Australia

Australia is the only island continent, the sixth largest country in the world, where 60 per cent of the population huddle around five coastal cities. It is a land of droughts and flooding rains. A landscape of tropical jungles, deserts to snowy alpine mountains, where sugar cane plantations and vineyards are as bountiful as the fields of grain. It should come as no surprise the similar extremes can be found in Australian whisky. These extremes make Australia's whiskies fascinating, diverse and surprising.

Whisky production has been continuous in Australia since 1822, becoming the fourth largest whisky-producing country between 1920 and 1970. At the genesis of the new micro-distilling trend the last of the large column and pots distilleries closed in the 1990s. One of these late 19th century distilleries was the largest malt whisky distillery in the world in the 1920s with a massive 220,000-litre mash tun. Australia’s boutique micro-distilling movement started back in the 1990s; today over 100 distilleries make whisky in Australia. Most distilleries here are small and often infrequent in their production, which is another Australian whisky quirk, due to financial constraints, although a few large ones dominate production and sales (STARWARD, Hellyers Road). The industry redux began in Tasmania in 1992 (Sullivans Cove, Small Concern) and within a few years, new distilleries soon mushroomed across the mainland (Smith's 1997 in South Australia, Bakery Hill 1999 Victoria); now three-quarters of the whisky distilleries are located between the mainland's east and west coasts. At present, over 90 per cent is malt whisky; however, that's changing as over a dozen distilleries have moved into other grains and mash bills in recent years. Western Australian and New South Wales distilleries have adopted rye, corn, wheat and Bourbon-like mash bills. Bourbon is a protected geographic indication, so these whiskies are marketed as American style spirit or sour mash.