Production has been temporarily halted at Africa’s only commercial whiskey distillery due to the water restrictions in the Drakenstein municipality, according to EWN.

The James Sedgwick Distillery in Wellington is home to international award-winning whiskeys and has more than 150,000 casks maturing at any given time in its cellars.

The distillery has been feeling the brunt of the water shortage, even before the municipality approved level 6b water restrictions and tougher water tariffs on Wednesday at a council meeting.

Distillery manager Jeff Green said: “We did draw boreholes but we found no water, which was unexpected. And the distillery primarily operates from a combination of river water and municipal water and both of those have been restricted now, so we are spending quite a lot of money on a few projects in order to allow us to work a lot more efficiently with water.”