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- Chris Hemsworth has joined Sydney distillery Archie Rose as co-owner ahead of its first US launch in late 2026
- Hemsworth has been working behind the scenes for more than a year and will focus on product design, content and global launch plans.
- Three whiskies developed with Hemsworth will launch later this year, with the UK and Europe to follow in 2027.
We at Man of Many have known for a long time that Australian whisky is amongst the best in the world – and one of our favourite Aussie distilleries is Sydney-based Archie Rose. And now, with a little help from Thor himself, the rest of the world is about to find out too. That’s because Chris Hemsworth is now a co-owner of Archie Rose – with big plans to crack the US market.
But don’t expect the distillery’s new co-owner to mess with perfection. Archie Rose has been making spirits since 2014 – long before Hemsworth’s Thor picked up Mjölnir – the distillery already has more than 45,000 casks of whisky maturing ahead of its international expansion, and Archie Rose Chief Distiller Dave Withers will continue to take charge of production of their award-winning drops.
Hemsworth’s role will be all about creative direction, design, and acting as a global ambassador, taking the Archie Rose brand to the world as it eyes an aggressive global expansion over the next two years.
Why Chris Hemsworth is Investing in Archie Rose Distilling Co.
The distillery will remain independently owned and Australian-run, with Hemsworth acquiring an undisclosed stake in Archie Rose alongside founder Will Edwards as the brand prepares to enter the US for the first time in late 2026.
His move into co-ownership also comes with a trio of whiskies developed by Hemsworth, Edwards and Withers. They’ll launch across Australia, New Zealand and select Asian markets in late 2026, before Archie Rose expands into the UK and Europe in 2027.
For Hemsworth, the relationship started well before the ownership stake.
“I’ve been a fan of Archie Rose for a long time,” he said. “Wherever I am in the world, tasting an Archie Rose whisky immediately transports me right back home, to that feeling of sitting around a campfire in the Australian bush with my mates.”
And despite putting his creative fingerprints on three new releases arriving later this year, Hemsworth apparently has no interest in messing with what’s already in the bottle. He’s been more interested in the design, branding, content and storytelling around it, including the new whisky packaging due later this year.
“Chris has been – and continues to be – a fan of the liquid for a long time, so he has no desire to change the whisky itself,” Archie Rose founder Will Edwards told Man of Many.
So we won’t be seeing Hemsworth stepping up to the copper stills himself. Instead, Withers and the existing production team will remain firmly in charge of distilling, as they should.
Archie Rose already knows how to make whisky. Since launching in Sydney, it has won more than 450 awards, including World’s Best Rye Whisky twice and Australia’s Best Single Malt five times. Its whiskies are made exclusively from Australian-grown malts, while some smoky expressions even swap imported Scottish peat for native stringybark. For Edwards, that distinctly Australian approach is central to the export pitch, with Archie Rose using its spirits to tell “the stories of the growers and the land beneath them.”
Global Expansion Plans for Archie Rose Australian Whisky
Hemsworth’s value is clearer when you consider the awareness problem, and the timing certainly doesn’t hurt. Avengers: Doomsday lands in cinemas on 18 December 2026, putting Hemsworth back on screen as Thor right around the same time Archie Rose begins its US push.
Few Australian actors have his international profile. As Edwards told the Sydney Morning Herald: “He’s obviously the biggest Australian there is, and in terms of being able to tell the story to consumers, there’s no better guy.”
And there’s potentially more riding on this than Archie Rose’s own sales. Australia’s distilling industry now has more than 700 producers, but exports remain one of the category’s biggest opportunities. The Australian Distillers Association reckons the sector could grow into a $1 billion export industry by 2035. If Archie Rose can get more people asking for Australian whisky in the US, there’s a decent chance some of that curiosity spills over to everyone else making the stuff back home.
Of course, getting Americans curious is one thing. Convincing them to pay for Australian whisky alongside established Scotch and bourbon is another. Archie Rose hasn’t locked in US pricing yet, but its argument is pretty straightforward: Australia grows bloody good grain (and we couldn’t agree more).
“Australia grows arguably the best barley and rye in the world,” Edwards said, also pointing to local malting and coopering, Australia’s maturation climate and its production methods as reasons American drinkers should find something different in the bottle.
The good news is Archie Rose hasn’t suddenly decided it wants to go global because Thor turned up. This US push has been years in the making. When Archie Rose opened its larger Banksmeadow distillery, Edwards was already talking about taking Australian ingredients and its whisky-making approach to a global audience. The company also spent years developing a patented production process that treats each malt separately before blending the resulting whiskies.
So the move overseas isn’t about building a Hemsworth-branded spirit from scratch. It’s about using his reach to amplify a distillery that already has the stock, production capability and history behind it.
It should also help Archie Rose avoid one obvious pitfall: becoming just another celebrity-owned spirits brand.
The recipe remains unchanged: Australian ingredients, provenance and an established distillery, not the bloke standing beside the bottle. We’ll get the first proper look at how much influence Hemsworth actually has when those whiskies arrive later this year.
Archie Rose doesn’t need Chris Hemsworth to make whisky. It wants him to make the rest of the world notice Australian whisky.
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