South Australia set to steal Tassie's whisky crown

South Australia's burgeoning whisky industry wants to steal Tasmania's crown as the home of the country's best whisky.

Among the distillers leading the charge is the former Steam Exchange brewery at Goolwa, which has transformed into Fleurieu Distillery.

Owner Gareth Andrews started making craft beer in 2004, but decided to move into distilling and released his first single malt whisky last year. 

He says the State is perfectly suited to whisky production. “We’ve got the barley, we’ve got the climate, so everything’s good,” he explained to The Lead last year. 

Andrews was inspired one of his favourite distilleries, Caol Ila on Islay, and used a scaled down version of its still to produce his first batch, which then matures in ex-Seppeltsfield port casks for at least three and a half years.

The resulting Fleurieu Single Malt was named as one of Executive Style's 20 of the best Australian spirits to come out in 2016. Executive Style described it as "A rich, oaky and malty experience. It's a pricey drop, but will certainly appeal to collectors."

“There are plenty of Scottish whiskies out there owned by the big companies and run by accountants and they’re thin and flattened, they’re watery," Andrews tells City Mag. "So this is a return to that historic style of big, juicy single malt whiskies.”

McLaren Vale Distillery founder John Rochfort (pictured with his team), former CEO of Tasmania’s Lark Distillery, chose South Australia as his base because of the quality of its grain.

“What we’ve been able to do is work with farmers in four specific regions of South Australia – they each have their own climate that produce a different character to the grain," he tells 

“So by doing that small batch malting, every single barrel we put out will have its own provenance from the grain.”

Rochfort said access to high quality local barrels was another reason McLaren Vale was chosen as the site for the distillery.

“We’ve selected some incredible South Australian barrels with amazing history like a 90-year-old muscat cask that continually held muscat for the entire period of time – it was the same block of muscat every single season – and we’ve got our hands on some incredible port barrels as well,” he said.

The distillery will debut its first release in about 18 months.  

“We would like to think it would be a good rich, oily whisky, that’s got a lovely oily mouth feel and is rich with a really good palate feel, that’s the goal."

Meanwhile, the Tin Shed Distilling Company sold out of a batch of its Adelaide-made whisky in just six hours last year, at $130 a pop.

Owner and distiller Ian Schmidt told Adelaide Now the company had been overwhelmed by demand and was installing a new $50,000 to triple production.

“Our problem is making enough, we’ve even got people from France chasing the booze,” Schmidt said.

The business started out as Southern Coast Distillers a decade ago and released its first bottles in 2011, with Jim Murray describing one of its single malts in the 2012 edition of The Whisky Bible as "one of the most astonishing whiskies it has been my honour to taste."

A falling out between partners saw its doors close in December 2012, with two of the original distillers, Schmidt and Victor Orlow deciding to produce whisky again in 2013.

Another feather in the cap for the State is that Adelaide has been chosen to host the 2017 World Whiskies and Spirits Conference. The conference, which is the largest of its kind in the world, will bring together the industry’s international leaders between August 4-7 at the Adelaide Convention Centre.

Shadow Minister for Primary Industries and Tourism, David Ridgway, said the conference’s presence will only help to grow Australia’s distilled spirits market further.

“I am absolutely delighted to hear that South Australia will be center stage for what is the leading distilled spirits conference in the world,” Ridgway said.

“Now South Australia will have the world’s distilled industry leaders convene in its backyard, giving our distillers unprecedented access to the industry’s peak bodies and major players.”

“South Australian barley producers, logistics companies and manufacturers are just some of the local businesses set to benefit from the evolution of the distillery industry.”