Originally reported by Eli Greenblat of the Australian
Crafty Spirits and Greenbanks Whisky Co founders, from left, John Slattery, Hugh Roxburgh and Tim Salt.
Tasmanian whisky has a problem. It’s not the taste, mind you. The whiskies flowing from the Apple Isle rank among the world’s best, thanks to pristine water, an ideal climate for ageing whisky in wood, and a growing local cadre of expert distillers and artisans assembled over decades.
Rather, the challenge facing this young industry is supply. Put simply, Tasmania hasn’t yet built the fermentation, distilling and storing capacity, nor the warehouse space, to produce whisky at scale. This has kept Tasmanian whisky bottles at painfully high price points and made them uncompetitive on the shelf beside comparably aged Scottish and Japanese rivals. Investors, whisky drinkers and tourists love the Tassie whisky story, but volumes remain stubbornly constrained.
This is the gap Crafty Spirits, via its new distillery in Hobart, Greenbanks Tasmanian Whisky Co, believes it can solve. Backed by a Sydney wealth adviser, the former boss of Johnnie Walker in Australia and a renowned whisky maker, it already has whisky in 1,500 200-litre barrels due to mature in June 2026 at its new and sizeable facility as it prepares for a global launch, possibly in 2027 or 2028.
Early tastings of the slowly maturing whisky are promising, its backers say, helped in part by Tasmania’s mix of cold but dry weather which is even more conducive to perfecting whisky than the equally cold but sodden Highlands of Scotland.
“Man walks into a bar” is often the start to a joke, but for the backers of Greenbanks it was also the inspiration to make top-shelf quality Tasmanian whisky that could match it with the power brands of the liquor industry.
“I thought it was just fascinating a number of years ago when you walked into any bar, restaurant or pub in Australia and you looked behind the back bar, there was nothing there that was distinctively Australian, probably other than Bundaberg Rum,” says Hugh Roxburgh, co-founder of Crafty Spirits, whose finance career has stretched from UBS and Wilsons Advisory to founding wealth manager Bellevue Private Investments.
“You had Russian vodkas and English gins, Scottish whiskies and American whiskies. So I saw a big opportunity there in dark spirits and in whisky. And I just loved whisky and the process of making whisky. It’s such a tangible production process, from the grain all the way to the spirit and the barrels, and that’s got me exploring opportunities in whisky.”
This article was originally published in the Australian, continue reading it here.
