The Story

Kristy Booth-Lark has had an unparalleled upbringing in Tasmanian whisky and distilling. She first learnt the trade from her parents, Lyn and Bill Lark, two of the pioneering figures in Tasmania’s whisky boom, and fondly recalls growing up with a still outside her bedroom door.

At 17 she started at Lark Distillery proper, and eventually rose to cellar door manager then production manager and finally general manager. During her time there, she distilled some of Australia’s most significant and award-winning whiskies, but when Lark was sold to investors in 2013, Kristy left the business to find her own path.

She was on track to start a career as an air traffic controller before finally making the switch back to spirits to start her own distillery. Killara, the name of the street where Kristy grew up, is the business she founded in 2016, Australia’s first solely female owned and operated distillery.

The business started in a mixed use space with Kristy producing and bottling her own Killara single malt whisky and Apothecary gin. Then in 2019, the business moved to its present site just outside the town of Richmond, 20 minutes north of Hobart.

When you walk through the clean and sharply designed Killara site, vestiges of Kristy’s distilling journey and the history of the Tasmanian industry sneak up on you. Early Lark bottlings distilled by Kristy, old pot stills and distilling equipment, and the tin shed bond store sporting a stone floor all speak to the history of Tasmanian whisky making.

Step on to the distillery floor, and references to that history continue. Kristy’s spirit still, nicknamed ‘Rocketship’ and built by Air Con Industries in Hobart, is a slightly larger replica of one of the original stills used by Lyn and Bill Lark. The still’s unique condensing system, situated on top of the pot and sans lyne arm, reduces reflux and creates an oily new make spirit.

A larger 1600 litre wash still was recently installed, and was the last still built by Peter Bailly of Knapp Lewer Contracting – the renowned Tasmanian still maker who famously began a collaboration with Bill Lark two decades ago that would see him build stills for dozens of Australian distilleries. Kristy gave Peter a very specific design brief for his final still – dumpy and curvy with a short lyne arm – to again reduce reflux and help to produce malty, viscous whisky.

Killara’s spirit starts with wash sourced from multiple Hobart breweries. Spring Bay are Killara’s current wash supplier, but mashing and fermentation will eventually happen onsite following an upcoming expansion.

Maturation in ex-fortified wine casks, predominately Australian, is favoured, although Killara has also been filled into ex-shiraz, Bourbon, rum and a suite of other casks, including ex-Scottish peated whisky casks.

A number of future expansions are slated for the site, with a distilling school, botanical garden (for gin production) and adjacent barley fields for paddock to bottle whisky all in the works.

Kristy has also established the Australian Women in Distilling Association to promote, encourage, support and celebrate women in the industry and assist with furthering education and training.

There’s a homeliness and feel good character to the entire Killara project that encapsulates where Tasmanian whisky has come from and why it’s become so sought-after. And yet, there’s progression here, too, and it’s little wonder Killara has quickly become a must-see destination for those wanting a taste of how Tasmanian whisky got to now and where it might be heading next.