Speaker Profile

Chris de Bono is the head fermenter at Sanyou Baijiu, bringing his deep knowledge of Asian solid state ferments to the process. Chris initially had a career as a Navigator in the Royal Australian Navy before the allure of fungi, moulds and microbes got the better of him and he founded Australian Miso – Australia’s leading producer of miso and specialty Asian condiments.

It was here that Chris met Ian who had stumbled upon a list of the top revenue earning distilleries in the world – and he had hardly heard of any of them. This is where Ian first came across Baijiu and set upon creating an authentic Baijiu made from Australian ingredients. The last part of the Baijiu puzzle for Ian was making qu (pronounced choo), the fermented wheat brick that naturally provides the yeasts, moulds and bacteria to saccharify and flavour Australian Sorghum.

The team at Sanyou are reasonably confident that they are the only Baijiu distillery outside of China to have been able to successfully develop the process for making qu – making their baijiu a truly unique product.

When Chris is not making miso or gently coaxing microbes out of qu, Chris can be found at any number of the amazing food and fermentation focused establishments around Launceston and the Tamar Valley.