Hellyers Road has been one of the most divisive whisky brands in Australia. But now that they've split from the previous ownership, rebranded, hired a new Head Distiller, and launched a new range of whiskies including some serious age statements, could this be Tasmania's "ugly duckling" distillery?
Hellyers Road Distillery is a little out of the way by Tasmanian standards, being in the coastal town of Burnie, around 4-hours drive north-west from Tasmanian capital city Hobart, or 1.5-hours west from second-city Launceston. The distillery was built in the late 1990s within production commencing in 1999, at a time when there were only a handful of whisky distilleries in the country and the others were all privately owned and absolutely tiny. Hellyers Road was different from the outset, being an off-shoot of large Tasmanian dairy company Betta Milk. This meant they had the finances to build a large distillery with large equipment, and they were able to lay down significant stock early-on when the competition needed to release young for cashflow reasons. Hellyers also had a visitor's centre and café/restaurant attached to the distillery, which still isn't the norm in Tasmanian & mainland Australian distilleries twenty-five years later. For a long time Hellyers was the only Tasmanian single malt exported out of Australia and the only Australian brand that was available in duty free / travel retail stores, which gained the brand an international awareness at a time when our other distilleries were largely unheard of. This was Australia's largest distillery for almost two decades, really until Starward and Archie Rose came along over 15-years later. Prior to those large players coming of age Hellyers was the cheapest Australian single malt on the market, often with significant age statements that early competitors couldn't get near. As an example, back in those early days - admittedly over ten years ago - the flagship Hellyers Road 10-year old at 46.2% ABV in a 700ml bottle was selling for $80 AUD, which was less than half the price of most competing brands that were often half the age and in 500ml bottles. Even now the new Hellyers flagship "Double Cask" at 46.2% ABV retails for $120 AUD in a 700ml bottle, where the more famous Tasmanian names are far higher - Lark's entry level "Classic Cask" single malt is now over $200 AUD in a 500ml bottle at only 43% ABV, and Sullivan's Cove's entry level Double Cask single malt is north of $250 - albeit at a higher strength of 47.5% and in a 700ml bottle.
Today Hellyers Road produces around 500,000 bottles annually, but the only pure alcohol (LAL) capacity figure that I can find is 160,000-litres, which seems a little low and doesn't quite add up to the bottle figure. One crucial difference with Hellyers Road is that they have always brewed their own wash from the get-go, when many other distilleries were - or still are - buying wash from external commercial breweries for distillation. There is only one pair of stills here, but they're both massive, by far the largest in our industry - the wash still has a capacity of 60,000-litres and the spirit still is 20,000-litres! For reference this is far larger than the stills at Islay's largest distillery, Diageo's Caol Ila, which has 19,000-litre wash stills and 12,000-litre spirit stills, although they have three of each and boast an annual production capacity of 6.5-million litres! So Hellyers is much smaller than the giant of Islay, but is still equipped with massive equipment. Interestingly, and controversially, those two very large stills are made mostly from stainless steel rather than copper, with only the neck, lyne arm, and condenser being copper. I don't exactly know why they made this decision over 25-years ago, but we can safely assume it was due to both cost and to the distillery's dairy industry owners having the connections for stainless steel fabrication, which is very different to working with copper. Looking at these behemoth pieces of equipment pictured below, they more closely resemble dairy storage vats than the traditional pear-shaped pot stills that we're used to seeing in malt whisky production, which would explain why they're so unnecessarily gigantic. Thanks to their huge size, shape, and very slow distillation speeds - one distillation run takes two full days, roughly 50-hours! - they do have very high levels of reflux where the lighter compounds in the vapour condense back into liquid and fall back in to the body of the still, but due to the construction there still isn't a lot of copper interaction taking place.
Hellyers Road's huge stainless steel still with copper neck, lyne arm & condenser.
This crucial difference, among other factors, has historically given the spirit a rather unique - some would say challenging - flavour profile. Butyric acid (in this case often heading to the sour "vomit" end of that spectrum), sulphur, and metallic notes were the commonly seen descriptors thanks to that lower level of copper interaction. Those "challenging" notes also weren't obscured by the high levels of cask influence that most Australian whiskies were presenting at the time, thanks to the other distilleries using small format casks. Right from the start Hellyers Road bucked the trend and exclusively used larger format casks, and chiefly ex-bourbon rather than port (tawny) and apera (sherry). At a time when most Australian distilleries - Bakery Hill and more latterly Sullivan's Cove are the exceptions that come to mind - were using 20-litre or 50-litre casks, Hellyers was filling 125-300-litre casks, which left more of that rather odd spirit character on show. Some liked the unusual flavour profile, but the majority did not, which didn't do the distillery any favours in the PR department in those earlier years. Many Scotch whisky distilleries produce a sulphurous spirit by design, where that heavier style is counteracted by longer maturation, arguably resulting (if & when the plan comes together) in a more characterful whisky at the end of the tunnel. The way to change or reduce this sulphurous character, without switching to copper stills at least, is to increase the amounts of reflux, and to increase maturation time. Since separating from Betta Milk in 2019 and more recently with a new Head Distiller coming onboard, Hellyers Road have altered their distillation regimen by reducing speeds and fill levels, also adding copper plates inside the wash still for increased copper contact. They've also switched to using more charred casks and also longer ageing in some cases, which brings us to today's principle subject - their 21-year old Peated Cask.
I have to admit that I didn't realise Hellyers Road had whisky stocks at this sort of age, let alone multiple releases at this sort of age! They actually have two 21-year old bottlings currently on the market, alongside a 20-year old and two 19-year olds, and one of those 19-year olds is peated which makes that bottling the oldest peated Australian single malt ever released! These sorts of ages are quite the rarity in Australian whisky, since due to their very small size and independent ownership most distilleries bottled young for cashflow reasons, and because the smaller casks were overwhelming the spirit very quickly. Only two distilleries come to mind as having released comparatively older single malts thus far; Sullivan's Cove released a 24-year old last year and have another on the way shortly, while Scottish independent bottler Cadenhead's have released 24-year old and 23-year old single casks from the mysterious Cradle Mountain / Small Concern Distillery. I can't find pricing on the latter as they were released some time ago and were matured and bottled in Scotland and thus shouldn't really be included. But the previous Sullivan's Cove 24-year old single cask was around $2,500 AUD and sold out very quickly. That may sound like a huge amount of money, probably because it is a huge amount of money, but that was the oldest official bottling of Tasmanian single malt released to date, and from the states' highest profile distillery - possibly the country's highest profile distillery. On the other hand this 21-year old Hellyers Road is nearly half that amount, at $1,350 AUD, which is still a lot of coin compared to similarly aged whiskies from Scotland, but for a "new world" whisky that isn't beyond reason. As an aside, the oldest Indian single malt released to date, Amrut's "Greedy Angels" 12-year old limited release, was priced at around $1,000 USD ($1,600 AUD) when it was released back in 2017, which would of course be even higher if released today. Likewise Teeling's 30-year old Irish single malt was $2,500 AUD back in 2022. Both of those "world whisky" examples are from much larger companies than what we have here in Australia, so it's all relative! This 21-year old Peated Cask Hellyers Road has won "Best Australian Single Malt" at the 2025 World Whiskies Awards, which is the same awards program that helped put Tasmanian whisky on the world stage back in 2014 when a single cask of Sullivan's Cove won "World's Best Single Malt". So the win with this 21-year old should help get Hellyers Road back on whisky fans' radars!
This 21-year old Hellyers Road Peated Cask Finish (distilled around 2003) was matured for 17-years in multiple ex-bourbon barrels before being vatted together and filled into an ex-Hellyers Road Peated 7-year old cask for a further 4-years of maturation. While there is a cask number printed on the label of this 21-year old, this Hellyers release is not labelled as a single cask since multiple casks were filled in to that one ex-peated cask, which is nicely transparent. This is an unpeated single malt that has been secondary matured in an ex-peated single malt cask, rather than being peated spirit from the outset - if you ask me it shouldn't be labelled as "Peated" on the label as you can see below, "Peated Cask" would've been more transparent which is explained in the smaller print on the label. I'll be the first to admit that I don't think peated cask finishes don't always work, in many cases there just isn't enough cask influence from what is essentially a refill cask that may have already been tired prior to filling with peated spirit. But when you're talking about one distillery tipping their own peated spirit out of a cask and then filling that cask with unpeated spirit, that's a different story. Ex-peated malt casks don't get much fresher than that, and if you're after cask influence it'll always be better than shipping a refill cask from the other side of the world! As an aside, the peated spirit from Hellyers Road is distilled from peated Scottish barley sourced from Inverness, like the vast majority of peated Australian whisky since we don't have many local maltsters willing to do small runs of peated malt. This particular ex-peated cask was previously used for Hellyers' flagship peated expression, the 7-year old.
The distillery was generous enough to send me a sample of this 21-year old Peated Cask for this review, via their Sales & Events Manager David DeBattista who was formerly with Launceston Distillery. 301 bottles of this 21-year old were released at the natural cask strength of 52.5% ABV, with no chill filtration or added colouring. This is the first of the "new breed" of Hellyers Road expressions that I've reviewed, in fact I've only tried one or two Hellyers whiskies in the last decade. I will admit that I was not a fan of the brand back in the day, however, during my visit to the distillery in 2014 they offered hand-filled 500ml bottlings at cask strength, which were far, far better than any of the range offered for sale in the shop. They completely changed my opinion of the distillery for the better, and since then I've been waiting for the brand's official bottlings to close that gap. Based on what I've heard and read since Hellyers Road rebranded and relaunched back in 2021, it certainly seems like that's finally happening and the consistency of their whiskies is much improved. Speaking of which, if you'd like more information on the rest of the Hellyers Road range I highly recommend reading Andrew's recent article over at Whisky & Wisdom, where he's delved further into the distillery's history and their recent relaunch, as well as speedy reviews of a whopping 14 different expressions! He didn't get to this 21-year old Peated Cask though... so I'll be taking it from here!
Hellyers Road 21-year old Peated Cask, 52.5%. Tasmania, Australia.
Unpeated spirit matured in ex-bourbon barrels for 17-years, vatted together and filled into ex-Hellyers Road peated single malt cask for 4-years secondary maturation. Non-chill filtered, natural colour. 301 bottles, cask number 20F05C01.
Colour: Pale amber.
Nose: Earthy, nutty, oily, and slightly coastal. And there's definitely some peat! Earthy, ashy, coastal peat, macadamia oil, thick honey, butterscotch, and drying sea salt. Orange peel, fresh stone fruit. Bushfire smoke (herbs & eucalypts included), iodine / disinfectant and slight mineral notes in the background.
Texture: Medium-heavy weight. Oily, surprisingly peaty & smoky again! Slight heat but it works well.
Taste: Oily, smoky entry followed by spicy & earthy peat, more macadamia oil, honeyed stewed stone fruit, a little toasted oak, and drying sea salt. Ashy, bushfire smoke, those herbal & eucalypt notes again, and a slight touch of liquorice.
Finish: Long length. Over-salted caramel, hot wood embers, bushfire smoke again. Slightly leathery & woody. Light orchard fruits and macadamia oil before the ashy peat and bushfire smoke take over again.
Score: 4 out of 5.
Notes: OK, this is without doubt the peatiest "peated cask" whisky I've tasted to date! It's not just a one-trick pony, there are plenty of other things going on, but the level of peat influence here was a surprise! So much so that I reached out to David to doublecheck that I hadn't misinterpreted the slightly confusing labelling and this wasn't actually peated spirit in addition to the peated cask secondary maturation. But no, I had interpreted it correctly, it's an unpeated spirit with those four years spent in an ex-peated whisky cask. Obviously our climate is much more active than that of Scotland, even down in Burnie, but that's the advantage of having your own peated whisky on hand, there's no need to wait for overseas shipping while that precious peat influence dissipates or even disappears altogether. That freshly emptied cask has really made itself known here!
Like I mentioned above, it's been a while since I've tasted anything from Hellyers Road. This is by far my favourite of the distillery's work to date, even trouncing the previous leader which was the peated bottling that I filled from the cask back in 2014. There's a great oiliness here that I'd have to attribute to the heavier, more sulphurous style of spirit that just needs time in the right cask to help tell its story. Meanwhile the bushfire, macadamia, and eucalyptus notes really cement this as an ex-bourbon cask Australian & Tasmanian single malt that has spent such a long time maturing in our climate. Some of our best well-aged whiskies tend to have those notes to them, particularly when careful cask management hasn't allowed to overshadow the whisky's character. Which is what's happened here, with the addition of a healthy serving of peat! Thanks to David and the Hellyers team for the tasty sample.
Cheers!
