Region & History

In 1969, the country's first still stood on a farm near Dunedin: the Baker family founded Willowbank Distillery, the southernmost distillery in the world. Regular production only began in 1974, and the whisky was bottled under the name Wilson's.

In 1981, the Seagram group bought the distillery and replaced the stainless steel equipment with copper pot stills, as is customary in Scotland. The new whisky was called Lammerlaw, named after the mountain range that supplied the distilling water.

Sixteen years later, it was over. Seagram sold to the Australian group Foster's in 1997, and the distillery was shut down and dismantled. The two copper pots and the four column stills for grain whisky were exported to Fiji, where they have been distilling rum ever since.

What remained were hundreds of casks made from American bourbon oak, which simply kept maturing with no one responsible for them. Winemakers Warren and Deb Preston bought the stock and brought it to the historic harbour district of Oamaru, where they transferred part of it into French wine casks. This find became the foundation of the New Zealand Whisky Collection.

Two decades after Willowbank closed, a second attempt began in New Zealand, this time at two ends of the country simultaneously. In Riverhead near Auckland, Matt Thomson set up his first commercial still in 2014, after distilling at home since 2005. In Central Otago, former lawyer Desiree Reid founded Cardrona Distillery in 2011; spirit first flowed from her stills in 2015, and in 2020 Just Hatched became the first bottling of their own to reach the market.