The Spirit of Australia: The Past, Present and Future of Australian Whisky

Once upon a time, Australia’s whisky industry was all about volume. Today, boutique distillers are the ones making all the noise. 

If you’re new to Australian whisky, the past, present and future states of the industry can take some navigating. Currently, over 70 distilleries have released their own distinctly Australian whiskies. To put this in context, Australia has more than double the number of distilleries making whisky than Ireland, the spirit’s birthplace. This number looks set to grow with global drinks industry analyst IWSR predicting the Australian whisky industry will have grown 14.5 percent by 2025.

The industry has boomed since its Tasmanian reinvention in the 1990s when distillers such as Brian Poke (Small Concern Distillery) and Robert Hosken (Sullivans Cove) started producing whisky. The efforts of Bill and Lyn Lark of Lark Distillery, in particular, were instrumental in establishing this new small-scale Australian whisky and spirit movement. Granted a license to distil spirits in May 1992, the Larks became one of Tasmania’s first whisky producers since 1839 when distilling was prohibited in the state. Although Tasmania’s distilleries lay dormant during the 19th century, whisky-making thrived on the mainland.

After Victoria’s Gold Rush, several large Victorian whisky distilleries were established to supply the state’s growing population. Following Federation, Australia was the world’s fourth-largest whisky-producing nation with the likes of Federal Distillery in Port Melbourne becoming one of the biggest distilleries in the Southern Hemisphere. These large Victorian operations were eventually amalgamated, so much so that in the 1980s, distilling in Australia was reduced to a handful of large, predominantly industrial sites. Almost in opposition to that period, the Larks released limited single malt whiskies and created a quality-over-quantity blueprint for the distillers that followed.

By the early 2000s, other Australian whisky producers cropped up in Tasmania (Hellyers Road), Melbourne (Bakery Hill) and as far afield as Albany in Western Australia (Limeburners/Great Southern Distilling). At this point, most of Australia’s whisky makers were focused on crafting quality single malt in the mould of Scotland’s finest. But by the 2010s, other whisky styles started to emerge. Peter Bignell led the charge with his Belgrove Distillery in Tasmania, creating an earthy, herbal rye whisky that captured the flavours of his farm north of Hobart. It remains one of the only paddock-to-bottle rye whiskies made anywhere in the world, and Belgrove’s unique approach has seen it labelled the world’s greenest distillery.

The aforementioned Limeburners/Great Southern Distilling in Western Australia then released its Tiger Snake whiskies that are similar in style to the traditional US ryes and Bourbons. For Bourbon whiskey fans, Whipper Snapper Distillery near Perth’s CBD also produce an award-winning Upshot corn whiskey.

Initially, many of these new whisky distilleries were small, owner-operator businesses releasing hard-to-find bottlings. But eventually, distillers like Melbourne’s Starward Whisky (established in 2009) started to change things up. Starward’s founder David Vitale, a previous employee at Lark Distillery, set out to produce a more affordable, approachable Australian single malt matured in local wine casks. With the backing of Distill Ventures, a subsidiary of drinks behemoth Diageo, Starward has become one of the most recognisable Australian whisky brands and is now exporting into international markets.

But Australia’s most revered whisky brand is almost certainly Tasmania’s Sullivans Cove. In a watershed moment for the local industry, a single cask of Sullivans Cove French Oak was awarded world’s best single malt at the World Whiskies Awards in London in 2014 – the first time a whisky outside Scotland or Japan had picked up the accolade. The award has since catapulted Sullivans Cove, and Australian whisky more generally, on to the world stage.

Now, large drinks companies are making and releasing Australian whiskies. Casella Family Brands, producers of Yellow Tail, recently launched Morris Whisky, making brilliant use of Morris’s famous fortified wine casks. In South Australia, casks from some of the world’s top wine producers are now being used to create richly flavoured single malt whiskies – Fleurieu, Iniquity and 5Nines among them. 

Up in the Adelaide Hills, Sacha La Forgia’s 78 Degrees Native Grain Whiskey, flavoured with native weeping grass, offers a more experimental, local interpretation. Other distilleries, like Backwoods Distilling Co. in Victoria, are even releasing native wood single malt and rye whiskies matured in casks made of red gum. For those with a taste for single malt and rye whiskies, Sydney’s vaunted Archie Rose Distilling Co. has developed a highly sophisticated approach to creating both styles.

From the traditional to the experimental, Australian whisky has become so diverse in style and taste that it’s difficult to easily summarise. As new distilleries continue to materialise and established producers ramp up production, Australia will continue to cement its reputation as one of the world’s major whisky nations. 

Taste the breadth and diversity of Australian whisky at Three Bottle Man (Sydney Harbour Marriott) and Curious (W Melbourne).