Madeleine and Damian Mackey – Hunter Island Whisky
The launch of Damian and Madeleine Mackey’s Hunter Island Pot Still Whisky marks a new direction for the Australian whisky industry.
With the Hunter Island release, and John Halton’s Transportation Whiskey brand (also produced at the same distillery), Australian distillers are linking into the traditions behind one of the world’s iconic whisky styles. And it’s not just Tasmania exploring this heritage. Other distilleries like Tara Distillery on the NSW south coast will release their pot still whiskies in the Irish style in coming years.
The distilling journey of Damian and Madeleine Mackey hasn’t necessarily been straightforward. They started from humble, home distilling origins and then helped to create and expand the sprawling Shene Estate & Distillery, where their gins and whiskies received numerous awards and accolades and found a devoted fan base.
But eventually, the rapid growth and expansion became too much for the Mackey’s, and in 2018 they sold their shareholding and decided to leave the business. Since then, they’ve gone on to create Bright Night Gin in partnership with Suman Dahal, and now they’ve unveiled their long-awaited Hunter Island Whisky project.
I caught up with the Mackey’s on a couple of different occasions over the past 12 months, both at their home distillery in inner-city Hobart and in Melbourne closer to the release of their first whisky. Below is an extract of our chats, edited for clarity and brevity.
Maybe let’s start with a brief synopsis, if it’s possible to keep it brief, of your time in the industry, where you’ve come from and how the new whisky journey is evolving?
Madeleine: Brief. Good luck. [laughs].
Damian: Okay, well, my first exposure to the Tasmanian whisky industry was when I was working as a surveyor for Bill Lark back in the early 1990s when he was getting the industry re-started here in Tasmania.
Fast-forward to the mid-2000s, and we decided we wanted a change of life, so we set up our own distillery here in New Town.
By 2007, we’d laid down our first barrel using a 300 litre still, and drawing on our Irish heritage, we wanted to do something different to what everyone else was doing, even though there was only about six or seven others distilling whisky at the time.
They were all doing double-distilled single malt, so we went the triple-distilled single malt route following Irish whiskey traditions.
We released our first whisky about six years later, and at that stage we were building up to going in with the Kernke’s out at Shene. They had a heritage property, we had a distillery, and we realised we could have a much bigger operation there.
So we helped to build Shene up to a larger distillery, and then in 2018 we decided to leave there and go back on our own. We sold our shares to one of the other partners, and from there, we set ourselves up back in New Town but on a bigger scale than before.
When we first set up here, we really wanted to go further in exploring our Irish heritage, and pot still whisky was really starting to be re-born in Ireland at the time, so we decided to go down that path.
Now, it’s a bit over three years since we first started distilling, and we can lay down about 300 litres of new make spirit a fortnight here under this configuration.
Hunter Island Whisky
And how does Transportation Whiskey sit alongside what you’re doing?
Damian: Both John ‘Johnny’ Halton [Transportation Whiskey founder] and I have been big fans of Irish pot still whiskey. After Madeleine and I left Shene, we spent a few months thinking, well, what do we do next. And we thought we’ll start again, and by that stage we’d met John and the idea came up that pot still whisky is what we’d like to do.
I was in discussions with Johnny and we thought, this is definitely what we’ve got to do next, it’s the logical next progression from the triple-distilled single malt whisky we did as Mackey Whisky.
When we started off Mackey Whisky, pot still was a little bit in the doldrums, if we think back 20 years ago. But when we were ready to go again, it started having this big resurgence and we thought, let’s go for it.
We’ve got a good working relationship with Johnny. He makes his whisky at our distillery, and we have a lot of informal exchanging of ideas, which has proven very worthwhile for both of us.
He comes and does the important bits of his distillation. The mash bills are his own, the cuts in both the intermediate run and the final run are very much his own.
‘Gypsy distiller’ might be the closest way to describe him, but that’s not quite right because we do have this big exchange of ideas all the time, especially when it comes to joint tasting sessions of each other’s whiskies, and of the barrels, seeing what we think is ready or not. I think it’s just a really good mutually beneficial relationship.
Transportation Whiskey Tasmanian Single Pot Still
And single pot still whisky. Some people will be familiar with it, some people won’t. Can you tell us what to expect from your brand of pot still whisky and how that relates to the Irish style? What makes you passionate about pot still? And how do you convince people to get behind it?
Damian: Single malt, as a lot of people would know, is whisky made with 100% malted barley. Pot still whisky refers to the very Irish way of making whisky, which is mainly a mixture of malted and unmalted barley. When we say ‘unmalted barley’ we mean barley as harvested from the field.
We’ve also added in 5% oats to our whisky. In Ireland, you have been allowed to add in a small amount of a third grain, what they call the adjunct grain, although the Irish have recently changed that to go from 5% up to 30%, which will allow for some of the really old mash bills that were made in Ireland back in the 1800s to be reborn.
And I guess, the way we look at it, our pot still is triple-distilled, so it’s a smoother style. But being pot still with that unmalted barley in there and some oats, that also adds whole other characters. It’s a smoother style of whisky we’re creating, but packed full of character.
If there’s one criticism of triple-distilled single malt, especially Scottish, some people might argue that a lot of the interest has been taken out by that third distillation. But with pot still, you’re adding back a whole different variety of interest with the different grains in there.
Madeleine: And those grains give you a lot of spice, chewiness, and also mouthfeel. And in Tasmania, we’ve got that thick oily maltiness from the grain grown here which we’re seeing transfer into our pot still whiskies as the barrels age. We’re really hopeful that it’s going to produce a fantastic whisky.
Are you going to do any exploration on mash bills further, or are you going to stick with that same mash bill from here?
Damian: We’ve kept that possibility open. Because playing around with the mash bill is one of the fantastic things about pot still whisky. You have all of that variation to create different expressions in addition to the type of cask that you age in, from the yeasts that you use or the cuts that you do in the still run.
Hunter Island Whisky
Are you going to be doing gin as well at the new distillery?
Madeleine: Yes, we are doing gin at the moment. We’re doing Bright Night Gin with our partner in the gin, Suman Dahal. He’s done everything on the outside of the bottle and we do everything on the inside of the bottle. You’ll see a few bottles of Bright Night Gin there, and we’ve recently released a pink version as well. We make that and Suman’s role is to market that and get it out there.
Great. So you’ve got your unique pot still spirit, what are you thinking for maturation? Ex-Bourbon, tawny, apera, other fortifieds?
Madeleine: Yep, that’s what we’re thinking, as well as some actual port and sherry casks as well.
Damian: Dave Schmeider up there at Transwood Cooperage, we think he’s probably the best cooper going around, and he’s sourced some really interesting casks for us, some muscat and tokay casks in particular which are looking really good.
And many of your casks are two and even three years old now. Where are you thinking you might land in terms of age with the different sizes you have?
Damian: A lot of this whisky is now over two and even three years old, so legally whisky, which is exciting. Most of our spirit is going into 125 litre casks, so we’re expecting they’ll be five or six years away from being ready. And we’ve also done some 50 litre casks as well, and we’re expecting they’ll be ready in about four years.
And one of the big questions to finish, what spelling are you going with? Whisky or Whiskey?
Damian: Yes, we’ve decided we’re not having an ‘e’ in the name of our whisky. And yes, Johnny with Transportation Whiskey has got the ‘e’ in there [laughs]. I suppose he’s emphasising more the Irish roots of it.
We definitely want to emphasise that heritage as well. But I’m more about emphasising our Tasmanian-ness. You know, we’re Tasmanian whisky, we’re not Irish whiskey.
A big thanks to Damian and Madeleine for their time. And check out our article here for all the info on their first Hunter Island Whisky release.