Whisky Posts & Articles

Which is the best Australian whisky?

Which is the best Australian whisky?   With interest in Australian whisky at an all-time high, combined with the staggering number of Australian distilleries now bringing mature spirit to market, it’s certainly an understandable question to ask. But can one realistically answer that question? Well…we’ll attempt to offer some guidance in just a moment but, first, it’s important to establish some ground rules…

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Cape Byron Whisky

Cape Byron whisky burst on to the Australian scene in late 2022 with the official unveiling of its inaugural single malt releases. Of course, the distillery had long been established by then and was already well known for its gins. But well before the newmake malt spirit was even filled into casks back in 2019, whisky enthusiasts in Australia and further afield were already aware of the distillery and knew what was coming. That’s a pretty unusual situation for an Australian distillery, but then it’s also pretty unusual for an Australian distillery to have one of the giants and legends of the Scotch whisky industry – Jim McEwan, no less – onboard as a consultant, distiller, and business partner. To understand that arrangement, you have to go back to the beginning…

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Westward Whiskey Tempranillo Cask

Westward Distillery, in Portland, Oregon continues to push the envelope in making American single malt whisk(e)y in a style that’s unshackled from some of the more traditional aspects or methods that define (and sometimes limit), say, Scotch whisky. The latest release from Westward to explore flavour further is the Westward Tempranillo Cask.

Whisky & Wisdom has written about Westward previously, and if you need a quick memory jog about the distillery’s story and philosophy, you might like to check out the first few paragraphs in our previous article here. The Westward Tempranillo Cask is the first release in a new range that’s been christened the Cascadia Creative Series.

The Cascadia Creative Series is a collaboration between the distillery and Dominio IV Wines, also located in Oregon. The series has been designed to highlight the provenance of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon and to celebrate the creativity of the local team at Dominio IV Wines, a nearby producer from the Williamette Valley. The valley, on the western side of the Cascade Range, is home to over 7,500 hectares of vineyards and over 500 wineries.

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Indri Trini “The Three Wood”

Indri is the latest single malt brand to emerge from India, and it’s wasted no time in garnering accolades and attention. Like so many other “overnight success stories”, the real story reveals that success is actually the result of years of effort and development, and not some sudden, lucky strike of lightning. Trini (fully styled as Trini The Three Wood) is the flagship offering from the Indri stable, and it’s a whisky worth your attention. Indri Trini’s credentials, as we’ll see in a moment, make for a worthy pedigree.

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The Macallan – A Night On Earth

A Night On Earth (In Scotland) is the new, limited edition expression from The Macallan, released in time for Christmas and the new year.  The Macallan announced last year that it would be unveiling a series of annual, limited edition gifting expressions, and this is actually the second edition of A Night On Earth, after last year’s well-received 2021 release.   The suffix, “In Scotland” is added towards the bottom of the label in a smaller and lighter font, giving context to the whisky’s name and philosophy.

Macallan’s A Night On Earth essentially celebrates Hogmanay – the Scottish tradition of saying goodbye to the old year and welcoming in the new year.  Aye, it’s effectively the Scottish take on what the rest of the world calls New Year’s Eve.   Traditionally, one of the key aspects of Hogmanay is the first-footing – being the first person after midnight to cross the threshold (i.e. enter the house) of a friend or neighbour and present them with one or more gifts.  Traditionally, this would have been coal, shortbread, salt, or whisky, and was intended to bring good luck to the householder for the year ahead.  The host reciprocates by providing some food and drink which are then enjoyed together, and the festivities can continue well into wee hours of the morning (and the late hours, for that matter) with people knocking on doors to be the first-footer!

No accident, then, that A Night On Earth is timed as we approach the gift-giving season!   The whisky comes in impressive packaging that is a bit reminiscent of unpacking Russian dolls as you encounter layer under layer. 

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The Macallan M Copper

Exciting news for fans and observers of The Macallan this month with the release of the new addition to The Macallan’s M Collection range for 2022 – in this instance, the M Copper. The M Collection is a special, high-end offering within The Macallan’s portfolio that aims to showcase the brand’s so-called Six Pillars. As the word “pillar” suggests, these are the foundations on which the brand is built, and they comprise the following:

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Visiting Scotland when your partner doesn’t like whisky

When planning a whisky trip to Scotland, most keen whisky tourists typically plan their itinerary by plotting out the key distilleries they want to visit, and then they crudely join the dots by shoehorning in the requirements and logistics of accommodation, transport, and food.  That’s all well and good but, as you quickly discover, distillery tours and visiting times are generally condensed between the hours of 10.00am and 4.00pm – leaving you with some blanks to fill in your days.  Also, as we explored in this article here (scroll down to point no. 7), trying to get your various distillery tours aligned without clashes or overlaps is a tough challenge.  Another consideration is that – as a very general generalisation – it would be fair to say that most whisky enthusiasts who would plan such a dedicated whisky pilgrimage to Scotland often have partners that don’t share a love of whisky to quite the same level of fanaticism. 

Accordingly, when planning a trip to Scotland with your partner, you’ll often need to incorporate stops, side-excursions, and other attractions to keep your other half happy….and not sentence them to the drudgery of sitting in the distillery car park while you’re inside having fun.   To keep the mood happy between the two of you as you traverse around the country, here are some worthwhile destinations, attractions, and other things to do in Scotland that are all near distilleries or that you’ll pass through as you hop from distillery to distillery….

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Amber Lane whisky

Amber Lane joins the growing list of New South Wales malt whisky distilleries to have emerged in the last five years.  Conceived in 2017 in the Yarramalong Valley just inland from Wyong on the Central Coast (about a 90 minute drive from Sydney), Amber Lane has quickly – very quickly – found fans and acclaim with the quality of its whisky.  This was recently in evidence just last month when all four of Amber Lane’s entries submitted to the Tasting Australia Spirit Awards walked away with Silver medals.  No mean feat for a distillery’s first releases.

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The Speyside Whisky Trail

With travel opening up again around the world, and particularly in the UK, whisky tourism is slowly getting back into the swing of things. And no whisky pilgrimage to Scotland would be complete without swinging by Speyside and dropping into a distillery or two. Or three. Or twenty. In fact, for those looking to make a specific trip of it, Alastair Rooney’s new book, “The Speyside Whisky Trail” is the perfect guide for discovering a lot about Scotland and visiting 20 distilleries along the way.

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Paul John Mithuna & the new Paul John releases

For fans of whisky looking for something new or different to explore, the choices and options beyond the shores of Scotland grow more and more each day. Many of the so-called “new world” malt whisky countries now have industries that have at least a decade under their belt (e.g. Taiwan, India, the USA and, of course, Australia) and the whiskies from these countries are now firmly established. Paul John whisky, from India, is a brand that burst out of the starting blocks 2012, and has been going from strength to strength ever since.  The new Paul John Mithuna release, together with the excellent Oloroso expression, take things to the next level again.

John Distilleries Pty Ltd, the company behind the brand, has been in the spirits business since 1992, and turned its hand to producing single malt in 2008. With its first release of matured spirit four years later in 2012, by 2015 Paul John had expanded to have a core range consisting of Classic, Brilliance, Bold, Peated, amongst others. (You can read Whisky & Wisdom’s early thoughts on these whiskies in our 2015 article here). Things went up a notch in 2017 with the release of their special Oloroso bottling, and the range is now increasingly exotic with three new expressions now available in Australia: Nirvana, Oloroso, and Mithuna.   Our tasting notes and reviews for these three are presented further below, but first some general background information on each one….

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