Hellyers Road 16 Year Old

The largest whisky distillery in Australia, Hellyers Road has become well known and loved for its richly complex, fruity style of single malts. Thanks to strong and consistent production since inception, today Hellyers is in the most enviable position of all Australian distilleries in that it sits on a vast reserve of mature stock dating back to the very early 2000s. As a result it can do what no other local distillery can, feature a full core range including four NAS expressions (Original, Pinot Noir Finish, Peated and Slightly Peated), the 10 Year Old Slightly Peated and the recently released flagship 15 Year Old Original. The single cask Masters Series offers a very well priced glimpse into the distillery’s vast reserves and has understandably become very popular with connoisseurs, and finally of course there’s our 16 Year Old Limited Edition!

Like all Tasmanian distilleries, Hellyers uses locally grown Tasmanian barley and pure Tasmanian rain water. Barley is malted locally at Joe White Malting in Devonport, though the distillery did also bring in 50,000 tons of peated malt from Scotland back in 2004 allowing for production of their peated whiskies.

Whilst their size by comparison to other local distilleries is huge, in the overall scheme of things and by comparison to Scotland, with a capacity of 100,000 litres a year it’s still a tiny craft operation. The distillery is equally humble, “we think big and act big, but when compared to Europe’s finest, we’re actually quite small. And that’s good, because it keeps us trying hard. We try hard to produce Australia’s very best single malt whiskies.”

It certainly helps to have really good gear when you’re on a mission to make the country’s best whisky. Hellyers Road features a whopping 60,000 litre wash still and a 20,000 litre spirit still all set up so that it can also be remotely controlled from Master Distiller Mark Littler’s home when he’s not in the distillery. So while we’re all tucked up in bed we can rest assured that Mark is making whisky for us around the clock!

You’ll find Hellyers Road’s unmistakably rich, complex and fruity style at its absolute best in our January whisky, a rare limited edition created exclusively for the Club and drawn from an historic set of first-grade first-fill American Oak casks laid down back in 2002. Crafted using premium Tasmanian barley and pure Tasmanian water this is some of Hellyers Road’s, and indeed Tasmania’s oldest whiskies and of course it’s non-chill filtered and bottled at natural colour.

A hallmark achievement in Australian whisky distilling, we couldn’t be happier to open 2019 with this superb example of Tasmania’s finest! Enjoy!