The Story
The Kinglake Distillery story starts with Chantal Daniels and Sam Lowe. Daniels grew up in Kinglake following three previous generations of her family – her parents still live down the road while her uncle owns the property next door.
After completing her studies, an MA in Applied Science, Daniels went travelling overseas and met Lowe while working in a French ski resort. Lowe, who hails from Cambridge in England, owned an après-ski bar that was eventually sold when the couple, both avid whisky and spirits lovers, decided to found a distillery back in Australia.
The property chosen for the distillery is located 10 minutes north of Kinglake, the rugged bushland region north east of Melbourne that was utterly devasted by the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. A key feature of the property is the spring fed dam from Chyser Creek that supplies all the water needed for the site. Daniels had the water tested and found it was ideally suited to whisky making. ‘It’s got great mineral properties for making quality single malt, and we think it brings a unique character to our whisky,’ she says.
Before distilling officially started at Kinglake in 2018, Daniels and Lowe spent two years experimenting to find their ideal mash bill and distilling process. They eventually settled on a unique mash of 46% Atlas, 25% Vienna and 4% chocolate malt, all supplied by Voyager Craft Malt in the Riverina. To inject even greater depth of flavour, heavily peated malt from Simpsons Malt in Scotland rounds out the remaining 25% in the mash.
Mashing and fermentation all occurs on-site. During the latter, the fermentation tanks are opened to introduce some of the surrounding yeasts and pollens into the wash. After a double distillation through a large 2500 litre Knapp Lewer pot still, and a wide cut to capture a heavier, oily spirit, new make is filled into barrel at the Scottish standard 63.5%. Intriguingly, the pair have observed that the ABV of the spirit comes down over time – standard in Scotland’s more humid conditions but less common in drier Australia – even though their evaporative loss sits somewhere between 6-10%.
‘We definitely have a unique microclimate here,’ says Daniels. ‘Our barrels mature differently depending on the weather and the season, and that’s going to keep changing in future.’
Kinglake spirit has predominately been filled into ex-Bourbon casks – mostly re-coopered 50 litre casks, although larger format casks will come online in future – producing a spirit-forward style favoured by Daniels and Lowe. Australian ex-tawny, apera and brandy casks have also been filled, while a number of experimental bottlings using ex-red gum and rum casks have been released, some of which have been independently bottled.
The Kinglake core range comprises of the flagship O’Grady’s Stand at 46% and matured in ex-Bourbon casks, the French Oak, matured in ex-tawny casks, and Full Noise, a cask strength ex-Bourbon cask release. The price of Kinglake’s single malts have also won the distillery a legion of fans, with the core range retailing between $100 and $145.
The other significant talking point is the sustainability of the Kinglake operation. The entire site, which was recently certified as carbon neutral, is virtually off-grid. Solar panels power most of the distillery’s energy needs, waste water is recycled and repurposed, and a third of the property was donated to an Australian reforestation charity for the planting of indigenous shrubs and plants.
Of the many small-scale whisky distilleries to appear in Australia in recent years, Kinglake has hit all the right notes. The spirit-forward, textural quality of the whisky, its synthesis of where its made, and the affordable and sustainable outlook built into every part of the project has pushed Kinglake into the top rank of Australian whisky producers.
Whiskies Reviewed:
Limited releases:
Kinglake Single Malt Whisky O’Grady’s Stand Cask Strength
Kinglake Single Malt Whisky ex-Bourbon Cask Cask Strength (Pre-release sample)