Australia
The island renaissance
Distilling came back from a 153-year Tasmanian ban to become one of whisky's liveliest frontiers — wine casks, brewing barley and weather that ages spirit in fast-forward.
Regions
Tasmania
The apple isle's malt revival
Distilling was banned in Tasmania in 1838 and stayed banned for 153 years — until Bill Lark, sharing a dram on a trout-fishing trip, wondered why an island with brilliant barley, soft water and highland peat made no whisky. He talked the law over in 1992, and everything Australian whisky has become flows from that licence. Today more than twenty distilleries dot the island, and Sullivans Cove's 2014 crown as world's best single malt announced the revival to everyone.
2 distilleries
The Southeast
New world, wine casks
Melbourne and Sydney answer Tasmania's Scottish instincts with something defiantly local. Starward matures its malt entirely in fresh Australian wine barrels — shiraz, cabernet, apera — trucked wet from the wine country a day's drive away, and lets Melbourne's four-seasons-in-a-day weather work the casks hard. In Sydney, Archie Rose — the city's first new distillery since 1853 — rebuilt rye whisky around malted rye and took a world title with it inside six years.
2 distilleries