry and biochemistry. My dad is a chemical engineer who specialises in potable alcohol stills. I bought a small 20-litre stove with the idea of making gin and moonshine on the weekends. It kind of scratched every part of my brain: technical, flavour, branding. It was such a creative endeavour.

The timing was good and we’d just started to see the start of craft gin. So in 2015, he designed and built our stills. He built the still; I’m the chef. We got our licenses in 2016 and have been in business ever since. In 2020, we moved to Makers Landing, and we grew from doing gin to vodka, and later whiskey – though, of course, whiskey needs to age.

Talk us through  the distillery at Maker’s Landing...

We use a continuous column still, the same one we use for making vodka. Both are 100% corn fermentations, but of course vodka is distilled to a high percentage to strip out flavour; the whiskey is distilled to a sweet spot that lets in some propanols and butanols for a peppery, biscuity profile. Because we built the still, we can pick a strength – a flavour profile – and draw that consistently.

From the still, it goes into the barrels… anything special?

We import new American oak barrels. They’re expensive, but worth it. Our whiskey, apart from being made outside the US, would technically qualify as bourbon. We aim to fill 10 to 12  225-litre barrels a year, and we usually release single-barrel batches.

How long do you age your whiskey for?

Regulations say three years, and with our first batch, I was happy with how it tasted then. But by the time I had sourced the bottles and designed labels, it was around three years and nine months. So, I figured we’d just wait four years. Now, we’re on a four-year cycle.

We do keep some barrels back for longer maturation – partly for curiosity, partly for quality. But there’s always a balancing act with cash flow and the evaporation loss. We might release a six-year-old later this year. We use two char levels in our barrels – a medium char and a heavy char – and release both simultaneously, as separate batches.

What’s the flavour in the glass?

The heavy char is your classic profile of maple, vanilla, chocolate – a sweet, rich bourbon vibe. The medium char is more grassy, lighter, with a coconut sweetness. It’s more intellectual, I guess – the kind of whiskey you sip and think about.

Your packaging is great… why is it so important?

Tiny Batch is a bit of a stab at these giant distilleries releasing ‘small batch’ whiskies, and because we’re small, we need to stand out. Our whiskey bottle is actually an olive oil bottle, but I just love the shape of it. I take a lot of branding inspiration from the cosmetics world. I think high-end craft spirits and perfume have a lot in common.

Do you have other spirits on the horizon?

We’ve done some one-offs – a bourbon-style blend with rye and malt, and I’m chatting to barrel suppliers about orange liqueur barrels. So yes, we’re always playing around with stuff, but whiskey is our core. 

Can the public stop in for a tasting?

We’re open seven days a week for collections. Tastings happen from Friday to Sunday, and every Sunday we run a gin school where you can distil your own bottle. Bookings are via the website.

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