By Richard Thomas If you mention the term “fake whiskey” in American whiskey circles, more likely than not you’ll find yourself in a conversation about labeling issues and so-called “Potemkin distilleries.” Yet to a broader set of whiskey fans, the term might refer to a far more disturbing trend, that of the rise of truly questionable and in some cases ...

Interview with the Award-Winning Tasmanian Distillery By Richard Thomas Sullivans Cove wasn’t the first whisky distillery to come out of Australia’s early 1990s legalization, but it got started early and has come out twenty years later at the forefront of one of the most vibrant of the world’s new national whiskey industries. The distillery now has three single malt expressions ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C+ Updated March 24, 2014 Peter Bignell’s Belgrove Distillery occupies a niche that is presently unique not just in Australia, but in international whiskey. Bio-Diesel, farm-to-still whiskey is unusual enough, but what makes Belgrove special is that is one of two distilleries making 100% rye whiskey in a place that isn’t in North America, and the ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: C Although whiskey distilling came strangely late to Australia, the continent-country south of the equator has been making big strides since the legal obstacles were cleared away in the 1990s. Whereas most countries follow either the Scots-Irish model of relying heavily on malted barley or the North American mixed mashbill model, Australia does both… or at ...

By Richard Thomas Rating: B- Like Canadians and Americans, Australians trace some of their roots back to the distilling nations of Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The only real reason Australia lacked a well-established whiskey industry was because whiskey distillation was illegal until the 1990s, so the legalization of distillation prompted the founding of Australia’s first distilleries. Since then, the Australian ...