On tasting: Hunnington Sherry Cask No. 13, Old Kempton The Old Stables Batch 3, Old Kempton Solera Batch 3, Lawrenny Cellar Collection Sherry Cask (Cask 79), Hellyers Road Sherry Cask 7 Year Old, Spirit Thief American Oak Cabernet and Bourbon, Killara Shiraz Cask (KD056), Killara Muscat Cask (KD051) and Spring Bay Virgin Oak Cask
After a recent trip to Tassie, I’ve been writing about the evolution of the whisky scene down there and all that’s new and emerging. But one thing I haven’t touched on yet is just how many Tasmanian whiskies are now available for us to try (there’s freaking heaps).
Throughout the pandemic, restrictions meant that accessing whisky from some Tasmanian producers was tricky. Mostly, it was simple enough to place your order online from established distilleries and wait for the postie to drop off the goods.
But if you were keen on getting a taste of some of the newer or smaller Tasmanian producers, that was more difficult. Especially if, as I’ve found out, a lot of those producers predominately sell whisky to visitors through their cellar door or to nearby retailers and bars.
Maybe Tasmania’s wine industry has a point to offer here. I’ve long paid close attention to the Tassie wine industry, mainly because their wines are bloody fantastic, but also because you occasionally see symmetries between how the whisky and wine sectors operate. And one Tasmanian wine stat has always stayed with me: around 40% of Tasmanian wine is sold in Tasmania, with 55% going to the mainland and around 5% heading overseas to the export market. Basically, a lot of Tassie wine never makes it out of Tasmania.
Should we expect the same sales trajectory for Tasmanian whisky? I’m thinking not. Finding any sales data on Australian whisky is near impossible, but anecdotally, the export market has always been stronger for Tasmanian whisky brands, especially the early leaders like Hellyers Road and Sullivans Cove. And with Lark now determined to export, you’d expect that Tasmanian whisky’s future will ride on selling whisky beyond the Apple Isle.
And yet, I’m now coming across a growing number of small Tassie whisky makers who appear to be heading the other way and keeping things hyper local. Close to half of the whiskies below would be difficult to get a taste of without visiting Tasmania, so how things progress from here I guess we’ll see.
You get a sense of what I’m talking about with this round-up: cellar door exclusives, hard to come by bottlings and a few recent batches of core range whiskies I was keen to revisit.
It’s our first look at the triple distilled whisky from Hunnington Distillery, my first taste of a Tasmanian whisky in a new oak cask (Spring Bay Virgin Oak), and my first official crack at a Lawrenny single cask bottling (they’re almost exclusively sold through the cellar door).
Back to the initial point, this is just a snippet of the new Tassie whiskies now on offer, so we’ve got more reviews coming soon.
