Distilling

Some stills on the island could fit into a large kitchen. Others would fill an entire warehouse. At Lark in Hobart, a 1,800-litre wash still pre-distills the mash. A 1,200-litre spirit still then takes over for the second run, both made of copper and both watched over by hand.

Bill Lark started with a still holding twenty litres, sitting in his own kitchen. The leap from there to today's setups is enormous. It shows just how much Tasmania's whisky scene has grown from small beginnings, not from grand investor plans.

A striking exception is Hellyers Road in the northwest. Instead of a small copper pot, the distillery runs a still with a 60,000-litre capacity, charged with 42,000 litres. This is one of the largest stills in the country. Hellyers Road was founded in 1997 by a group of dairy farmers.

For visitors, Hellyers Road also runs its so-called Copper Dog system. Guests can fill their own whisky straight from the cask into a bottle. This combines the industrial scale of the setup with the same hands-on approach found elsewhere across the island.

The rest of the island sits between these two extremes: small, often family-run houses like Overeem or Sullivans Cove. They distil in modest quantities and bottle each cask individually. Two stills are usually all they need.

Double distillation is standard on the island, just as it is in Scotland. Only the size of the equipment differs from house to house.