Exciting news for Sydney whisky enthusiasts with the opening of the city’s second bricks-and-mortar retail shop dedicated purely to whisky. Thirteen years after World of Whisky established itself in Double Bay back in 2010, The Whisky Ark has now set up shop in the Queen Victoria Building in the heart of the CBD.
The shop has a very pronounced focus on high-end and/or rare & collectible whiskies, and their catalog features an impressive range of highly sought-after malts from Scotland, Japan and Australia. You’ll not find garden variety expressions of Glenfiddich 12yo or the like here, but the more expensive expressions of that particular distillery (starting at $600!) are on offer. The pattern is similar with most of the other brands of Scotch – the lower tiers in the portfolios are absent, but the upper tiers are well catered for. There’s no delicate way to say it: If you want to buy whisky with price tags that involve several zeros on the end, this is the place to come to. As an example, there are 33 different products available with RRP’s in the $7,000 to $75,000 price range!
Fans of Japanese whisky won’t be disappointed, with an impressive range from Karuiazawa, plus increasingly hard-to-find Hibiki expressions. On the Australian whisky front, there’s a significant number of rare/collectible Sullivans Cove releases. As you might gather from some of the photos from the launch, the shop’s owners are Chinese, and a key target market demographic for them is the Asian travelers and tourists transiting through Sydney. I’d love to tell you more about the shop and their membership program, but since the entire launch and the many speeches were all delivered in Mandarin (which I don’t speak!), we’ll just focus on the whiskies…
The launch of the shop has been proudly supported by Ian McLeod Distillers in Australia, courtesy of their local distributor, Swift & Moore. Following the grand opening of the shop in the morning, a celebratory dinner was held later that night at Sydney’s Sky Phoenix restaurant for the business’ shareholders and their wider associates. The dinner featured a four-course meal with matching whiskies, paired to the likes of the Tamdhu Distinction, the Glengoyne Cask Strength, the Glengoyne 21yo, and the Glengoyne 25yo.
Tamdhu is unique amongst the Scottish distilleries, making the claim that it is the only distillery in Scotland to fill 100% of its spirit into ex-sherry casks. The Tamdhu Distinction – whose full and official name is actually Tamdhu Quercus Alba Distinction – is made entirely using American oak casks, offering up a sweet and contrasting style to some of the other sherried whisky houses that feature European (Spanish) oak. On that front, Glengoyne caters nicely, with its older expressions – particularly the 18yo and 25yo – featuring a generous proportion of 1st Fill European oak ex-oloroso sherry casks.
For more details on Ian Macleod Distillers and some of the whiskies in the Tamdhu, Glengoyne, and Smokehead portfolios, you can check out Whisky & Wisdom’s previous feature article on Ian Macleod here. And if you’re keen to grab a bottle of any of these whiskies, you can cut out the middle man and get them direct from the local distributor’s outlet here.
Cheers,
AD
