Sun, Dec 07, 2014 page14

• World’s No. 1 single malt puts Tasmania on whisky map

  Clean water, good weather, quality barley and peat fields make the Australian state ideal for making the drink, conditions that one distillery has mixed with old-world distillation to international acclaim

  • By Glenda Kwek / AFP, HOBART, Australia
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  Tucked away between rolling hills dotted with sheep and winding roads taking wine lovers to vineyards is a nondescript, white warehouse with small, square windows.

  The modest-looking building gives no hint about what lies within its four walls, except for a small sign hanging on a fence that says “Sullivans Cove,” signaling the home of the makers of a whisky recently anointed the world’s best single malt.

  Made with barley and fresh water, and matured in barrels in Tasmania off Australia’s southern coast, Sullivans Cove is among a new breed of whisky makers in the country’s smallest state that are making waves on the international stage.

  

  A bottle of Sullivans Cove single cask malt whisky stands on a barrel at the Sullivans Cove distillery in Cambridge on the outskirts of the Tasmanian city of Hobart on Nov. 19. The French Oak cask batch of the dram was named the world’s best single malt by Whisky Magazine in March. Warning: Excessive consumption of alcohol can damage your health

  Photo: AFP

  “It’s an old-fashioned style of whisky and I think when the judges tasted it, it appealed to them,” owner Patrick Maguire said about the 13-year-old single malt he and several colleagues distilled, which won the top accolade at Whisky Magazine’s World Whisky Awards in March.

  “It’s got all the structure there: the mouth-fill, the creaminess, all these things that aren’t in so many whiskies these days because they are mass-produced — and that’s the difference, I think,” he said.

  Influential international whisky expert Jim Murray, who rates the Tasmanian tipples highly, has also praised the casks — all second-hand and previously used to keep other wines and spirits — as being key ingredients in their success.

  

  Patrick Maguire, left, and his brother, Bruce, sit on casks of their single malt on Nov. 19 as they are interviewed at the Sullivans Cove distillery in Cambridge, Tasmania. Warning: Excessive consumption of alcohol can damage your health

  Photo: AFP

  Scotland has long been known as the spiritual home of whisky, while Ireland, the US, Canada and more recently Japan are viewed as established markets.

  Yet while some may see Tasmania’s producers as upstarts mingling with the old masters, Bill Lark — regarded as the grandfather of Australian whisky — said the southern state had a budding industry in the 1820s before more pressing concerns ended it.

  “Sydney was starving and they started sending messages to Hobart saying: ‘We need your barley for food, stop using it for whisky, send it to Sydney,’” the 60-year-old said as he cradled a glass of single malt in his bar alongside Hobart’s harbor.

  

  Whisky bottles are filled and labelled at the Sullivans Cove distillery in Cambridge, Tasmania, on Nov. 19. Warning: Excessive consumption of alcohol can damage your health

  Photo: AFP

  “There was a lot of pressure borne on the governor of the day and in 1830, he agreed to raise the level of excise so high in Hobart that six of the seven distilleries closed,” Lark said.

  The remaining producer briefly benefited before the next governor, John Franklin, imposed a total ban on distillation in 1839.

  Fast-forward one-and-a-half centuries to 1992. Lark said his wife, Lyn, were drinking whisky in the state’s highlands when they started to wonder why Tasmania did not make the spirit even though it had “very good barley, beautifully clean water, a wonderful climate ... and peat fields.”

  The Larks managed to persuade a local politician to help amend a 1901 law that discouraged boutique breweries and bought a A$65 (US$54) still to make whisky in their home.

  Awards and international recognition followed, and two decades later, Lark’s business has 18 staff and turns over millions of dollars each year. Dozens of other producers have popped up in Tasmania and on the Australian mainland, catching the attention of whisky critics and connoisseurs around the world.

  Maguire, 57, said early fans of Sullivans Cove whiskies were from France and the Netherlands, before interest picked up in countries as far flung as New Caledonia, the United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong and Britain.

  Domestic consumption has also increased sharply and the biggest challenge facing the producers now is not getting aficionados to drink their drams, but to meet the explosion in demand.

  Lark produces about 25,000 bottles a year, which he hopes to increase to 60,000 bottles in eight years. Sullivans Cove releases 18,000 bottles a year and runs such a tight operation that when its whisky was chosen as the world’s best, the distiller only had three bottles left from the winning French Oak barrel.

  In contrast, British drinks giant Diageo PLC — the world’s biggest producer — sells more than 120 million bottles of Johnnie Walker scotch each year.

  Lark and Maguire both believe moving toward a mass-produced product would compromise the hand-crafted nature of their whisky, which they say is essential to their brands.

  “I’ve got a cupboard full of Scotch and Irish and Japanese whiskies at home and I love them — they are all good whiskies,” Maguire said. “But a lot of them are mass-produced and they don’t have the same luxury we’ve got of having the time to do things slowly in the old-fashioned way ... which retains all the natural things that should be in a whisky.”
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