Well established Tasmanian whisky producers are entering a new phase, as I recently found out at Tas Whisky Week 2023. Some of the old guard are now offering up notable age statement malt whiskies, and Hellyers Road’s recent 21 Year Old American Oak released via The Whisky Club is a prime example.
Distilled in 2002, way back when Hellyers had no idea how their efforts would ultimately be received, the 21 Year Old spent two decades slumbering while Tasmanian whisky grew up into a bona fide industry.
At $1350 a bottle, this is Hellyers looking to follow in the Sullivans Cove mould. But in contrast to Tasmania’s world beater, Hellyers have sufficient stock to create widely available and sharply priced bottlings.
As part of the new core range, the Hellyers Double Cask ($119, 700ml) and Sherry Cask ($139, 700ml) are proper value-for-money malt whiskies, especially in the Tassie context. And if Hellyers can convince the whisky literati to start jumping at their limited bottlings, like the Voyager Cask 19 Year Old also reviewed below, then there’s plenty of upside moving forward.
Distillers Brian Poke and Brian Halpin laid down significant volumes of spirit in large format casks in the early years of the Hellyers project. As a result, the distillery now has a wide range of older casks coming of age – you can bottle your very own 19 year old whisky straight from the cask at the distillery’s cellar door at the moment.
If you’re still a Hellyers sceptic, and there’s a few out there (I was one of them at certain points), then I’d suggest it’s time to rethink your stance and try this new stage of the distillery’s development.
Postscript: A note on history
I couldn’t help noticing some curious claims that accompanied the release of the Hellyers 21 Year Old.
‘The oldest official bottling of an Australian single cask to date‘ from ‘Australia’s oldest continually operating distillery’ announced the social media posts and website copy. Ah… not quite.
What about Sullivans Cove’s 21 year old single cask bottling released earlier this year? (It tasted pretty good, too.) And as for Hellyers being Australia’s oldest continually operating distillery, um… yeah nah. That title would belong to either Beenleigh or St Agnes.
Beenleigh have operated at the same site since 1884, and while they’ve had silent periods and floods destroy parts of the distillery, that’s not uncommon when you’ve been producing for nearly 140 years.
It’s more straightforward with the still family-owned St Agnes. The distillery in Renmark has been continuously producing in the same location since 1911. Hellyers isn’t even Australia’s oldest continually operating distillery in the modern ‘craft’ era – the Hoochery Distillery in the Kimberly also predates it.
Tasmanians often have a bit of a wobbly time getting their distilling history straight, as this confused ABC Hobart article recently showed: ‘Tasmania legalised whisky distilling before Scotland but then came a 153-year ban‘. Hmmm. Some work to be done there.
