DEMAND FOR TASMANIAN WHISKY LEADS TO SHORTAGE

SULLIVANS COVE, Tasmania’s biggest selling whisky, is forced to limit sales of its popular French Oak variety in order to ensure continued availability for the next five years. Domestic demand for the French Oak, which was named as Australia’s best single malt by Whisky Magazine, has increased beyond supply levels and the distillery has been forced to limit exports of French Oak to provide for local demand.

The distillery’s French Oak variety is Australia’s highest awarded whisky, having scored 96.5/100 in whisky writer Jim Murray’s 2013 Whisky Bible and was also named Spirits Business magazine’s World Whisky Grand Master. Its winning run continues with this week’s announcement of the 2014 Wizards of Whisky results where it was named Australasian Single Malt Whisky of the Year and Australasian Whisky of the Year.

Australians are the biggest consumers of Sullivans Cove, accounting for more than 90% of all sales. This is a large turnaround from four years ago when the local market only made up around 40% of sales. The Tasmanian whisky industry is experiencing strong growth and this has been boosted by a $110,000 grant from the state government for the development of whisky trail.

Chief distiller Patrick Maguire said: “The industry has come a very long way over the past few years and this is exactly the situation that we hoped we would be in one day, we just didn’t expect it to happen this soon. It is a great problem to have and we are making all efforts to ensure that sufficient stock remains available for our Australian customers.”

Sullivans Cove is available nationwide at all good liquor stores including Dan Murphy’s, Vintage Cellars and First Choice