South Australian distillery 78 Degrees has released its first smoked whisky, which ties together the three powerhouse whisk(e)y producing regions of Australia, America and Scotland.
Working in collaboration with Corsair Distillery, from Nashville, Tennessee, 78 Degrees have taken local, single paddock unmalted barley and smoked it with Australian redgum. This has imparted notes of hazelnut praline and eucalypt: Corsair then took the same barley, smoking it with American cherrywood, before adding in a portion of Scottish peated malt.
“When Corsair reached out to produce a whiskey together, I jumped at the opportunity,” says 78 Degrees Head Distiller Tim Gniel. “They are a fantastic independent craft spirits producer, who share many of our own ideals around pushing boundaries.
“For this release, we wanted to look at how smoked whiskies could look if we didn’t have external influence. Peat was traditionally used in Scotch production as it was the most abundant fuel source available. That is not the case in Australia and if whiskey had been created here independently, we would likely have used native woods instead.
“We thought a fun way to combine the three whiskey producing regions of Australia, USA and Scotland would be to combine a different smoked element from each in the mash.”
Bottled at an enticing 44 per cent, this limited edition whiskey (RRP $149.99/700mL) is available now.
