Trouble brewing for the Australian whisky industry?

Pour yourself a big dram of your favourite Australian whisky and get comfortable.  It’s a long read…

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Believe it or not, Australian whisky existed prior to 2014.  Australia enjoyed a rich history of whisky distillation from the 19^th century into the 1980’s before resting for a few years of silence.  But it was in that fateful year of 2014 that a single cask release of Sullivans Cove won the accolade of World’s Best Single Malt, and Australian whisky suddenly lit up on everyone’s radar.  But whilst Sullivans Cove’s success that year told a story for 2014, it also told a story – for those that cared – about the Australian whisky industry’s previous 20 years.  And, as both producers and consumers jumped on the bandwagon, it also played a role in contributing to a brewing storm and some concerning issues now looming…

FOUNDATIONS

The industry’s current renaissance – perhaps rebirth is a better word? – dates back to 1992 when Bill Lark broke through several legislative barriers and started distilling.  We’ll return to Bill in a moment, but for the distilleries and players that set out in those first 10 years, it was truly fledgling and frontier stuff.

I’ve been writing about Australian whisky since 2003.  No accident, perhaps, as that was also the year that a few Australian distillers publicly announced and presented themselves to the community of Australian whisky enthusiasts.  For 2003 was the inaugural Australian Malt Whisky Convention, convened by the MWSoA, and several notable things occurred over that famous weekend in Canberra:  Bill Lark hosted a plenary session and showcased some reasonably matured stock; and David Baker introduced and launched the very first official Bakery Hill bottlings, having established his distillery a few years earlier in 1999.   Whilst still quite youthful, they were quality spirits filled into quality wood, and they were a far cry from the early (and diabolical) decanter bottles of Sullivans Cove and the Cradle Mountain bottlings that had preceded them and were – unfortunately – most drinker’s early introductions to the new generation of Aussie spirit.  And, also on that weekend, we met Mark Littler and learned about what was happening at Hellyers Road (1999).  Aussie whisky was now firmly in our conscience, and the spectre of Corio could be laid to rest.

Over the next few years some more distilleries established themselves – Limeburners in Western Australia (2004); Southern Coast Distillers in South Australia (2004 – although this operation would subsequently close and re-establish itself as Tin Shed Distilling Co); and Old Hobart Distillery, aka Overeem (2007).  Many, many new players of all different sorts and sizes added to the landscape from 2009 onwards, with the last five years, in particular, seeing a huge explosion of new distilleries being established.

FRACTIONING

Fractioning is an antiquated term for distilling, denoting that the distiller would divide the spirit up into its fractions – better known to most of us as its foreshots, middle cut, and feints.   The same fractioning has now occurred amongst the Australian distillers, as we can categorise them by their size and business models.

Sitting atop the pack are the “big fellas” in terms of capacity, funding, and production.  Examples are Starward, Hellyers Road, Archie Rose, and 23rd Street.   One of the main features of distilleries in this category is their ability to vat their casks and produce a consistent house style.  We’ll explore this further in a moment.

(This larger group also has the scope to change the landscape and what is actually offered as Australian whisky – as is already happening!  The growth of the Manildra Group and the available supply of bulk grain spirit has led to the first mass-market blends of the modern era, such as Starward’s Two-Fold.)

Then there’s the mid-range of distilleries – most of them already mentioned above, who have been around for a while, earned their reputations, and grown into their intended or natural size.  This category also includes the band of distilleries that has seen (and will continue to see) some changing of ownership as original founders or long-term operators hand over the reins, retire, or seek new pursuits.  This has particularly been the case in Tasmania, with Sullivans Cove, Overeem, Lark and Nant all changing hands in recent times.

And, finally, we have the smaller operators – which includes the majority of those that have set up in the last five years.   Funding, business models, and pedigree varies, but there are exciting players in the mix and some fine spirit being produced.  How much of it is finding its way into good casks is another matter, but we’ll also come to that in just a moment.   This category also includes a handful of distilleries that would best be described as hobby distilleries, although the marketing folks prefer terms like “craft” or “artisan”.

THE BEAUTY AND CURSE OF THE SINGLE CASK

The Australian whisky industry is now established.  Distilleries that have set up in the last five years are entering an industry that now has an enhanced reputation, a sufficient history and breadth, and – importantly – an established market, both domestically and overseas.  There are easier and wider paths to market and distribution, and both the internet and social media readily facilitate online sales, PR, and marketing.   Such avenues and luxuries were not available to those pioneering distillers that set up business from 1992 to, say, 2007.

Such was the nature of the industry – by which I mean the distillers, their means and cash flow, and the consumer market – that it was during those years that Australian whisky, driven by necessity, developed a dependence on a characteristic that continues to be its bugbear:  The inconsistency of small-batch production and the single cask.  With the notable exception of Hellyers Road, which was the only operator large enough and with enough stock to facilitate vatted or homogenised releases, the distilleries were either inclined or obliged to market their product as single cask releases.

Again, with the exception of Hellyers Road, the early distillers simply didn’t have the scale or funding (nor a reliable market) to invest in large or continuous production.  Production was sporadic; done in small batches with, at times, long intervals between some of the production runs; and thus understandably inconsistent.  The sourcing and purchasing of consistent casks was also a constantly-shifting variable.  When it came to maturation, distillers were also trialling and learning on the fly, discovering the complex and uncharted relationship between our hotter, drier climate and its influence on different cask sizes and cask types.  These factors all contributed to wide variability in a distillery’s casks and maturing stock.  Casks purchased and filled in February one year could be very different beasts to a parcel of casks sourced and filled seven months later in September.   And so the beauty and curse of the single cask came to the fore.

Consumers thus played the whisky equivalent of Russian roulette:  Some releases were spectacular and got you excited for the brand, but the next release you purchased would be well short of the mark, or perhaps even badly flawed.  To be fair, as much as there were some stellar cask releases that deserved their high praise, many of the distilleries occasionally bottled and sold some single-cask releases that did their brand no favours.

Some distilleries were difficult to nail down.  With a couple of very specific distilleries in mind, if someone asked you, “What does <Aussie distillery> taste like?”, it was near impossible to answer…each single cask release tasted completely different to the last one (particularly when subsequent releases were from different cask types).   With the flavour of many releases being so wood-driven rather than spirit-driven, there was little consistency in the distillery’s flavour profile, and certainly no consistent house style or DNA that you could pin down.

The situation is no different today.  Even for the smaller distilleries that have entered the market in the last four years or so, we’ve seen wildly diverse releases from 20L, 50L and 100L casks, drawing upon a variety of barrels that have previously held all manner of liquids – port, sherry, chardonnay, pinot, and so on.  Each subsequent release resultingly tastes vastly different to the previous release.  Some producers hide behind the label “artisan” to deflect this variability, or they attempt to put a positive spin on it using phrases with words like “innovative”, “creative”, and “experimental”.  We take no issue with distillers learning which casks and previous fillings yield the best results for their particular spirit, although – on occasion – consumers have borne the brunt of some very unsuccessful outcomes.

CASH

For those early distillers and, indeed, for many of the new and smaller distilleries established in the last five years, revenue and cash flow are constant troublemakers.  In an ideal world, distilleries would have funding and patient investors that could comfortably purchase good quality, good-sized casks and then sit out the five to eight year waiting game (say) until the whiskies reach their ideal maturity.  But few distilleries operate in that ideal world.

Instead, there are financial pressures and realities.  For many distilleries, there is a need to bottle stock early and sell it to generate revenue.   And so it is that many Australian distilleries in the last five years have announced themselves to the world stage by releasing two year old whisky.  Many distilleries, following models and philosophies established by predecessors, play to this angle, commissioning smaller 20 litre or 50 litre casks in an attempt to fast-track their spirit’s maturation.  Results have been very mixed, to say the least.  The use of 20 litre casks is risky business in this country: There’s a growing belief by many that they’re good for about two Australian summers before they’re cooked.  However, two Aussie summers is only 12-15 months, and the spirit has to be 24 months until it can legally be called whisky.  Sometimes, the extra nine months in the cask is the tipping point, resulting in a whisky that is over-oaked.

Other distillers are learning that their business model can’t (or couldn’t) sustain the long wait for matured stock.  Several small distilleries have “closed” or stopped production; others have sold as a going concern; others have simply dumped matured or part-matured casks on the market in an effort to claw back funds.  Whilst we haven’t seen serious collapse yet (ignoring the Nant saga, which was deliberate fraud rather than poor funding), several observers are warning that the brink is nigh for a few.

The abovementioned parameters and forces have meant that a lot of young whisky is being released and sold with relatively expensive price tags.   Whether $200-$500 offers good value for a two or three year old whisky in a 500ml bottle is entirely determined by your wallet and your tastebuds, so no one should ever criticise or lambast the distilleries for charging what they need to to survive.  Or, for that matter, charging what they can get away with.  However, with the likes of the “big fellas” (discussed above) producing more affordable, available, and attractive offerings, some in the industry believe a “market correction” is coming that will put the squeeze on the smaller distilleries and such expensive small releases.

CASKS

The Scotch whisky industry makes a virtue of American oak ex-bourbon casks.  Many brands’ PR firms spin the line that “our whisky works best with ex-bourbon casks and they produce the best results”.  It’s a nice slant, but the reality is that the Scots are simply capitalising on the (relatively) cheap and available supply of what is essentially an unwanted, discarded product of the bourbon industry.   They conveniently ignore that (i) the use of bourbon casks is a relatively new practice in the 250 year old commercial history of Scotch, and (ii) they were saying the same things about sherry casks until worldwide consumption of sherry dropped and sherry casks became a rare and expensive commodity.

The Australian industry is no different – except in its case, the more readily available and affordable source of wood is the Australian wine industry.  Port casks, in particular, are flavour of the month with many Australian distillers, and many other casks that previously had a life in the Australian wine industry are being re-purposed to mature Australian spirit.

One is loath to make comparisons between Australian whisky and Scotch whisky and one must tread carefully – after all, our Aussie distillers are setting out to make Australian whisky, and not merely emulate Scotch.  However, the fact remains that, in Scotland and elsewhere – with the notable exception of sherry – wine casks are used predominantly for finishing.  A relatively small number of Scotch releases come out each year where the spirit has spent its entire life in a wine barrel, but these are very much the minority.  Port, in particular, is treated very carefully, as its tannins can quickly overpower the spirit and play havoc with the balance, dryness, and mouthfeel.  And yet, in Australia, a large amount of spirit spends its entire life in port casks (or other wine casks) as the maturing wood of choice.   Is this to become the default Australian style?  On this very note, Whisky & Wisdom also published this article, which identified some serious problems and issues with the increasingly hot and tannic whiskies that some Australian distilleries are now producing, giving rise to an image problem around the world.

The reality is that ex-fortified casks in this country develop and ingest tannins as they hold the wines, and these tannins can leach into the spirit when they’re subsequently re-purposed for whisky maturation.  We’ll say it plainly: Many distilleries are not handling this well, and they’re releasing whisky that is hot and tannic.  

As the space grows and more distilleries come on line, one of the biggest problems looming for our industry is the supply of quality wood.  Some commentators (several of whom were interviewed for this piece) believe we’re already in trouble.  Whilst the spirit being produced across our industry is generally good, several observers believe Malthusian theory is already kicking in and some producers will be forced (or have already been forced) to fill into cheaper, poorer quality casks.  Many distilleries are trialling pinot casks at the moment – with, it must be said, very mixed results. 

Other observers point to issues of ready and affordable cask supply in the context of a cooperage industry that is becoming increasingly monopolised – or at least a perceived monopolisation.  The two major cooperages – the Tasmanian Cask Company and SA Cooperage are joined at the hip with common ownership/investors, which includes Chris Malcolm of Australian Whisky Holdings (which – until recently – owned four Tasmanian distilleries, but now just Lark and Nant).  With as much as 90% of Australia’s coopered stock thus tied up in these combined hands, some point to a “manufactured scarcity” that drives price upwards.  No problem for the bigger players, but a squeeze exists for the smaller start-ups.  For the 10% of casks sourced from cooperages outside TCC and SA Cooperage, the quality and suitability of those casks to mature quality spirit appears varied.

STILL THE SAME STILL

Bill Lark is often referred to as the Godfather of the Australian whisky industry, and he is widely and rightly credited with kick-starting the industry we now enjoy.  However, one of Bill’s biggest and most impressive achievements is often overlooked or under-appreciated:  After a decade of toil, trials, and learning, and with some of his peers continuing to struggle in finding the right formula, Lark Distillery was the first in its particular category and business model type to adapt and develop an operation that was commercially efficient and geared for commercial viability.  He did this by engineering his systems and back-calculating specifically what was needed to fill a 100 litre cask from a single production run.  This thus informed the amount of grain needed for the mash that would produce the right volume of wash, which would produce the right volume of spirit after the two distillations – based on the size and shape of his stills.   The result was a template for efficiency, economy, consistency, and sustained success.

No surprise, then, that other distilleries followed that template.  If you visit a number of the distilleries surrounding Hobart, you’ll recognise identical replicas of Lark’s stills at Nant, Overeem, Old Kempton, and Devil’s Distillery, to name just a few.  And not just the same stills, but identical or similar production philosophies and approaches.

The size and shape of the stills plays an enormous role in determining the character of the distilled spirit.  Whether the spirit is heavy and oily, or light and fruity can all be influenced by the still’s shape and form.   The Scottish distilleries play this to perfection:  Blenders need all sorts of differently-styled whiskies to create their blends, and so each distillery has its unique still design – resulting in huge diversity in the character, style, and flavour of the spirit being produced.   Textbooks and commentators have remarked in the past that the shape of the still contributes as much as 30% to a whisky’s final flavour.

Peter Bailey and his firm Knapp Lewer in Tasmania quickly became the default still makers in Australia (although other manufacturers such as Burns Welding & Fabrication in Griffith, NSW are gaining ground), and their quality is renowned locally, impressing even those in the know in Scotland.  Knapp Lewer stills have found themselves into distilleries all across Australia.  However, the issue at play here is the similarity in the shape of these stills.  There is tremendous potential for monotony in the character of the distillate at so many different distilleries if the distillers are mostly requesting and commissioning the so-called “base model” still.   The fundamental base model in use at Lark can also be found essentially in the same shape and form (even for stills manufactured by stillmakers other than Knapp Lewer) at Nonesuch, McHenry, Nant, Tamar Valley, Overeem, Old Kempton, Fleurieu, Shene (albeit using triple distillation), Timboon, Devil’s Distillery, the original Archie Rose distillery at Rosebery, Kilderkin, Limeburners, McLaren Vale, Spring Bay, Fannys Bay, and many others around the country.

Whilst many celebrate the number of new and different distilleries that have sprung up around the country, one’s enthusiasm is somewhat muted if their production or still (or both!) is merely a carbon copy of Lark.  With so many distilleries employing the same stills and filling into the same size and type of port casks, the variety in the character of the spirit being produced is not nearly as diverse as it could be.

Of course, the sentiments of the preceding paragraph would be entirely redundant if different distilleries were using different yeasts and producing a diverse range of fermentations.  However, this is again a situation where the vast majority of Australian distillers are sticking with one widespread formula – using the same combination of a brewers’ and a distillers’ yeast strain, and running the same seven day fermentation.  So, whilst some may suggest it’s an unkind or overly-simplified observation, the reality is that, for the most part, our supposedly large and diverse industry is chiefly employing the same yeast to run the same fermentations to produce similar washes to charge largely identical stills and then mostly mature it all in the same ex-wine casks, sourced mostly from the same two cooperages.

Another problem identified by several in the industry is that, in Australia, there is no legal requirement for a distillery to actually produce its own wash.  As a result, many distilleries (including high profile distilleries such as Sullivans Cove) contract a brewery to brew their wash offsite.  It has been observed and commented on that, particularly in Tasmania, some of the new distilleries are sourcing their wash from the same commercial brewery, and the mash tickets and yeast choices are identical.   Little wonder, then, that these distilleries end up producing quite similar spirit.  For a more indepth read on distilleries outsourcing their brewing responsibilities to third parties, you can read our feature piece here, which caused quite a stir in the industry at the time of its publication.

To be clear, we’re not suggesting all Australian whisky tastes the same.^#    Just be careful when using the word “diverse” to describe the distilleries and their practices.

^# Having said that, some commentators have suggested that a lot of Tasmanian whisky fits into a very narrow flavour profile.  The observation is not without foundation. 

CLIMATE DRAIN

The Scots have it pretty easy:  Fill up your cask, stick it in a dark warehouse for around ten years, and she’ll be right, mate.  With cool and reasonably constant temperatures, their climate simply does the work, albeit slowly over time.   Lark and his early cohorts learned the hard way that the same methodologies aren’t universally transferable to this side of the globe.

Much is made about climate when it comes to maturation.  Hot weather can be the enemy of the producers, with the angels’ share (evaporation) significantly higher here than other whisky-producing countries in the northern hemisphere.  The high evaporation rates experienced in Australia mean we’re unlikely to see too many releases get matured to ages greater than 15 years.  (Those that have been released were intriguing curiosities, but they also demonstrated that the spirit had peaked several years earlier, long before the oak overpowered the show).   But it’s not all about temperature.  As Indian distilleries like Paul John and Amrut have demonstrated, high-temperature climates will result in high evaporation, but you can find a winning formula.  However, the other key factor is the humidity, and distillers need to take this onboard.

The local environment’s humidity influences whether water or alcohol is lost during maturation, and also the extent of wood extraction and the accompanying flavours.  For example, contrary to most people’s intuition, Tasmania is surprisingly dry and a spirit’s ABV can increase over time in the cask whilst the overall volume decreases.  Sullivans Cove reports evaporative losses of around 5% – certainly higher than the 1-2% figure that routinely gets trotted out for Scotland.  In contrast, more northern, coastal cities like Sydney experience high humidity, whilst the coastal climate moderates the extremes of temperature.  Dave Withers, head distiller at Archie Rose in Sydney, advises that the distillery’s evaporative losses are around 11-13% and that they’ve lost about a third of the volume of each cask after just three years’ maturation.  (A sobering figure, considering how much everyone gasped when Paul John revealed its angels’ share in Goa, India, was 8%!)

Withers also advises that there is no single, one-size-fits-all figure that can be used in a predictive sense.  “There are simply too many variables,” he explains.  “It’s also a function of the cask’s filling strength; the quality and porosity of the wood; the size of the cask itself; whether the cask is 1^st fill or 2^nd fill, and so on.  We even find losses vary depending on the cooperage we sourced the casks from, when all other factors were equal!”  With the parameters and variables they control (e.g. filling strength and cask size), Archie Rose is currently finding that the ABV strength at decanting stage is roughly the same as when they filled.

As several producers here have already found, high temperatures can be used to drive off the lesser-desired volatiles during maturation and can fast-track the process.  However, hot, dry summers with consistently low humidity can also drive off the “good” volatiles as well.

And so, again, our distillers have a difficult balancing act.  At the end of the day, spirit needs sufficient time in the wood.  And the sweet spot for that sufficient time will vary, depending on where each distillery is located in this big, brown land.  As we just discussed above, no one is pretending that the maturation environment in outback NSW is the same as it is in Albany or Melbourne.   Each distillery, then, must quickly learn and establish its own rules and shape its operations to suit its unique location.  Consumers will lose faith after too many trials or failed experiments that get released as ho-hum single-cask bottlings.

Some distilleries – and this is particularly a Tasmanian feature – make a point of actually working their casks into the climate, driving them to the point of exhaustion in poorly insulated tin sheds where the spirit and wood are subjected to the low and high extremes of the days and the seasons.  Utilising temperature variance (instead of resisting or minimising it) is certainly adapting to suit your conditions.  In the words of a tour guide at a well-known Tasmanian distillery, “There’s no such thing as a re-fill cask around here – we get everything out of the wood the first time”.

As impressive as some of the younger releases have been, most seasoned observers (and plenty within the industry) agree that two-year old spirit matured in a 20L cask is a poor substitute for the whisky that comes from a 100L or even 200L cask that’s spent five or more years in peaceful slumber.  That’s not romance or idealism, it’s simply science.  This writer’s observation is merely that some are handling their maturation better than others.  There are too many small distilleries releasing expensive whisky that is over-oaked, yet under-matured.  

CALIBRATED CONSUMERS

Lest the above be interpreted as a lament or desire for older age statements or greater maturation periods, let’s be clear that age is no guarantee or indicator of quality.  There’s no reason why a three year old Australian whisky can’t be better than a ten year old.  However, it’s important for both producer and consumer to appreciate the end game and to engineer the objective.

As a perfect example, consider bourbon:  Most people would agree that bourbon matures and generally peaks at around four to seven years of age.  But is that just a passive result of the Kentucky climate or an accident of science?   The answer is neither…it is engineered to be that way.  With the exception of Woodford Reserve’s smaller distillery in Versailles, the US distillers use column stills and continuous distillation to produce a higher ABV spirit with fewer impurities – thereby reducing the amount of time needed in the cask.  The spirit is then filled into virgin wood to get maximum wood interaction and flavour extraction.   And it is warehoused in tall rackhouses, with some distilleries either utilising the resulting microclimates to advantage, or rotating their casks through the building to ameliorate them.   The end result is a whisk(e)y that is fully matured and ready to drink in a time frame significantly shorter than Scottish practice dictates.  More critically, consumers accept this.  Bourbons matured to greater ages (e.g. 12 years and more) are curiosities and exceptions, not the rule.

In Australia, it seems consumerville needs that same education and to re-calibrate its understanding and expectations.  There was recently a public outcry on a well-subscribed whisky Facebook group following an Australian distillery’s release of a limited-edition bottling for a seemingly expensive price.  Many of the more vitriolic comments questioned whether the whisky’s relatively youthful age justified such a high price tag?  Surely such thinking and values have been unfairly and incorrectly shaped by the history and expectations of a market that has become too accustomed to Scotland’s parameters?

This, then, is yet another challenge for the Australian distillers:  Fighting years of bias and habit that has taught or ingrained into consumers the expectation that a whisky has to be at least eight to ten years old to be any good.  Or that it has to be “old” to justify a high price tag.

However, as introduced above, distillers can contribute positively to this process by tailoring and engineering their production to suit our environment and the outcome.  There is no point in doing things “the Scottish way” but not adapting or engineering to Australian realities.  One distiller who has excelled in this area is Peter Bignell at Belgrove Distillery in Tasmania.  Much has been written about the distillery’s uniqueness and individuality in its operations, but one particular practice merits mention here:  During distillation, the foreshots are collected separately but, instead of recycling them back in with the next batch (as 99.9% of distilleries do), they are removed from the system and subsequently burned as biofuel.   Peter explains that this saves him about a year in maturation time – with the impurities removed from the spirit to begin with, the cask has less work to do and it results in his whisky being ready to drink a year earlier than it otherwise might.  He’s tailoring and engineering his production to suit his dry climate; producing a faster-matured whisky that speaks of the place in which it’s made.  It’s no accident that Belgrove won “Craft Producer of the Year” at the 2020 Icons of Whisky Awards for Australia. 

This is what must surely lie at the heart of the Australian distiller:  Not to emulate the Scots or to shoehorn their methodologies into our climate, but to develop strategies to produce a whisky that reflects Australia; will have a tendency to be a younger spirit than traditional Scotch drinkers will be accustomed to; and to speak of the place in which it’s made.  International examples of other “native” youthful spirits that speak this way are Jamaican rum, Kentucky bourbon, and Mexican tequila.

SO WHAT’S MY POINT?

You’ve read this far?  Well done.  Now what’s my point?  Is the above all just mild or loose criticism?  Or is it idealism?  Is it nit-picking or deliberately looking for cracks in an industry that otherwise appears to have a well-polished veneer?  No, far from it.  I’ve celebrated and espoused the Australian whisky industry for 17 years, and will continue to do so.  But what was once a fledgling industry with a handful of players has now blossomed into a larger community.  And, just like any other growing community, we must accommodate and respond to all comers and all entities in the spectrum, for better or worse.  But it’s evident that Australian whisky can no longer be lumped into one generic pigeonhole, as perhaps it once used to be:  It is now too fractioned (which is actually a good thing), and consistent quality across the board is difficult to pin down.  As proud as we are of our industry, we need to recognise and acknowledge that not every release is perfect; many newer distilleries are still learning; the financial pressures that are ever present will continue to shape the distiller’s hand; and there is, unfortunately, some inferior whisky being bottled.

15 years ago, it was considered rude, inappropriate and unsporting to criticise an Australian whisky.  Today, we must be bolder and braver.  The industry has grown to the point where it’s developed a skin, and being an “Australian whisky” is a proud badge to wear.  Let us see it worn and aspired to appropriately.  Bad whisky must be called out.  The inconvenient truth is that there are some producers out there bringing down the industry’s reputation

THE FUTURE?

Of course, like everything in business, outcomes will ultimately be driven by the consumer and market forces will play out.  Aussie whisky drinkers have their favourites and each distillery will attract its own fanbase.  Pricing will also play a role:  Collectors may pounce on the rare releases that are north of $500 for 500ml bottles; the regular punters will be less enamoured.  The investment and backing of big players will also continue to play a major role – Diageo’s Distill Ventures injection into Starward has obviously provided a tremendous boost and allowed that distillery to provide consistent, homegenised product with mainstream distribution into the supermarket chains at a highly affordable price.   Ongoing consolidation will also have an impact:  Witness Australian Whisky Holdings’ buy-up of Nant, Lark, Overeem and a stake in Old Kempton. (Although they subsequently sold back the latter two).

So is Australian whisky any good?  Of course it is.  Its best is excellent; the rival of any other world class spirit, and the many awards and accolades collected bear testament to this.  Well made Australian whisky should sit proudly in any bar or on your shelves at home.  The future could be rosy – providing we keep the checks and balances, and providing both distillers and consumers do the right thing.

Cheers,
AD

[Update: Not long after publishing the above article, I was invited to discuss some of the items raised on the excellent podcast, Drinks Adventures.  You can listen to that episode here.]

PS:  You also might like our article, “The challenges of starting a new whisky brand“.

Whisky & Wisdom’s favourite Australian whiskies

Bakery Hill “Peated”
Limeburners “Darkest Winter”
Tin Shed’s “Iniquity Gold”
Heartwood “Convict Redemption”

Other Whisky & Wisdom articles on Australian whisky and/or the Australian whisky industry

Australian whisky – It’s got an image problem

The pioneers of Australia’s whisky appreciation community

Visiting the distilleries of Tasmania  

Bakery Hill – the view from the top

The heart of Heartwood

Archie Rose – the giant stirs

TIB – Tasmanian Independent Bottlers