Region & History

Between 1838 and 1992, nobody in Tasmania was officially allowed to distill whisky. The reason was almost mundane: Lady Jane Franklin, wife of Governor John Franklin, disapproved of alcohol. She pushed her husband to ban distilling on the island. Before that, there had been far more operations here. Since the Sorell Distillery opened in 1822, at least sixteen legal distilleries had been counted, plus countless illegal ones.

A law passed in 1901 technically lifted the ban on paper, but it required stills with a capacity of at least 2,700 liters. For anyone wanting to make whisky on a small scale, this remained practically impossible. As a result, Tasmania went almost another century without its own single malt—despite the island having everything Scotland has.

That changed in 1989, on a trout fishing trip in the Tasmanian highlands. Bill Lark found himself wondering why nobody was distilling malt whisky from the clear water, local barley, and surrounding peat bogs. The question wouldn't leave him alone. He started writing letters and calling members of parliament until the law allowed an exception for smaller stills.

In 1992, Lark founded his distillery, becoming Tasmania's first fully licensed distillery since the 1838 ban. He started out with his wife in their own kitchen, using a still with a capacity of twenty liters. Today, Lark works with a 1,800-liter wash still and a 1,200-liter spirit still, both still made of copper.

Others followed quickly. Sullivans Cove joined in 1994, in Cambridge near Hobart. Hellyers Road followed in 1997 in Burnie, founded by a group of dairy farmers. The Old Hobart Distillery came along in 2005, which later became the Overeem brand. In 2014, Sullivans Cove claimed the title of World's Best Single Malt with a French oak cask. In 2018 and 2019, the distillery also won—uniquely in the world—the award for Best Single Cask twice.

Today, Tasmania counts well over two dozen distilleries, on an island smaller than Bavaria. For a region that wasn't allowed to distill anything at all for 154 years, that's a remarkably steep curve.