Spinning Demons and Whisky

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Imagine a place that is home to lavish fields, clean spring water, and untapped peat. You’d rightly assume that this place is the ideal distilling ground for fine whisky. But what if it was also teeming with hippies, wallabies, and spinning devils?

Despite being more famous from Looney Tunes, Tasmania has quickly become the hub for Australian whisky. A descendant of Scotch thanks to all the prisoners the British sent over, they’ve been distilling since 1822 using locally grown barley and a little bit of rye too.

However, it’s history has been fraught and sparse. In 1838, after the 15-years had just started flowing, Governor John Franklin imposed a form of Prohibition that forbid the production of whisky for well over a century thanks to the input of his disapproving wife.

Strict regulations remained in place until whisky pioneer Bill Lark decided to fight back and restore the short-lived greatness of the tiny Australian island. In 1992, despite having no experience as a distiller, he and his wife, Lyn, were granted a license to do just that. They were confused for a moment, until Bill got a call from the Glenfarclas distillery in Scotland, who said they could teach him how to produce the good stuff.

They bought some cheap gear and got to work, eventually releasing the inaugural Lark Distillery Single Malt in 1998. Business started to boom, so they quit their day jobs and starting whiskying full time!

By this time, other people had started to catch on to this beautiful untapped market, and there were six distilleries on the island state by the turn of the millennia. But Lark distillery has remained at the centre, and are growing exponentially.

And in a beautiful display of camaraderie, they released a whisky that had been finished in a 1992 Glenfarclas cask, celebrating the phone call that started it all. Their products page is a fascinating read in itself, with whisky finished in fortified wine casks and ‘mince-pie aged’ Christmas whisky (we’ll leave that one up for interpretation).

So next time you hear Tasmania, and you think of the slobbering, spinning monster - just remember that it’s all worth it. There’s whisky there too.

TRIVIA

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