At a bus stop painted in bright rainbow stripes, we turn left down a long road, dodge a few roaming chickens, and shrug off surburbia. We are headed for William McHenry & Sons, where the heady scent of gum trees is cut with an unmistakable sweet, briney tang. This collection of sheds and barns stands over Port Arthur on the Australian island of Tasmania, and is, McHenry tells me, the world's southernmost whisky distillery.

Today, there is a celebration going on as distillers come together to catch up – one of their number (Sullivan's Cove distillery, near Hobart) has just won the coveted title of best single malt in the world at the World Whisky awards – the first time this accolade has been given to a whisky outside Scotland or Japan.

McHenry, who has been here for four years, is one of the newest members of a growing community of Tasmanian producers. Twenty-two years ago, distilling was still prohibited on the island (and had been for 153 years). Now there are nine distilleries, whose products are increasingly lauded.

Among the visitors to McHenry's today is Bill Lark, known locally as the godfather of Tasmanian whisky – the man who persuaded the authorities to reintroduce distilling. He was fly-fishing in the Tasmanian highlands with his father in law when the idea came to him. "We have good barley, good water, the climate is OK, there are peat bogs in Tasmania," he says. "I thought: 'Why is nobody making whisky?'"

Indeed, Tasmania often feels closer to Scotland than Sydney, in climate and scenery: with cool air, grey skies, lush countryside and water everywhere, I am reminded of Islay, the Hebridean gorse and heather replaced by native eucalypts. Tasmanian peat, too, shares many traits with its Highland counterpart – although peat is not a strong characteristic in the island's single malts.

Lark's 43% single malt, single cask whisky, matured in port barrels and lightly peated, is balanced and complex, with a smoky finish. His first whisky was made in a A$65 copper still bought at auction and kept at home. "Our house became the first licensed distillery in Tasmania since 1839," he laughs.

A couple of hours across the island, there is another new distillery opening up, this time in an estate that dates back even further than the prohibition ban. Redlands Estate, with its old and beautiful redbrick buildings, has its own barley, a river with an inquisitive platypus, and in an otherwise bare room, two racks of maturing whisky in small, Tasmanian pinor noir barrels.

Many of the distilleries on the island get their barley from local brewers Cascade, the oldest continually operating brewer in Australia, or newer craft brewers Moo Brew. But Dean Jackson, the distiller here, will take his own barley from field to fermenter to still, which he hopes will add a uniqueness to his whisky. Redlands' whisky will be peated – but again not particularly heavily. "Because we only add a little bit of peat, we find we can change the flavour of the whisky, the feel, the presentation to a point that's not iconic of Scotland but iconic of Tasmania," he says.

World beater: Sullivans Cove French Oak Cask single malt whisky.

The quality of barley on the island also sets its single malts apart, says Lark. "One of the blessings for us in this industry on Tasmania is that the only malt we've been able to obtain is from one of the local brewers, and we're using a traditional brewing barley." That gives a lower yield – Tasmanian whiskies are definitely not cheap at upwards of A$130 (£72) a bottle – but a fantastic flavour, Lark argues. "Judges in competitions where we're winning awards are suggesting that the brewing barley is really giving us an advantage. It gives us a big fat oily malt."

In a distinctly unlovely industrial-park unit not far from Hobart, you will find Sullivans Cove, whose French Oak Cask took the best single malt title. Owner/distiller Patrick Maguire is still reeling. So, you imagine, are the owners of the now extremely expensive 556 bottles from winning barrel HH52, almost all sold before the award was announced – the value jumped from A$140 (£77) to more than A$1,000 (£560) overnight. The distillery was already struggling to keep up with demand – it bottles around 18,000 units every year, by hand – for its much-admired rich, buttery, unpeated whisky. Orders have since gone through the roof.

"We entered the French Oak Cask for the awards because all of us at the distillery kept buying it ourselves to take home," says Maguire of the winning bottle. He has run the distillery since 2003, after it was liquidated under previous owners, launching his first, young whisky on the market in 2006/7. Now, his bottles are between 12 and 14 years old.

"There have been a lot of times where we've really wondered if we were going to survive because we weren't selling much," he admits. "It seems like success has been overnight but it has taken the industry here – if you can call it that – 21 years. It's taken a long time to get to this point. And . I think we're all enjoying this point now – all the Tassie [Tasmanian] distilleries are doing well. I think we're going to have a great future."

One of the issues for this burgeoning Australian whisky industry has been a relative lack of local interest. Australia does not drink a lot of single malt compared to countries such as France, Holland, Canada, the UK and the US, where many of the island's distillers export. So, initially, Tasmania's whiskies were being drunk more abroad than at home. It's only in the last couple of years that Maguire has seen Australia buying 80% of his product.

"As soon as you start winning awards around the world, the local market picks up on that and goes, 'Maybe it's not so bad,'" says Lark. "Really, the surprise for us all is that we thought export would be our strong area of growth, and it could well be. But in the last two years the strong growth is in the local market."

And the good news for Tassie's distillers is that the success of one seems to be rubbing off on them all. Back at William McHenry's, with plates of oysters being passed around, and a gaggle of staff from Overeem and Lark discussing the springs, the distiller considers Tasmania's place in the whisky world and this co-operative way of production. "Individually we're all minute," he says. "The joke is that we make less whisky a year than is spilled on the ground in Scotland. So we need each other."

• Vicky Frost travelled with Tourism Tasmania. You can book a whisky tour of the island at Tasmanian Whisky Tours