On tasting: Goodradigbee Jarrah, Goodradigbee Ironbark Red, Goodradigbee Tasmanian Blackwood, Mountain Distilling Red Gum Single Malt
There’s no shortage of hot button talking points to explore here. Australia is often referred to as the ‘innovation nation’, and that’s exactly what we’re looking at with these four spirits.
Yes, spirits, not whiskies, and that’s where the problems arise. The Goodradigbee and Mountain Distilling spirits don’t meet the requirements set down by Australia’s current distilling regulations to wear the ‘whisky’ title, mainly because they haven’t been matured for the minimum two year period in a wooden vessel. But whether inadvertently or not, they’ve often been sold and marketed as whisky products, and that’s where some whisky producers have become frustrated.
Mountain Distilling’s Red Gum Single Malt was even entered into the International Wine and Spirit Competition’s (IWSC) 2021 Australian category as a whisky. The ‘single malt’ spirit produced by Mountain Distilling is force-aged with red gum wood in just 15 days, and was created using a thermal-based technology developed with the assistance of a Monash University professor.
However, it’s production method wasn’t disclosed to the judges, and staggeringly, it won the category. But now it appears that the IWSC award may have been removed by the organisers as the product isn’t listed anywhere in the results for the 2021 competition.
Accelerated aging is nothing new in the whisky industry. We’ve had oak sticks, spheres and chips used to mature spirit, claiming to convert bottles into whisky within a week. We’ve had temperature control warehouses, sonic exposure, forced agitation of casks and the use of oak staves in the maturation vessel. The desire to speed up maturation has led to some innovative techniques, but at what cost to the finished product?
The aging process is absolutely crucial to a whisky’s DNA, but the science behind it is not as simple as we might anticipate. Scientists have continually run experiments to unravel the magic behind how oak transforms whisky. Well beyond being a simple vessel to carry liquid from port to port, we now understand the fundamental importance of this process to producing complex and refined spirits.
Oak maturation adds and subtracts both desirable and undesirable elements in new make spirit. Through the spirit’s interaction with charred or toasted oak in particular, spirit is polished of its youthful qualities, enhancing its aromatic complexity and adding weight and texture.
The way spirit changes over time and interacts with oak is becoming better understood as well. In the first year of maturation, a lot of vanillin, colour and flavour is stripped from the barrel. Over time, the influence of the oak isn’t as impactful, and as the cask breathes and the spirit slowly oxidises, complex new flavours are revealed.
But oak is expensive, it’s getting harder to procure, and its quality can be inconsistent from broker to broker. Oak barrels also take up a lot of valuable rental space in storage, and a bad barrel found late in the aging process can represent a significant loss of money and time, especially for smaller producers. It’s little wonder then, that producers are exploring oak alternatives to bring their product to market more quickly.
The other significant issue thrown up by the products reviewed here – the use of native Australian wood to mature spirit. With the correct treatment and management, Australian native woods can add something truly unique to our whiskies. But there’s a significant question now being asked by some in the industry: is it safe for consumers to consume whiskies and spirits matured in native Australian wood barrels?
In the wine industry, lab tests using gas chromatography/mass spectrometry have long been used to detect Eucalyptol (1,8-cineole), which is present in many Australian native woods, especially their leaves, and can be poisonous at high levels. The Australian Wine Research Institute (AWRI) offer testing for spirits as well, and I’ve been made aware of a number of research reports conducted by the AWRI where Australian producers have submitted their native wood matured whiskies.
The early results, which haven’t been made public by producers for a number of reasons, indicate that when the wood is seasoned correctly, i.e. air dried for the right amount of time, and used to mature spirit, 1,8-cineole is hardly detectable, if at all. More research and testing needs to be conducted, but the early signs are positive if care is taken in the preparation of the wood.
The other side to this is whether or not consumers will actually enjoy the flavours imparted by Australian hardwoods. For me, growing up in the 90s in suburban Sydney, sucking on eucalyptus lollies was the norm, and we were often told about the antibacterial properties involved. The flavour imparted to new make spirit is something that is an acquired taste, as you can see in the review below, but these are flavours that we’re familiar with, at least in Australia, just maybe not in a whisky context, so it’ll be interesting to see what consumers make of them.
There’s a lot to take in here, even without the use of rapid aging in cubes, as is the case with the Goodradigbee spirits, or the accelerated aging technique employed by Mountain Distilling. From a drinking experience, the methods being used here have created spirits that, for me, tend to lack the weight and texture I look for in a mature whisky.
But should we be applying that lens to these products? That debate is currently raging, and clearly, there’s a lot to more to come in the making of truly Australian spirits and whiskies.
