Andrew Derbidge

Think back to your final year of high school. (For the purposes of this allegory, I’ll assume most readers did a year of kindergarten, six years of primary school, and six years of high school). Your 13 years of hard slog took many twists and turns, and as you neared the end, you chose different subjects to suit your interests and ambitions. And when you finally sat your last exam and left school, you were in a very different space and place to the one you were in when your journey first started 13 years earlier.

And that, ladies and gents, is the story of 147.1. It’s been – give or take – a 13 year journey for an Australian whisky to wear the SMWS label, and the final result is very different to what was perhaps envisaged at the start. For, as many of you will have deduced, when the quest to bottle an Australian whisky first gathered steam, the distillery that would be assigned SMWS code 147 did not even exist!

I assumed the role of Cellarmaster in late 2005, and it wasn’t too long before the notion of bottling an Australian whisky was on the cards. It was discussed and toyed with on several fronts, but it wasn’t until 2008 when Simon Downs – the Society’s Whisky Manager in Edinburgh at the time – confirmed “let’s do this”. There were, however, some obstacles in the way, and some of those had a context which is perhaps difficult to appreciate today. For starters, there were only four or five distilleries around that you could actually deal with who had stock that was relatively mature. There was then the issue of volume: There were very few 200 litre barrels being filled, and – for where the Society was at at that time – there was little point or interest in bottling a 100 litre cask that had already had some thirsty angels get stuck in. And, to be entirely honest, there were issues with quality. We rejected plenty here at the first pass. Then, for those candidates that we felt might have a chance, we sent samples to the main tasting panel in Scotland, where they were subsequently deemed not good enough. We spun our wheels for a while.

Interest and efforts to bottle an Aussie cask grew between 2011 and 2015, and a number of the Society’s directors from Scotland flew out to Australia and visited some of the more favoured distilleries during this time. However, those same issues of both quality and volume continued to hinder progress. Lest this be misinterpreted, I can assure you there were distilleries making excellent spirit and producing stunning casks – but it was evident that if a distillery identified a superb cask, they were keeping it for their own brand and label. It seems it was the second tier or casks from “failed experiments” that they were prepared to sell to the Society. By 2016, a new issue arose that made bottling an Australian whisky for the Society a challenge: Price. In the wake of the World’s Best Single Malt award going to Sullivans Cove in 2014, interest and demand in the category was rising, and distilleries could charge more for their whisky than they’d been accustomed to during the start-up years. For the established distilleries who’d been doing it tough for a decade and more, there was finally an opportunity and market for them to make money, and the notion of selling whisky wholesale or discounted to a third party like the Society was an unattractive proposition for most of the players. I’ve shared this story previously in Outturn, but we did have the somewhat amusing situation a few years back when one of the Tasmanian distilleries wanted to sell a cask to the Society at a price that was higher than what we’d just paid to acquire rare, ex-sherry casks of aged Karuizawa! (One of the rarest, most collectible, and most expensive whiskies from a closed distillery in Japan). Commercial realities played out.

And, so, it has been a long, winding road for our first Aussie cask to make it to an Outturn. Like our own experiences through school, there were trips and bumps along the way; there were some electives that we didn’t end up needing at the end; and the dog definitely ate our homework once or twice. I’m pleased to share that it won’t be such a tough journey for our second cask: 148.1 has already been bottled and is waiting in the wings also.

Happy graduation.

Cheers

Andrew Derbidge ~ Director, Cellarmaster & NSW Manager