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Beyond The Barrel: Heartwood’s Tim Duckett On Australian Whisky
386 Plays10 days ago
“Our isolation leads to innovation.”
In the last of the episodes recorded at the inaugural Grainstock in the Riverina in October, we take a sidestep into the world of spirits, welcoming one of Australian whisky’s true characters onto the show.
Tim Duckett, who grew up on a farm in Tasmania’s North West, bought his first barrels of whisky back in 1999, so has been both participant in and observer of the rise of the local industry.
The whiskies he releases under the Heartwood banner are sought-after the world over, often selling out batches in advance, admired for their consistency of quality, renowned for the might of their impact, and noted for the humour found in their names and labels. Since 2015, he’s also released lower-ABV, typically more approachable whiskies under the Tasmanian Independent Bottlers banner.
An outspoken commentator on the industry, one unafraid to ruffle feathers, he joined us to reflect on his own life in whisky since meeting Lyn and Bill Lark in its fledgling days, how Australian whisky is regarded globally, the current issues that have brought some businesses down – not unlike in the beer world, the need for federal support, and the difficulty in defining an Australian characteristic beyond “We give it a crack” in a vast country where distillers operate in such varied climes.
James is joined by a guest co-host this week too. Luke McCarthy is one of the country’s most respect drinks writers, recently penned a piece for us on the trials and tribulations of the Australian whisky industry, and provides background and context ahead of the main interview.
Start of segments:
- 10:32 – Tim Duckett Part 1
- 37:06 – Tim Duckett Part 2
To find out more about featuring on The Crafty Pint Podcast or otherwise partnering with The Crafty Pint, contact craig@craftypint.com.
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Transcript
Introduction and Format Change
00:00:05
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Crafty Pint podcast. I'm James and no will with me this week. We've got a slightly different show and as such a slightly different intro. um I have with me instead Luke McCarthy, one of the country's leading drinks writers specializing in whiskey and spirits.
00:00:21
Speaker
um Former bartender at some of the country's best whiskey bars, potentially future bartender and educator as well. um Avid readers of The Crafty Pint will have read one of Luke's articles for us a few weeks ago on the trials and tribulations of the Australian whiskey industry.
Luke McCarthy's Background and Contributions
00:00:37
Speaker
And we took the opportunity when at Grainstock recently where there were both brewers and distillers and bakers for that matter there to sit down with with I guess one of the real characters from the the local whiskey industry for a chat which is this week's podcast. and Before we get to that though, um hello Luke.
00:00:53
Speaker
Hello, great to be with you mate, thanks for having me. Yeah, and not at all. um Yes, I figured before we get to the main chat with Tim, be good to learn a bit more about yourself, your sort of history as a writer, journo and with, I guess, your connection with the spirits world. Did that of start as a behind the bar or how did how did it all come about? I like connection to the spirits world coming just off Halloween. um Yeah, no, it started, I started, well, i studied a Bachelor of Writing Literature before and sort of during and after I was in bars and working in bars and And I started a bar called Shea Regine in 2012, the forerunner to whiskey and ailments. And yeah, very quickly, everything exploded with whiskey here in Australia and globally. It probably kicked off a little bit before that internationally. And so, yeah we've suddenly found ourselves in this like swarming mosh pit of amazing whisky-ness that just exploded. and
00:01:41
Speaker
Swarming mosh pit of amazing whisky-ness sounds like it could be an O.C.' 's album or something. Yeah, it was like that. because the first the first six months of Whiskey Enalment was insane. yeah Brooke Jules, Evan, myself, we yeah yeah we were pushed the limit. Four of us just operated. Did you see what was coming? you Were you aware that there was going to, obviously, you know there was a huge whiskey global industry, well-established, but could you see we feel what was happening locally at the time? Absolutely. we we could see Yeah, we could feel it. um There was huge international interest in what was happening in Australia. And so I mean, God, within that four five year period, we had some of the top people in whiskey all around the world come into that bar. And some incredible beer events that we were able to put on as well. i remember some of the early Brooklyn ones during Good Beer Week, you know, Garrett Oliver coming. The Garret Older Lunders. That's still probably like the tops for me in terms of tastings. That was absolutely
Tim Duckett's Role in the Whiskey Industry
00:02:28
Speaker
incredible. And right around that time of that tasting, actually, I got asked ah to write, well, I guess the National Drinks column for the Age of Cinemone Herald, which was still a big, was sort of you know, towards the death of print then. Yeah.
00:02:39
Speaker
and so I was writing for Epicure at the same time. And then everything sort of ah snowballed from there. Not long after that, i published a book, The Australian Spirits Guide, which was sort of the first, but yeah bizarrely the first book to ever look into Australian spirits production in its own right. And yeah, it's just continued on from there through writing for various publications overseas, um developing a website here. And yeah, with the publication recently of of a couple more books on spirits. So yeah, it's all happening.
00:03:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I guess if people hadn't read the article, which we'll link to in the show notes for this week anyway, sort of summarise what you were sort of getting across with the piece that you wrote for us a few weeks ago.
00:03:17
Speaker
Yeah, that was a fascinating one um because, you know, as we've discussed and I think as a lot of people are aware, there are some similarities between what's happened with craft beer and and what's happened with the Australian spirits, especially whiskey market. Yeah.
00:03:29
Speaker
And so we're trying to sort of look at those links and connections and commonalities, open them up and chart where Australian whiskey has come from and and and where it might be going. um Look, there I think there are some there are some concerns from some people in the industry about, I guess, the growth, or the lack of growth or what's going to happen to certain businesses that might have been, um you know, cutting it fine prior to COVID. um I don't necessarily see it that way. i Tim, who we're going to introduce in a moment, um you know there are some people in the industry who have, I guess, some some concerns. I think it comes from a point of care generally about hopefully the the industry continuing to grow and and continuing to move forward. And that's what we were sort of looking to to get at in the article, looking at some of the some of the recent VAs within within the distilling world, some of the businesses um that have struggled. um
00:04:14
Speaker
The beauty of it is there's still so much brilliance to get around in terms of Australian whiskey Australian spirits. um The push over the next two to three years that I'm seeing in terms of marketing and spreading Australian spirits to you know both local and international audiences is going to be really exciting to get around. So yeah, trying to cut capture that so some of that in the article, I think we we pretty much got there. so Yeah, great. and And Tim was one of the people you spoke to for the article, school who's our main guest this week. Do you want to tell us a little bit about Tim Duckett and why you spoke to him for the piece?
00:04:44
Speaker
Yeah, absolute character. Tim Dougherty. Anyone who knows him knows that yeah he's fantastic to be around. He has a lot to say. i tend I tend to think he puts his opinion forward really, really well and really intelligently. Maybe after a few too many whiskeys, less so. um But yeah, I've known Tim since yeah that my earliest time in the in the spirits industry. One of my sort of goosebump moments was tasting his second whiskey release, Release the Beast.
00:05:08
Speaker
right out of the barrel, you know, probably low 60s. One of the most ridiculous things I've ever tasted. It was ah was a watershed bottling for Tasmanian and Australian whiskey at the time. No one had really seen anything like it. And so what Tim did in basically the late 90s, he started buying up some of the first casts that became commercially available from Larkin from Sullivan's Cove. um And he just sat on those casts for a very long time. And, you know, so Tim is an independent bottler. doesn't have his own distillery, as he points out in the interview. I'd love to claim that was deliberate in me, sort of um a bit of sort of, you know, putting myself in um in the headspace of a beer drinker, you know, not knowing the difference. But no, I just made a mistake with my very first question of the interview, which I guess, you know, starts off starts it off in the, you know, gets Tim going at least. Totally. Yeah, it hooked him straight in, didn't it?
00:05:55
Speaker
And so, yeah, what Tim has done is follow in the fashion of very famous independent bottlers overseas. So independent bottlers have a really central, pivotal, um and i guess really progressive ah role in whiskey and especially, you know, rum bottling over the last sort of 12 years.
00:06:11
Speaker
um especially, but then, you know, going well back over the last sort of three, four decades. um And so Tim, I guess, was very aware of this. Bottlers like Gordon McPhail in Scotland, um William Cadenheads, and especially the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society. um If you're in whiskey in Australia, you'll know the Scotch Malt Whiskey Society and some of the people are running that organization. They've done a great job here over many years.
00:06:32
Speaker
um I still remember vividly Tim opening a drawer full of bottles and yeah drawers full of bottles of Scott SMWS bottling some of which now are worth huge money um and very rare and so he was a devoted fan of of these particular companies and the way they went about it and i think as these cars that he had acquired in Tasmania sat there and evolved and got better and better um he then decided well you know it's time to to open them up and and release them to the public and the way he's gone about that ah since 2011 2012 has been really creative and fun and innovative and it's uh it's yeah he's basically captured the sort of spirit and ethos of of a lot of the best of the old school scottish bottlers and that's why people love him for it here
00:07:12
Speaker
Yeah, and there's certainly a bit of a sense of humor around the names and and labeling of, and it's Heartwood is his his brand? Yeah. Yeah. yeah well the two the The main brands are the two brands, but yeah. That's correct. Yeah. So his private, personal, very idiosyncratic brand is Heartwood. And he then formed Tasmanian Independent Bottlers, um you know, sort of a result of a lot of criticism because people were just like, we can't get you whiskey.
00:07:34
Speaker
It was, you know, so so highly sought after that um the volumes and the and the the wackiness and the way he went about it meant that some of the bottlings were selling out sort of four and five. in advance of him even telling people what was coming. um And so TIB was, I guess, his his progression to sort of maybe create some whiskeys that were a bit more palatable to a broader audience and then ah to also, you know, offer some more bottlings so more people could enjoy them as well. so Yeah.
00:07:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, it was a great chat. Matilde saw the morning after the first night of grain stock, but he certainly had plenty to say. um Also with this week's show, we're recording this early because our producer's on his way to visit his family in the States, so there'll be no discussion of this week's news, um I guess, but there's plenty to tuck into with Tim.
00:08:18
Speaker
And although this wasn't planned, it's actually turned out to be good timing with this week's episode as this weekend and there's a pretty special event for the Distillers all taking place Abbotsford Confort, Luke. That's right, Whiskey Abbey. Probably one of the top whiskey festivals on the Australian calendar put on by the folks at Casa De Vinos.
00:08:35
Speaker
The lineup is always incredible. um It's got a very special place, I think, in a lot of whiskey and spirits drinkers' hearts in Melbourne and probably Australia. Distillers travel from all over the country to attend and indeed are from internationally as well. So...
00:08:47
Speaker
Yeah, if you're not familiar with it and you love whiskey, I guarantee head down, you will be um treated to a smorgasbord of you know whiskey brilliance, that's for sure. Yeah, and Luke's done such a great job of convincing me to head along that I'm actually to be playing for the North Althington Blacks Vets team this weekend, which is a a real shame, ah probably for the opposition. I'm not going to try it.
00:09:09
Speaker
So that's coming up at the weekend. Luke and I will be there, possibly even Will as well if you've missed him from this week's intro.
Tim's Journey from Consulting to Whiskey
00:09:15
Speaker
um Before we get to the main show, obviously we're always looking for fresh nominations for our Bluestone Yeast Brewery of the Month, which you can do at craftypint.com slash bluestone. And also if you you'd like to nominate any good beer citizens from around the country, you can do so at craftypint.com slash rallings.
00:09:33
Speaker
um Thanks for joining us, Luke. Look forward to more chats and learning more about um the spirits world over over time. I believe you got me a bit of a reading list to tuck into over summer as well. Oh, yeah. yeah Get up to speed.
00:09:44
Speaker
um But yeah, on with the show. And if you do enjoy it, please remember to like, subscribe, rate and review. Cheers. If you're looking for the very best digitally printed beer cans in the business, you need to talk to the team at the Crafted Can Company.
00:09:59
Speaker
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00:10:12
Speaker
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00:10:33
Speaker
tim welcome to the show thank you very much um now i'm sure many of our regular audience will know of you and heartwood but for those who don't you tell us a bit about yourself and yeah the distillery Okay, so I'm going to pull you up straight away. You used the word distillery. Yes. We're not a distillery. You're a bottler.
00:10:51
Speaker
We're an independent bottler. So an independent bottler is one that buys either whiskey or new make from established distilleries and manages the product and produces the product themselves. so In our case, we buy new make from 20 distilleries in Australia and New Zealand, 25 different new makes, 25 different barrel types, mainly Australian and European fortifieds, and seven different cooperatives from around the world.
00:11:18
Speaker
And we make anything we like. And that number's increased in the last few years? No. The 25, has always been 25? Yeah, it's actually probably... We've dropped off a couple and we've picked up a few.
00:11:32
Speaker
so we were And we we're looking at some more recent distilleries on the mainland to see if we can pick some new makeup from them as well. And what brought you to this world? um Look, I was an environmental consultant working in mining and construction and did habitat restoration and degraded land repair. And I was appointed to ah the Ben Lohman Ski Field Advisory Committee. Right.
00:11:57
Speaker
a long, long time ago. And Lynn and Bill Lark actually were part owners of the lodge on top of the mountain. And I got to meet them and i and they said that they were going to make whiskey. I said, well, I'll drink it. And that's how our relation started way back then at the beginning of the industry. And when barrels first became commercially available in 1999, I started to buy them.
00:12:23
Speaker
And of course, my other business as an environmental consultant I was funding all my bad habits. So um that's the that's the origin. That's the start. ah Plus, I must as say university, always it used to sit at the university bar, a bit of a bar fly, but I'd always have a glass of water.
00:12:39
Speaker
and a whiskey and a glass of water. I probably started on Famous Graus, I reckon. And I would drink them separately. That was probably the start of the very slippery slope downhill. but but But early days in terms of Australian whiskey?
00:12:51
Speaker
Early days in terms of Australian whiskey? Yeah, in terms you you get involved, yeah. Yeah, so as I said, I purchased the first barrel in 1999. But because I had ah another business and another career,
00:13:05
Speaker
I didn't bottle until 2012 when the Mount Wellington release came out. And so I think we would say we weren't the first independent bottler to release, but we certainly established our storage and stockpile well before others.
00:13:27
Speaker
Yeah, that was a pretty interesting moment to come in when you did first bottle. it was probably that moment just before... A lot of Tasmanian incineraries lot of mainland incineraries established themselves and exploded. So you you first released at a really interesting moment. If you released a little bit earlier, would have been um interesting too. so Yeah. But like I say, whiskey is ready when it's ready.
00:13:47
Speaker
and you just you know And it is purely for us based on palate. And that seemed to be the most appropriate time for for that particular release yeah so and it was of a it was uh highland holdings origin so precursor to sullivan's cove and uh yeah it was uh it was for its time i mean i think i could make a better whiskey now but at its time at the time there was not anything really like that in the market either and the name hotwood
00:14:18
Speaker
Heartwood, oh yeah. Okay, so I'm a dairy farmer's son from the northwest coast, far northwest corner of Tasmania. High rainfalls, very productive ground, nothing like the property sizes that you see where we are around here.
00:14:33
Speaker
And um on the farms, my father had three farms, blackwoods used to grow and they had that And you'll notice on our label, our heartwood label, the tree, that's the shape they used to grow in ah out in the paddocks.
00:14:49
Speaker
And a lovely tree. So i was going to call it Blackwood Malt Whiskey Company. But there was um um Lion Nathan had a... um a winery called Blackwood now in Western Australia. So I couldn't get that. And then I thought, okay, what's another Tasmanian timber? And I went, Blackheart.
00:15:07
Speaker
Blackheart at Sassafras. No, there was a rum distillery in New Zealand called Blackheart. And then Hartwood, which ultimately is probably the better name. And that's what the staves of barrels are made from.
00:15:19
Speaker
out of the centre of a tree. So we settled on that and that became our name and the still the Blackwood logo though, the tree, was part of our our part of our marketing logo.
00:15:31
Speaker
There you go. And in terms of like, is there underlying ethos behind every, is there a goal you have with every whisky you make? Yes, there is.
00:15:43
Speaker
i mean, I think, and I'll be talking about it later today, but consistency of quality is very, very important. And I think as an industry, sometimes sometimes we forget about what's in the bottle and it's more important to do marketing. And I understand that.
00:15:59
Speaker
But ah for us, the release, the quality of our release, the quality of the whiskey in the bottle is the most important thing that we, you know, that's what we base everything on.
00:16:12
Speaker
And quite often we'll be working on whiskeys for eight or nine months and not happy with them. They go back through the system. and There's something interesting too. So a small distillery like Fanny's Bay in north ah north of Tasmania, if they've got a bad whiskey, they'll redistill it, right? Glenfinnick just hired it with sheer volume, right? ah We as an independent bottle, we own it. Mm-hmm.
00:16:35
Speaker
So we have to fix it. So there's a lot of whiskey that we reject because distilleries might paint a lovely picture that everything's beer and Skittles and all their whiskey's great.
00:16:46
Speaker
40% of our whiskey in our Bond store, and we're more selective on barrels and all sorts of and spirit than others, is not good enough to release. So we have to fix it and that's part of what we do.
00:16:58
Speaker
And so we get all our releases, there's a consistent quality. All of them hopefully are a good drink. You might like some more than others, but generally we just try and produce a good drink and
Whiskey Craftsmanship: Quality and Innovation
00:17:11
Speaker
that's it. We're not big thinkers, don't give us credit to anyone beyond that. ah Yeah, just a good drink.
00:17:16
Speaker
How do you fix something that you don't think is right? Oh, the famous duck at process. Yeah, okay. How much time is that? How long have we been in it? How long have we been in We overrun with the last one, so let's go again. How long you got?
00:17:30
Speaker
Numerous ways. um Like, ah okay, so we do an assessment of our whiskey in October and November of every year. but and all those that we think are going to nearly be ready.
00:17:42
Speaker
um Those that will be good will be identified, but also a lot of faults are exacerbated over the summer months. So we usually decant the poorer whiskeys at that time.
00:17:55
Speaker
We have a TIB whiskey called Ramblings of a Madman. ah Most of the whiskey is 7 to 10 years of age, and we identify those that are quite poor. um So we rate our whiskey from 1%.
00:18:07
Speaker
ah to five. One is bottle now and can you edit this? yeah For sure. excited Then fours and fives, fuck me, I've wasted all my money, right? And so we have to fix those. So we often will identify those with faults and then we will blend them in a large vat and just by dilution,
00:18:28
Speaker
ah You can often reduce the ore-influenced flavour profiles and things like that. And then we let it integrate and then we put that out into other first-fill barrels again.
00:18:42
Speaker
But then there are issues like tannin. What happens if if I said to you in Australia, we've been filling out with yeah our barrels at the wrong strength, 63.5%.
00:18:52
Speaker
sixty three points 4% adopted from the Scottish model. um
00:19:01
Speaker
In Australia, our ABVs go up with time. And in Scotland, they generally go down and they drop down below the 60%. And below 60%, based on the research my son's been doing, you actually absorb more barrel sugars, right? So if ours continue to go up, we probably don't, i you know, we don't get that character from the barrel. So... um You know, some of whiskies have been quite dry and they've got up to 66, 67%. We've actually been breaking some of those down in the barrel to 55 to 58%. And within two weeks, you'll notice a dramatic change.
00:19:39
Speaker
So there we go. We're repairing things that are not really that drinkable to things that are much more palatable. Let's put it that way. And we've we've got... I mean, we don't have many barrels compared to most, but we've identified 11 or 12 barrels like that and we've used that process to fix that problem.
00:19:56
Speaker
And there are lots of other problems too. that you know Dilution is a great one. Tannin, some people in Australia would put call it a... Australian characteristic. and No, it's it's a fault. It's like sucking on a fence post. But there are ways to fix it and if it hasn't gone too far.
00:20:15
Speaker
So yeah can a liquid be unfixed, unredeemable? I think some, particularly smaller cat cast maturation, you can get good whiskeys out of small cast maturation. But if you don't monitor it and go too far, and yeah, it is just undrinkable.
00:20:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yes. So just absolutely. Tannin is an acid. And if you just dip it in there and and your mouth dries out completely, you know, you've got a problem. Fence posts. Fence posts. You know, when it gets to fence post level, then you're in trouble. And, you know, I served my apprenticeship as a farmer's son, so I i know leave suck it on a fence face yeah ah know what it's like. hey um And so we've got to talk about the names.
00:20:58
Speaker
The names of the bottlings have caught a controversy over the years. They've delighted and entertained a lot of people. um how do you come up with the names maybe you can take us through some of the more creative and crazy so um some of the names look I suppose I've got to say who inspired me first.
00:21:15
Speaker
I would say Compass Box. Yeah. Righto. It was one of our base inspirations, if you like, and the Scotchmild Whiskey Society. I used to love their descriptions and love their their names, and I thought, well, can do that too.
00:21:29
Speaker
And how I name them is relate it. related to the process of making a particular whiskey and any other influences that may occur uh with with comments from people such as yourself or jewels or or other there's a bloke called ray daniel and here's here's a story for you you'll see i've got in front of you a bottle of strife for the forbidden all right With Latin underneath, I see.
00:21:58
Speaker
Sorry? With the Latin underneath as well? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's just... Yeah, my my auntie taught Latin, so why not use it? And um anyway, yeah, so basically the story for that is that I had this cask and I...
00:22:14
Speaker
And I married two Old Kempton bourbon casks together into this cask that was could it was a bourbon cask. We selected five out of 60 and it was one of those that smelled like creamy bourbon bananas.
00:22:27
Speaker
You could smell the texture, right? And I mean, you just know. You open bourbon cask, you go, fumes, don't want that one. This one, you go, fumes. Yeah, you can smell texture. So we put it into that, right? So two married, two from Old Kempton married into this this bourbon cast from Heaven Hill that smelled like creamy bourbon bananas, right?
00:22:47
Speaker
Stunning juice. so And I knew it was good. And I let people taste it, like Jules from Whiskey and Ailement and ray Ray Daniel and all of these. And they wanted it everybody wanted to buy it.
00:22:58
Speaker
And I said, no, no, no. And Ray Daniel will ring me every week wanting to buy this barrel. And one day he rang up and I see Ray Daniel on my phone. And I just said, fuck off. And I hung up, right?
00:23:11
Speaker
And strive for the forbidden, you see? And everybody was striving for the forbidden. So there's a story and a name, right? um we've We've got one ah called a port in Tasmania, which is our political statement.
00:23:24
Speaker
Because the ferries is one one one of the bigger financial cock ups that Tasmania have done because they've ordered two big ferries and they've got nowhere to unload the damn things, right? And dam and they've been built. So we did one called a port in Tasmania and we it was parked in Leith in Scotland for 12 months.
00:23:40
Speaker
So we put the ship, we so we didn't get sued, we didn't call spirit of Tasmania, we called Tasmanian spirit, of course. And then we put a Scottish flag on it, put it in the background there and then we wrote it in the caption, it's the Leith we can do. and you know ah So it just seemed appropriate and ah it was a port cask. and but I also have a label already designed and a name called a port in Hobart. It's going to have a stadium in it which is very, very controversial. its that yeah right and and And there's a thing called the RSV Niuna which is I think a CSIRO flagship.
00:24:12
Speaker
Can't go under the bridge to refuel and it's based in Hobart. So there's a lot few things like that. and So we're having a crack and there's ah there's a lovely bar. um called hbc which is the hobart brewing company and they're going to get moved out if the uh of the red shed yeah yeah if they're going to get moved out if the um uh the oval gets built and so i've called that hb senior so Anyway, and I haven't got a whiskey for that one yet, though.
00:24:38
Speaker
Yeah. So sad that I've got that. I probably spend more time on the labels than I actually do on the whiskey. when get the whiskey, you can give the drain barrels to the brewery. They can make you feel it. Yeah. So there you go. There's some stories on the labels, right? Yeah. You talked about smelling this barrel and going, I just could smell the texture. Yeah.
00:24:58
Speaker
Is that how how you assess your whiskey? Is it taste? How do you know when you you're you're going in the right direction with a particular barrel you know or like or not the right direction? you know what what what is What is the process you go through?
00:25:08
Speaker
Every day you learn something new. We've made a lot of mistakes and we still make mistakes, but you learn something new. And so one of the things I think we've got much better at is barrel selection.
00:25:19
Speaker
right So if we're looking at a fortified barrel, um We will look for must or mould. We look for astringency in the wine industry. They probably call it VA. We look for sulphur. We reject those.
00:25:33
Speaker
The other thing we've learnt too is a ah lot of barrels that are um stored outside ah with um metal bands, not galvanised metal bands, you'll get a black stain.
00:25:47
Speaker
that actually leeches through the stave to the inside and i don't know if it's a metal organo organo-metal complex or something, but it certainly, if it penetrates through the stave, which does quite often result in significant bitterness, but it took us five years to learn that.
00:26:06
Speaker
So again, a lot of it is what we reject. and If you smell a fortified barrel and you can smell forest fruits or or a port, maybe, you know, ah sorry, cherries, you get Christmas cake and things like that, or muskets, you can smell the sweet musk.
00:26:23
Speaker
ah musket characters, they're the barrels that we choose. And bourbon casks, again, if we just hit with fumes, we we reject those as well. So we're very, very selective.
00:26:35
Speaker
Then we will match the new mate to those barrels. And particularly Louie's getting My son is getting much better at it than I am. Just don't tell him because he tells me all the time that he's much better than I am.
00:26:47
Speaker
So you know what he's like. You know his personality. and know yeah Yeah, very confident young man. yeah And anyway. Where's he getting it, mate? No, he is better than me, but just just just don't let him know that. Okay, so... um Anyway, ah that's how we choose the barrels. And it is every barrel is assessed. We do now trust our cooper. We have a cooper in Tasmania and he I find him barrels and he finds me barrels and I trust him now to find the barrels. And the best way, you know, to see how good a barrel is, is, you know, you do your shave when you toast it.
00:27:23
Speaker
And you just sit there yeah and go, there you go, there's the barrel. yeah There's the barrel. And that's how we choose them.
Challenges and Future of the Whiskey Industry
00:27:30
Speaker
It's interesting you said it took five years to realize this one thing was happening, impacting the flavor in particular way.
00:27:38
Speaker
is Is there not nothing like written down online or a book you could have read tell you this stuff? by There's nothing out there. You have to learn you know you have to learn yourself. well i think probably probably Probably our isolation and leads to innovation and we have to learn about our conditions. Our conditions are totally different from those that exist in Scotland and exist in the United States or Canada and it's a learning process. So it's still cutting edge, it's still pioneering. Yes. on airing yeah yes I mean some in some ways we've probably reinvented the wheel but again our conditions are quite different so there's a lot to learn.
00:28:13
Speaker
and yeah yeah We were talking to Lee from backwards and yeah he was saying exactly the same thing yeah which is just about our conditions. and Because aing this industry's honey our recent industry is only 33 years of age right compared to hundreds of years in Scotland and Ireland and the US.
00:28:31
Speaker
learning or it all the time. All the time. You're writing those manuals, all those books as we go kind of thing. My sons, both my sons have said, you you're writing this down? Yeah, sure. No worries. Yeah.
00:28:43
Speaker
I'll probably just cut my head off and store it. you Yeah. but as one of the first sort of independent bottlings, I guess you'd call yourself you the first independent bottler of the sort of the new age of Australian whiskey production. How do you see independent bottling progressing coming forward? Because <unk> you know you've got a few friends yeah in and around the in in around the game doing the same thing now, but um more distilleries coming online. Do you expect there's more stock maybe coming online in future, more to select from?
00:29:09
Speaker
That's an interesting question. If you'd asked me that maybe prior to 2023, I would have said, yeah, sure. I think it's going the other way at the moment. Yeah.
00:29:22
Speaker
You know, and this probably, I know we're probably, you've said we've got two sections of interview. This is probably flowing into the, this is going into the next section. Yeah, come on, Luke. Yeah.
00:29:35
Speaker
i We're gently, we're gently projecting. Gently rolling. Gently rolling. So I don't get a break. Is that right? We'll have a break after this one and come back to the following questions. but but um ah in the last, since about February, I think if you,
00:29:49
Speaker
looked at discretionary spends and share prices and all sorts of things. About February 2023, things started to take plummet. And I would say the majority of distilleries in Tasmania, at least, have either cut production or stopped production completely.
00:30:05
Speaker
It's an interesting time and I've got to speak about this later on the day. If you look at the brewers, they have input costs. They have a shelf life of three months maybe. So the input costs for them to generate income have got to be continuous.
00:30:18
Speaker
They got into trouble there. um i ran in into an economist at Whiskey and Dreams in 2024. He said that the distilling industry in Australia is probably about 12 months behind the brewers.
00:30:33
Speaker
You don't want that. fortunately fortunately the um the distillers they don't have to sell their product within that three month period they hang and that's what a lot of them are doing so they input costs have all been dropped off or cut back and they're just hanging on to their stock waiting for times to improve um and and i you know uh dean jackson in 2022 got up uh when i was speaking one day he said In Tasmania, developed, developing and and proposed distilleries, 150 for Tasmania, right?
00:31:10
Speaker
That's dropping off significantly. There are distilleries with bits and pieces still on the floor that have never got past construction and those that are construction, they're trying to sell it. And yeah you know I know of a number of examples of that.
00:31:22
Speaker
And then there are a number of distilleries in the last few weeks that are starting to go downhill. So I think the number is dropping away. um and people are just pulling the horns in really.
00:31:33
Speaker
yeah And so so it's a different time. It's a different time. I'd love to chat some more about the wider industry. Before before we take a break, um quick one for you. and What's the trajectory of heart Heartwood? like Have you been able to ride this rough time out?
00:31:50
Speaker
Where do you see the your business going? It's that's an interesting thing too. You know, um ah prior prior to COVID, I did think that the industry was growing too rapidly and I did that whiskey release called Market Correction, right? ye Yeah.
00:32:06
Speaker
Right. And then COVID came along a lot of people were artificially supported through COVID. Now I think that's coming back to bite us. um A lot of the... younger generation than mine, over capitalised, over committed and I think they're the ones that are slowly going down and I can think of um maybe three or four in Tasmania that are gone.
00:32:30
Speaker
I know of others that are in administration or facing administration as we speak and and there were a lot in the brewing industry that the same thing happened to them, you know, over capitalised because everything looked like beer and were and Skittles and that's not not what happened.
00:32:46
Speaker
And so I think we're in Look, it's difficult to say, but but the next couple of years, I think we're going to be faced with a significant reduction in the number of distillers, even though there are new ones coming on board, and I fear for them.
00:33:12
Speaker
right I think we'll see a significant reduction in distillers in Australia. Significant. um If you like, what are the canaries in the coal mine? um Let's go locally.
00:33:24
Speaker
Burns Welding. yeah but They've been advertising stills. right They've been advertising on Facebook and Instagram. They've been advertising stills that were ordered and the orders have been cancelled.
00:33:39
Speaker
right A lot of that happening from there. The other thing is too, our cooperage in Perth, Tasmania, right? They were doing a lot of new barrels.
00:33:54
Speaker
That stopped because new barrels got up to $3,000 each, you know. Then it was refurbishing old barrels. And then all the smaller distilleries just started to stop ordering anything.
00:34:09
Speaker
And ah things have picked up a little bit for them. And you'd walk in, they had a clean floor. And that was never the case. Yeah. Yeah. And I think even I heard maybe it was Craig from Belreen saying that Stewie here, he said a lot of the smaller producers are certainly cut back on their orders. So there are canaries in the coal mine.
00:34:31
Speaker
Yeah. So interesting times. yeah And how was Hartwood? Oh, yeah, that's right. That was a question. Have you navigated this? Thank you for bringing me back. This is the end. Thank you for bringing me back. Anyway, we have maintained our size. Okay.
00:34:46
Speaker
ah we have maintained our size and just maintain our quality. If times change, um ah you know, there are a few issues that I face. um One is finding the barrels that i want.
00:35:00
Speaker
And the other thing is excise. I don't get excise release. A distillery will, if they distill 70% of their own product, they will get some form of excise release. We don't, so I've got to negotiate cheaper prices of new making things like that to make it viable. So I'm yeah a bit slow in the last 12 months, um but we're not expecting to grow unless things change dramatically.
00:35:23
Speaker
We'll just maintain the status quo. yeah But this year all is going to be our biggest year ever. right Going against a trend. Excellent. Well, we'll take a quick break and then we'll come but back and talk more widely about Australian whiskey. Yeah, sure. Cheers.
00:35:35
Speaker
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00:37:07
Speaker
So an article that we were able put together for for Crafty Fine recently sort looked at some of the Australian whisky's growing pains and how things are progressing. You know, you've been talking a lot about growing pains or potential yeah issues that the industry faces and has based, I guess, for a long time now. um Some would say that you're occasionally a little bit too negative on the on the side of things, but you know I hear a lot of positivity coming out of yeah your bottlings and especially yeah a lot of your words in conferences and things like grain stock. So where do you see the next sort of five to 10 years going?
00:37:40
Speaker
I actually do, sir, correction coming. I think economic pressures on newer distilleries will often result in them producing whiskey at a young age so they can generate income.
00:37:55
Speaker
And I think one of the criticisms of the Australian industry is that a lot of the whiskeys are quite young, quite expensive of course, and not dissimilar from one distillery to another. And I think one of the big problems is that youth hides any sort of characteristic a distillery may have.
00:38:19
Speaker
And so one way to maintain or gain a foothold in the market is to produce good quality product. If you do not produce good quality po product and you're pumping it out for, you know, economic, just just to stay in the game, um you'll fall out of the game much more quickly. And I think that's the biggest problem facing the industry at the moment.
00:38:40
Speaker
Do think quality, what I've seen, I guess, in ah a judging sense and in a reviewing sense, looking at Australian whiskeys very closely, ah generally seen better maturation, better barrel selection. Would you agree with that? Do you think that the quality and the consistency has increased over the last so like five years especially?
00:38:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think ah the processes have certainly improved, but I think under current economic climate, I think that has had a significant influence on the quality and I I'd probably say some of the things are, you know, you'll you'll often have a distillery that will enter a competition with their best whiskey, but they fall away and they still try and release those at at a similar price.
00:39:22
Speaker
And so things that that that will will affect your position in the market, quality, of course, But consistency and, ah you know, ah there are a lot of distilleries that will enter their better whiskies, which they should do, but ah they fall away dramatically ah within the distillery. And that's how you do damage.
00:39:41
Speaker
And that's how you damage your name. You can't afford to do that ah in ah in a competitive market, which is probably saturated with Australian whisky at the moment. A lot of distilleries, the bigger distilleries, established distilleries have got stuff that they bottled two years ago still in storage in boxes.
00:39:56
Speaker
You know, and yeah it's very, very competitive out there at the moment. Just damaging to the particular brand or damaging to Australian whiskey as a brand? A bit of both.
00:40:06
Speaker
ah It certainly damages an individual brand. But yeah, I think, um you know, there's Yes, it does does damage to the Australian but now name as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:40:19
Speaker
would you like to see people doing more to sort of improve that side of things? um I guess strengthen up their brands in future? What do you see, ah and you know, any examples of people you think are doing a great job? Because we could sit here and obviously talk a lot about some of the great stories out there. But um yeah, any any thoughts on that?
00:40:36
Speaker
Look, again, i think it's back to consistency of quality. If you go to those distilleries that are, let's say, seven to 10 years of age, they have enough volume where they can produce consistent quality product to sell.
00:40:52
Speaker
The newer ones, they're the ones I fear for, the the ones that are five years or younger. Yep. they are the ones that I fear for because, as I said, economic times are a little bit tougher and they release to try and generate income.
00:41:07
Speaker
And so I'm probably ah probably repeating myself, but I think there's significant issues there. You can't cheat time. No. Essentially. Time is is, I mean, that's what a lot of people do in the whiskey industry. You've always seen these shonky guys who said, I can make a mature whiskey in a week and a half.
00:41:25
Speaker
know, time is part of it. It's part of the grain and the water and all that sort of stuff. Time. Yeah. Okay, just a quick one on on the uniqueness of what you do, the flavors. What do you think is unique about Australian whiskey? Because I can definitely point to some things that I think are you know, sort of world leading and incredibly different and distinctive about what Hartwood does. But ye what do you think of some of the flavor hallmarks and the sort of things that we might take to the world as uniquely Australian?
00:41:49
Speaker
Yeah, I struggle with it. because we're a big country. Limeburners have different conditions to King Lake, to Backwoods, to ah even Korowa, from the difference between Korowa and, say, Backwoods, and they're competing, of course. best of mates, but you know they're they're they're they're totally different environmental conditions.
00:42:15
Speaker
And we probably talked about that. what's What's an Australian characteristic? You probably pick it up seeing more than I do, but I'm saying to you, you know ah even in Tasmania, even in tasmania um Where I am in in Kingston, right, south of Hobart, my ABV goes up.
00:42:34
Speaker
Bill McHenry, who's probably 60 kilometres of the crow flies down at Port Arthur, this goes down. It's cooler. And I don't know what an Australian characteristic is because, and and the other thing that adds to that is is because we're isolated, we do different stuff.
00:42:52
Speaker
and And you see what's happening here. The grain stock, all those different grains out there. Yeah. but ah and And you go, ah the you know, the potential to make different types of products is huge. So I don't know what an Australian characteristic is, mainly because of the geographic spread of distilleries and ah around Australia. So, no, I can't answer that.
00:43:14
Speaker
Is that also something uniquely Australian about the sort of the lack of parameters, lack of rules? but you can Yeah. you can takes only approaches to make an Australian whiskey, essentially.
00:43:26
Speaker
You might not be able to do else elsewhere. And it's it's funny too, you look here and there's a certain personality too with the people that run a lot of these. And you see beer industry as well. you like Yeah, yeah. Just a little bit laissez-faire, a little bit more relaxed. And you don't see us in Japanese white coats, you know, around as you.
00:43:46
Speaker
So maybe the Australian characteristic is the Australian personality. I don't know what mean. You've definitely seen that at Rainstock already. The difference in approaches, the zaniness other people, other parts of the world would not even think. Wouldn't contemplate it, would they?
00:44:00
Speaker
But you know here we're giving it a crack, so yes that's what's exciting. yeah That's it. I think that's it. That's probably how say You're giving it a crack. There you mean, that's sort of the liquid in terms of models that that you think could be successful, for you know, going forward, because I'm assuming that, you know the economic situation has changed. yeah um You know, you're obviously bottling, there are people with distilleries, be so some people have yeah visitor experiences, some that don't, you know, some that are smaller, some that are larger.
00:44:28
Speaker
You know, is there a model that you think, you know, this is the way, this is the model you should have to be successful going forward? look again a few years ago i probably would have said a different answer than like i would now i think we've got a lot of geopolitical influences at the moment i think um there's an article there's few articles out of scotland about the oversupply of scottish whiskey now ah and i was talking to craig from edrickton group and he said it's a real problem the oversupply And I think that's going to affect our future.
00:45:00
Speaker
The way we go, ah we're probably going to have to produce whiskies that are more competitive. I think the cheapest Scottish whiskies going to come into Australia and they're going to get cheaper. The more expensive ones will still get more expensive.
00:45:11
Speaker
And we're have to compete with that. Now, what the model is to compete with that, I don't know, maybe it's a bottle 46% between $120 and $150 bottle, But you're still going to have have quality and... bottle right but then you're still going to have to have quality and Got to do more for less.
00:45:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think that's probably a way forward. But again, I think um it's it's going to be very, very hard to predict. um You know, ah it's it's quite interesting, and I'll deviate slightly again. Again, when I ran into that... um ah economist, Whiskey and Dreams.
00:45:49
Speaker
18 months to five years, he said, to pull out, to get us out of this hole. And maybe something is more consistent and more predictable. I don't think it's predictable at the moment. Right. And then Diageo and Brown-Forman, in queenstown with dramfest talking five years right to get out of this this hole and you've seen diageo pull out of numerous uh investments in other distilleries around the world ah including locally and then um last last new model so uh is is a five-year model so you know that's
00:46:28
Speaker
what seems to be from different sources. They're talking about five years to get us out of this hole that we're in. um And I think ah with particularly influences, as I say, geopolitical influences, freight issues, Suez Canal, Ukraine being a grain one of the biggest grain growers in the world, you know, we've seen what's happened there. We know what's happened with tariffs in the United States.
00:46:52
Speaker
We've seen three Kentucky distilleries go down. Just recently, we've seen six or seven in Ireland, four in France, two in Holland, you know, all just going down the last Yeah, I don't know.
00:47:03
Speaker
I think it's very, very unpredictable. And to come up with a model for the Australian industry, I'm just going to say consistency and quality and hold your place in the market and then see what happens.
00:47:15
Speaker
and all me you go I was just going to say, like to that point, what how do you think we can attract a global audience to Australian whiskey? Because every time I've got to speak about your whiskies internationally, there's a huge level of interest.
00:47:28
Speaker
yeah So what you know what how do we get to that international audience with with our whiskies? Because it's something that's very different to the the beer industry. Most beers sold locally. yeah but know We were chatting the other day about how the market for us a lot of Australian spirits is actually outside of these borders. You know, it's a very different, you know, I guess, model in that sense from brewing.
00:47:52
Speaker
I saw this question and thought this was really hard. we felt We found the hard one. Yeah, we found a hard one. um You know, I probably... I don't have an answer. ah I think it is. i mean, we know that the larger companies are trying to push themselves into the Chinese market, but the Chinese market, and you know and I've seen a lot of, I'm not going to call them puff piece articles, right, being written about the potential for export, right?
00:48:20
Speaker
Now, there's potential for export. We've got a lot of work to do. And I think ah it may come down to... So so i'll I'll say that I think our industry is very disjointed.
00:48:37
Speaker
Right. And I know we've got um associations that look after states and look after Australia, but I think we probably need more federal support to give us more professional advice and support and possibly even to fund um a professional organization as opposed to a committee because a committee you know there's jokes about committees and that's legitimate jokes right because if that's that's what happens you know on committees you know it's it's like a committee yes anyway so so maybe maybe we need uh support federally the federal support uh to have a unified body that then promotes the industry worldwide
00:49:24
Speaker
And if you look at, I mean, the mining industry has a professional body. all All of these other... Wine Australia. Wine Australia have professional bodies. I think that's where we have to go. And then otherwise, we're just going to remain disjointed and small and struggle to get our message across to the rest of the world. Yeah.
00:49:41
Speaker
So in the ideal world, you know, five, ten years down the line, where do you see hot wood and where do you see Australia in whiskey? If you could, like, you know, wave wave the magic wand and fix fix all the things need fixing. Yep.
00:49:52
Speaker
but Where would you love to see things? I would like to see quality producers, consistent quality producers on the world market. um But again, it's going to need a lot of effort and a lot of work. Heartwood will, I'm not that ambitious. i Actually, I'm inherently lazy. I just got to throw that at you.
00:50:10
Speaker
but you know we will strive to maintain quality and always at the probably the scale we are i think i think the other day i thought about um ah well here's here's a story for you just i'm deviating again um louie and louie and have been approached by 10 separate private equity groups over the last 18 months to pick over the carcass the whiskey industry in australia right?
00:50:36
Speaker
But then you explain to them, right, ah ah so Louis and I might be able to make you a bit of whiskey from the product you have, but then you've got to market it, sell it, store it, license it, all that sort of stuff. You're not even halfway there. And, and you know, I look at that and then I look at Okay, there's probably an opportunity there and it's probably a bit vulturistic to, you know, start another business and consolidate a lot of the whiskeys that are probably going to be available from distressed distilleries and then produce something and then sell it based on the names we have.
00:51:12
Speaker
And probably if I was 45 instead of 65, I would contemplate that. But Louis also got his own life too. So it's not as if it's something I hand out because he does he does his absence with Jack Lark and he he's got his Smokey Cokie, which you've heard about. yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's hilarious.
00:51:28
Speaker
And he does that with another guy and so he's got his own destiny, right? He's quite entrepreneurial. um Hartwood will tick along as it is. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good side of the story. Actually, the you you talked about this as well.
00:51:41
Speaker
The next generation that's coming through, louie represents that and there's you know many others like the Larks. Yes. So that's that should be something to look forward to. It is. To see what they do with ah Because because you know on ah on a lighter note, I quite often have drinks at my house, right?
00:51:54
Speaker
and this is And I bring the old guard, Billy Boy and all of the others and and I invite all the younger guys. And we all get together. And because I have quite a big whiskey collection that probably some of those guys won't have never be able to afford because they've got gone up astronomically. and probably We just open stuff, particularly after a few drinks, we even open more.
00:52:14
Speaker
And yeah, we try and get the melding of minds. And but yes, there there has to be a transition. There has to be a handover. And that'll be interesting. yeah be great Yeah, I don't know what.
00:52:25
Speaker
See, that's yeah I don't know where that will go. um but certainly you know i've tried to impart knowledge on my son anyway bill has done that with christy and jack you know and uh so maybe that's our future but you know even looking at their marketing strategies you've seen and their use of social media it's a different game and the other thing too i think we're finding is a problem is the gen z's uh don't drink i think i saw an article couple of days ago they're 20 down on what the previous generation the next generation uh you know they don't they don't they don't want to be healthy and and so they haven't had kids yet once they start having kids so and and and whiskey sales once the boomers die yeah you know uh whiskey sales may go down uh you know and and
00:53:19
Speaker
Matured alcohol in barrel is usually generally more expensive. So you'll notice people, the the younger generation, are drawn drinking white spirits and spritzes and all this sort of stuff or not at all.
00:53:30
Speaker
Yeah. And so that's something we're going to have to adapt to as well. Well, if the world world keeps going on its current direction, they'll need to drink anyway. So yeah i like as they get older, they'll be like, we need something to get through this. I always said two things. You know, you go back to like the rum rebellion and and alcohol is currency. So if the world goes to shit, right,
00:53:52
Speaker
I'm a very wealthy man. That's one. Or I invite my mates around and we sit down at the Bond store and we drink ourselves into oblivion. yeah So yeah there's a couple of options for you. and but What better way to finish? Thank you, Tim, for your time. Absolutely. Pleasure. Thank you, Luke, for joining us on the show. Pleasure. Thanks, Tim. Cheers.
00:54:11
Speaker
All right.
00:54:15
Speaker
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