Whisky Galore around Hobart

[Kyle]It was Australia Day, which is what they call July Fourth here. We still had the car, and Maryanne had accidentally discovered that one of the local whisky distilleries was offering free tastings in honor of the holiday, so it wasn’t long before she had arranged a whole Whisky Tour Day for us. She even appointed herself driver so that I could spend the day free from worry about the size or number of the various samples. Note: Tasmanian Whisky is spelled without the ‘e’ because of the area's leaning more to the Scottish than Irish heritage.

I was expecting the Tassie stuff to be a little rough, like when we did a tasting in Bruny Island back in 2020. In fact, it was all very well done. The trick, it seems, is to go for the good stuff. A bottle of most of the varieties I tasted generally sells for about twice what Maryanne and I blow on our one very special, only-on-rare occasions Scottish favorites. That is already several times more than our usual stuff (what the character Jack Donaghy from the TV show “30 Rock” calls “shower scotch”) Alas, we didn’t end up with any Tasmanian whisky to take home, since the same money could buy more of our Scottish whiskies that I like even better. Later, we regretted not splurging on a bottle from Shene Distilleries. It was delicious. Shene had recently been bought out by Lark and the official takeover was next week. Then the Shene brand will be no more.

We started at the picturesque and tasty Shene distillery in Pontville - it was a hit, and we spent some time there since the portions were quite generous and there was plenty to see.

The Old Kempton Distillery in Kempton was once known as Redlands (it's moved around a bit too). For Australia Day the tour and tasting were unexpectedly free to a lucky few, so we made sure to spend a little in the shop before we left.

Our final distillery was Sullivans Cove - with a much more modern tasting room (it was a portacabin, but they tried)

We ended the day with a trip to two different whisky bars (The Still and Lark), and topped that off with a Whisky ice cream from the floating "Van Diemens Land Creamery" at Constitution Dock

[Maryanne]If you allow for the time difference, then Australia Day (26th January) here in Oz coincided with Burns Night back in Scotland (25th January) so it seemed the perfect day to taste a wee dram (or more). They do things differently around here. All the distilleries we've visited in Tasmania are small scale, small runs. Tasmanian whisky is received so well internationally, it's not surprising that low supply and high demand results in a price hike when compared with Scottish whisky. Here, they rarely age the whisky as long in the barrels as they would in Scotland. The laws are different, but they also say it is because the storage conditions are much harsher (think walled sheds with lots of temperature fluctuations) and that the evaporation rate (Angel's share) is triple (or more) than what you'd find in a traditional Scottish bond storage facility - so they don't need to age it so long to get the quality. Some (Lark) don't even put the age on the bottle of their single malts. I'd say try some and decide for yourself!