Australian Whisky, Chris Middleton

AUSTRALIA

HAS NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD

Australians hold a unique place in the world of whisky. Every year since the 1880s, whisky has been our most popular spirit. No other country has crowned whisky the king of spirits every year for over 130 years. Today, whisky still commands a dominant 45 per cent of the total spirits consumed. During this reign, whisky has fought off the arrival of new spirit categories arriving after the Second World War, with the influx of Eastern European and Mediterranean immigrants, vodka and ouzo, followed by white rum, tequila and mezcal, and now cachaça, pisco and baijiu. Regardless of our ethnic composition, we remain a whisky nation.

WORDS CHRIS MIDDLETON

With each generation whisky fashions change, from Scotch to Australian whisky, back to Scotch and now bourbon whisky. So too consumption patterns and how we drink whisky change. As whisky is being rediscovered, from Baby Boomers to Millennials, it’s the cocktail trend and sipping whiskies that are creating renewed interest. Counterintuitively, our per capita consumption of whisky is declining. In other words, as the population increases, new cohorts enter and older ones live longer, whisky is not keeping pace. In recent years, whisky case sales have declined, yet the amount of money we spend has upsurged. The reason: we want to drink better whiskies. The smaller premium segments are enjoying double-digit growth, while the voluminous mainstream and economy segments wane.

Over the past decade, segments like malt whisky have skyrocketed fivefold, albeit from a small base. This is good news for the fledgeling craft malt whisky distillers, who can catch a ride on this consumer malt and premium whisky wave. Bourbon whiskey, which commands over half of the whisky consumption in Australia, has seen its premium segment grow by 40 per cent while the lower segments decline. Also, over the past 10 years, the major distilleries in Scotland and America have invested billions of dollars to significantly increase their capacity to tap into this global whisky boom. Joining, if not stimulating, this demand is the arrival of small craft distilleries worldwide; they too have increased more than fivefold since 2008. Fifty countries are making whisky today, a far cry from a dozen counties in the 1980s. Following the rapid expansion in the distilling industry, over a thousand new whisky brands, and even more new line extensions released from existing brands, are hitting the market. Never before have we had such choice, competitive prices, and outstanding styles of whisky to drink, from Taiwan to Sweden, Scotland to Kentucky. This boom is described as whisky’s new ‘Golden Age’. Much of it is high quality at good value, as advances in science, technology and inventiveness push whisky into new and exciting directions, from grain to wood.

The established international brands continue to dominate our whisky landscape, with the three top brands holding half of the total whisky sales. In the small malt segment, five malt brands dominate. Attention is being garnered by the new craft segment, which has carved out a noisy half per cent share in the whisky category. Craft is the amorphous term attributed to micro-distilleries and nano startups that have populated the whisky landscape over the past two decades. Their smaller scale operation and more manual resourcing have conferred on them the perception of

being more artisan than significant distilleries. In marketing parlance, provenance and authenticity make craft whiskies more popular with younger drinkers seeking to discover a brand, especially as the cocktail phenomenon sweeps the night economy. Marketing the provenance to a town, suburb or district, sourcing local ingredients and being operated by locals spurs in the consumer a sense of small, local and intimate, earning them the ‘craft’ moniker.

As Australia’s sizeable industrial whisky distilleries were shutting-down, the new small craft movement was in ideation. By the mid1990s, the old Australian whisky brands that dominated sales for decades disappeared, from both the liquor shelves and memory: Corio, Four Seasons, Bond 7, etc. As the last of the large distilleries silenced their stills, it was school teachers, gun store owners, property developers, plumbers and publicans who put their hands to experimental whisky distilling. It was as if a bushfire had wiped out the old hardwood trees and new shoots reappeared from their ashes. Most of these new craft whiskies were poorly made, young whiskies that struggled in the 21st century. Some of these distilleries closed, however persistence and outsider help slowly improved the quality. Twenty years later, some labels were winning awards in competitions. The success of these pioneers and the low barriers to entry attracted dozens of wannabe distillers. Some were looking for a sea change, others to lure tourists to a food stop and, for younger recruits, a different and romantic career path beckoned. The transmission of knowledge and skills proliferated, with specialist suppliers like still fabricators, coopers and maltsters serving this demand. From 10 whisky distillery start-ups in 2005, a hundred operate or are in development in Australia today.

In 2018, spirit production is projected to exceed one million litres of pure alcohol. The six largest distilleries generate over two-thirds of this spirit. By 2021, capacity could increase by another four million litres, as significant plant upgrades and new large distilleries are erected to capitalise on this current upswing. Australia, along with the rest of the world is experiencing an exciting and expansive whisky era. There are extraordinarily good, high calibre new whiskies released almost every day, and the major distilleries keep improving their international brands. The massive leaps in world production and entry by new players mean prices, quality and choice will remain very competitive. The whisky drinker has never had it so good.

TEN LITTLE-KNOWN AUSTRALIAN WHISKY FACTOIDS

• Australia was the fifth largest whisky producing nation in the world until the 1960s, when Japan moved up the rankings: 1. Scotland, 2. US, 3.

Canada, 4. Ireland.

• Today, Australian whisky represents less than 0.03 per cent of total world whisky sales, excluding Indian and Thai molasses-based whiskies.

• Australian whisky holds 0.3 per cent of the whisky drunk, yet Australians drink over 5 per cent of the global whisky (excluding India and

Thai whisky made with molasses).

• About 100 distilleries make whisky, two-thirds of the sales are from STARWARD, Hellyers Road and Limeburners.

• In the 1920s, Australia had the largest malt whisky distillery in the world, Federal Distillery, in Port Melbourne. It also had the world’s largest mash tun at 2.75 million litres.

• Until 1994, two of Australia’s largest grain whisky distilleries quietly operated in Botany, Sydney and Nuriootpa in the Barossa Valley. Seagram’s

Continental and United Distillers closed these distilleries as the first nano-malt whiskies started.

• Australia has the highest per capita consumption of bourbon in the world, 2.5 times more than the US.

• In 1925, the number one selling brand of whisky in Australia was Old Court. It was an Australian blended malt whisky, the first and only time a malt whisky brand was a market leader anywhere in the world.

• The first Australian whisky was made at

Parramatta by the Webb brothers in 1793; by 1796 distilling was banned until 1822.

• Australia was the UK’s top export market for

Scotch whisky every year from 1880 to 1939.

After the Second World War, Australian whisky brands held 75% of the local whisky market.