Excise: brandy, whisky or rum aged in a vat with wooden walls and a stainless steel floor - whether 'matured by storage in wood'

Would brandy, whisky or rum stored in vats with timber walls and stainless steel floors be considered to have been 'matured by storage in wood' as required by section 12 of the Spirits Act 1906 ?

No. Brandy, whisky or rum stored in a vat with timber walls and a stainless steel floor would not be considered to have been 'matured by storage in wood' as required by section 12 of the Spirits Act.

A distiller has erected square vats that have wooden walls and stainless steel floors which will be used to age brandy, whisky or rum.

Section 12 of the Spirits Act states that: Brandy, whisky or rum made in Australia shall not be delivered from the CEO's control unless the brandy, whisky or rum, as the case may be, has been matured by storage in wood for a period of not less than 2 years.

The same principles apply for imported brandy, whisky and rum.

The term 'in wood' is not defined in the Spirits Act so in order to understand what is meant by 'storage in wood', it is necessary to look to the ordinary meaning of the term.

In deciding the ordinary meaning of a term, case law indicates that regard may be had to what a particular trade or business knows and understands the meaning to be ( Mackintosh v. Limmer [1960] NZLR 266 at 269, Borowski v. Quayle (1966) VR 382 at 385-386, per Gowans J). Case law also indicates that the words of an act should be constituted in the sense they bore when the Act was passed and what the Parliament meant when it used those words Helby v. Rafferty (1979) 1 WLR 13 at 16-17; Sharpe v. Wakefield (1888) 22 QBD 239, cited by Brinsden J in Yager v. The Queen (1976) 27 FLR 475 at 486.

Based on industry texts such as Alexis Lichine's Encyclopaedia of Wines and Spirits, and the Ultimate Encyclopedia of Wine, Beer, Spirits & Liqueurs it is clear that in the spirits industry; the meaning of the phrase 'stored in wood' was and is unambiguously that the storage vessel must be made of timber. Accordingly, the ordinary meaning of the term for the purposes of the Spirits Act is that the vessel must be made entirely of wood. It is also considered that this was the intention of the Parliament at the time the statute was passed.

A vat with timber walls and stainless steel floors is not made entirely of wood, even though it may maintain a certain timber to liquid ratio.