The Story

Lawrenny Estate is a strong contender for Tasmania’s most picturesque distillery. Located in Tasmania’s Central Highlands, just over an hours drive north west of Hobart, the distillery sits next to a fast flowing (by Australian standards) River Derwent and is surrounded by paddocks of barley, pristine farmland and rolling hills. Visit the site, gaze at the surrounds, breathe in the air and you’ll understand why whisky is being made here.

The estate dates to back to the early 1800s and was established by one of Tasmania’s earliest and most controversial colonists, Welsh-born Edward Lord. By 1820, Lord was said to be the richest man in Van Diemen’s Land. He owned three ships, 6000 cattle, 7000 sheep and 35,000 acres – most notably the stunning Lawrenny between Hamilton and Ouse. At Lawrenny, Lord ran cattle and sheep across the thousands of acres that comprised the property and also farmed wheat, barley and hops.

Fast-forward to 1991, and the much smaller Lawrenny Estate was a neglected property with an enormous colonial mansion. That’s where Ross Mace, a retired crop dusting pilot, and his wife Mary Mace came in. They purchased Lawrenny and set about rejuvenating the property’s spectacular gardens while farming premium Black Angus cattle.

Then the Tassie spirits boom took off, and, like many property owners, the Mace family looked at constructing a distillery. From here, the family started searching for a head distiller to take the reins. In a major coup, they ended up landing one of the country’s top up-and-coming distillers, Joe Dinsmoor, who first got his start at Lark Distillery when he was apprenticed at 18 and later became head distiller of Archie Rose Distilling Co. in Sydney.

Dinsmoor was wanting to move back to Tasmania and the stunning Lawrenny property was the perfect fit. Paris Nightingale, Ross Mace’s grandaughter, became Dinsmoor’s assistant distiller, adding another family dimension to the small Lawrenny team.

Initially, a range of gins, a vodka and various liqueurs were released from 2017 onwards while the distillery was gradually constructed under Dinsmoor’s guidance. Intelligently, the distillery surrounds were incorporated into the flavours of Lawrenny’s gins, using botanicals grown within the property’s orchard, including strawberries, almonds and lime flowers. This gave everyone a taste of where the whisky might be heading, as barley was also being grown on the property with the eventual hope of creating a Lawrenny paddock-to-bottle whisky.

While waiting for the barley to grow, Dinsmoor set about creating Lawrenny’s whisky spirit using malt supplied by Joe White Maltings in the state’s north. Spirit was filled into a wide range of casks, including ex-Bourbon, tawny, apera, sherry, port and ex-cognac casks.

The first Lawrenny whiskies started to appear in 2020, with a number of preview bottlings and cellar door exclusive samples made available. Then in November 2020, the first Lawrenny whisky, Ascension, was launched. Dinsmoor initially matured the release in a range of 20 litre ex-Bourbon and tawny casks, transferred them to larger 100 litre casks, vatted them together and finished the lot in a Spanish pedro ximenex cask for a further seven months. The release showed how exacting Dinsmoor would be in fine tuning every Lawrenny whisky, and the follow-up bottlings like Descension have again showed his fastidious approach.

Since then, a range of ‘Cellar Collection’ bottlings, predominately single casks, have been released, matured mainly in ex-sherry, port and Bourbon casks.

Lawrenny’s general manager, Jensen Farley, has said that the long-awaited Lawrenny Estate whisky, made from barley grown on site and likely matured in a mixture of ex-cognac and ex-sherry casks, will be ready in late 2023 or early 2024. Dinsmoor has also been developing some exciting experiments with wild yeast strains for the estate-grown whisky, so it will be fascinating to see how that develops.

A visit to the distillery does not disappoint, and when Lawrenny starts to really hit its straps with core range bottlings, limited releases and the highly-anticipated estate-grown whisky, this impressive distilling project will be one to watch.

Whiskies Reviewed:

Limited releases:

Lawrenny Ascension Single Malt Whisky

Lawrenny Cellar Collection Sherry Cask Single Malt Whisky (Cask 79)