Launceston Distillery

Launceston in Tasmania's north was home to the Caledonian Distillery from 1824 and soon became one of the Colony's foremost distilleries, but its days were, of course, rather numbered and when the Distillation Prohibition Act was enacted in 1839 its doors were closed.

Fast forward to 2015 and Launceston finally had another whisky distillery to call its own, located in the rather unique location of Hangar 17 at Launceston Airport – Tasmania’s oldest aviation building still standing in its original location. Built in 1933, it was home to the airline that went on to become Ansett, who occupied the building until their closure in 2001.

Launceston Distillery was founded by Head Distiller Chris Condon, who has an amazing background, having originally worked as a quality analyst in the pharmaceutical industry. He then started making beer at James Boag’s Brewery in Launceston where he honed his brewing skills, and then moved on to become the founding distiller at Nant Distillery from 2008 – 2011.

With a CV like this, it’s little wonder Chris has a real dedication to focus on quality, and to produce whisky that resounds heavily with Tasmania’s Terroir. Not only does he use Tasmanian made equipment in the distillery where possible, he uses barley sourced locally from the barley fields of Northern Tasmania then malted just up the road at Joe White Malting house, and the purest of water directly from Tasmania’s longest river, the South Esk, which springs up on the Eastern foothills of Ben Lomond and meanders right past the Distillery.

Thanks to Chris’ brewing background, naturally everything is done onsite: from the milling and mashing to a 7-day fermentation that really helps with the ester production (a fancy way to say flavour molecules). Once the wash is ready it’s double distilled through the 1600L wash still and 700L spirit still. Gentle heat is applied at crucial times to make sure the vapour gets plenty of copper contact. This encourages a lighter, fragrant new-make spirit at 63.4%. The cuts are made by taste and smell, to make sure only the ultimate liquid from the heart run makes it into cask.

Being in an old hangar, the bondstore experiences a multitude of temperatures throughout the year, getting up to nearly 40° in summer and well below freezing in winter.

Some whiskies are bottled at cask strength (leaving it at around 60% ABV), while most are reduced to bottle strength (roughly 46% ABV). Launceston Distillery’s whisky isn’t coloured and it’s non-chill filtered so it retains its depth of character.