On tasting: McHenry Alpha Crucis, McHenry 6 Year Old Double Wood, McHenry 5 Year Old Tokay Cask, McHenry Barrel No. 21 (ex-port cask), McHenry Release 28 (Hillrock ex-Bourbon cask)
I’ve been driving up the bumpy dirt road that leads to McHenry Distillery since 2013. The location of William (Bill) McHenry’s distillery on Mount Arthur is something else.
The hillside, where sprawling huts and weathered silver sheds have been built into, is alive with wildlife. Bottle green rain forest hangs over the place like a church organ. Sea air from Antarctica drifts across the mountain after journeying a few thousand kilometres north from the Southern Ocean. The scent mingles with the eucalypts and the surrounding scrub.
They say the air’s different down there. Breathe it in and you’ll know what they mean.
Bill and me in 2013
I’ve visited when the mountain is glowing in sunlight, soaked with misty rain and blanketed by fog in the damp depths of winter.
Of all the locations where whisky is made in Australia, I find this place the most beguiling, the most promising, the most intimidating.
The infamous Port Arthur penal settlement is a ten minute drive from the distillery, and it’s there that the dark, edge of the world feeling this area is known for hits you with full force.
And then there’s Bill McHenry’s spirits: his range of successful gins and vodkas, and the single malts that inspired the whole ride (for the full story, read our profile).
In 2010, Bill left Sydney and a high flying role in the pharmaceutical industry to build Australia’s southernmost distillery. Since then, he’s experienced both incredible success and the deepest of tragedies.
With his whiskies, Bill set out to create something approachable, floral and light. He wanted longer term maturation in ex-Bourbon casks. He wanted to use the wet, cool climate in the same way his Scottish distilling ancestors did – long and slow.
The economics of it all caught up with Bill in 2016 and he decided he couldn’t wait any longer for the climate to work its magic. I was there for the inaugural whisky launch in Hobart all those years ago. It was a brilliant event celebrating a curious first release.
The inaugural whisky was initially matured in ex-Bourbon before being finished in 20 litre ex-tawny casks. It was different to anything released in Tasmania at the time, and a good deal older than most first release Australian malts. But it was also raw, grassy, sticky and a bit short and unbalanced.
Subsequent McHenry whiskies showed better integration. But Bill was having to finish the slowly maturing Bourbon cask whiskies in expensive 20 litre fortified wine casks to add polish and depth.
He got exactly what he was after with the location – it’s still one of the only Australian distilleries where spirit decreases in ABV over time and evaporative loss is on par with Scotland. The downside: his whisky was taking far longer to mature than anticipated, and almost twice as long those situated only an hour and a half further north.
In the last couple years, Bill’s whiskies have started to hit a sweeter spot. That extra time in cask has softened and rounded out the edges of what is already a delicate and fragrant distillate. The whiskies are starting to show more finesse and complexity. The bottle price has come down a bit, too, thankfully, and the growing McHenry distilling team are doing a great job at selecting the best casks from the bond.
Below, I’ve put together a round-up of whiskies that show the different cask treatments you can expect from McHenry releases, as well as some of the most recent single cask bottlings.
As you can probably tell, I’ve been fascinated by the project since Bill first told me about it a decade ago. There are now bigger plans on the horizon for McHenry Distillery, and it’s going to be fascinating to see how the story progresses over the next few years.
