Great article, Baldric, thanks for bringing our attention to it.
I took my son to the Sydney Whisky Fair put on by The Oak Barrel in September (he's showing an interest in top-level spirits) and I must say the Australian whiskies outshone the American, Irish, Japanese and Scottish exhibitors that night. It's probably a bit unfair to lump the Septics in with the other four as their whiskies were very different in style, there were only American bourbons while most of the others were malt whiskies in the Scottish and Irish traditions. The Starward mentioned in that article distil their drop in one of the old hangars at Essendon Airport, and it was very, very good. Limeburners from Albany in WA was also delicious. The Tasmanian trio of Lark, Overeem and Sullivans Cove had the outstanding whiskies of the show for me, they were so much softer than the Scottish malts. To my palate the Scottish whiskies all had a considerable amount of "fire" the Australian ones didn't. A rather idiosyncratic character called Peter Bignell runs Belgrove Distillery on his farm in the Tasmanian midlands, Peter does EVERYTHING himself, grows the grain, malts it, he even made the still in his back shed. Belgrove only uses rye, no barley, in their whiskies. Their unoaked was a bit plain, probably very good for mixing in cocktails instead of vodka, but the oaked ones were very good. The problems with Tasmanian whiskies are twofold: their production runs are extremely small resulting in very high prices (the peated Belgrove comes in at $224!) and they're now bloody hard to get due to recent publicity (Sullivans Cove won best single malt whisky at the 2014 World Whiskies Awards).
There were two exhibitors who triple distil their whiskies: Tyrconnell from Ireland and Auchentoshan from Scotland. There was a distinct smoothness about the drams from these two, by crikey, a flight of Auchentoshans is a fine thing! The Tyrconnells were by far the sweetest whiskies on show.
All in all a good night. I was so taken with the Tassie drops I've subsequently shouted myself a bottle of Overeem, port cask finish, with a forthcoming tax refund. It wasn't cheap, well into three figures, it's beautifully smooth with the most incredible length. Well worth it.
Whisky Fair site here:
http://www.whiskyfair.com.au/ See you there next year.