Hellyers Road Distillery

Drew H (00:08):
Welcome to Whiskey Lores Whiskey Flights, your weekly home for discovering great craft distillery experiences around the globe. I'm your travel guide Drew Hannush bestselling author of experiencing Irish whiskey and experience in Kentucky Bourbon and the soon to be released Whiskey myth busting book, whiskey lore volume one available January 2nd on Amazon and through your favorite bookseller. And today after a crazy day of travel, getting from South Carolina to Tasmania and the day of recovery in the town of Launceston, just a few kilometers down the coastal highway from our distillery destination Heller's Road. After weeks of being road bound going through the Midwestern United States, it's kind of a change of pace to be flying halfway around the world. And when doing this international traveling, it's always good to do a little investigative sleuthing to make sure that you're not going to try to show up in the country that doesn't exactly want you there.

(01:12):
American passports do work in Australia, but you need to get something called an ETA, which is an electronic travel authority costs you about 13 US dollars or 20 in Australian money, and you can either get it through Australia's ETA app, which is on the Apple store or Google Play, or you can ask your airline to secure it for you. It's good to plan ahead on it though, give it about three business days at least. Now, the next big step, of course is the flight and one of the short legs was from Greenville to Houston. That was just a couple of hours, but then a big long layover in Houston, and then a 17 and a half hour flight to get to Sydney. If you think jet lag hits you on an eight hour flight to Europe, imagine 17 and a half hours. You're basically a half day off from your normal schedule.

(02:11):
And not only that, but if you leave on a Tuesday, you'll arrive on a Thursday. So logistics can be a little bit crazy. Being that I'm on a whiskey trip, I decided to fly from Sydney into Launceston because there is a distillery right next to the airport. And so it's a good idea if you're going to fly that long. And then you have some driving to do afterwards to maybe take a day off and just recover and drag around and then go to bed early and then get up the next day and do your driving because it can be a little dangerous to be out in a country you're not used to driving in. Especially here, you're going to be driving on the left side of the road, so you may not be used to that either to get yourself all situated for the trip.

(03:03):
So it is kind of nice to know there's a distillery right there outside the airport. From there, you can catch a taxi rideshare or shuttle bus into the town of Launceston that is about 14 kilometers to the north. If you make it a casual day, you can stop by the city park or head to the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania, get that sleep, and then the next morning get your rental car and to get to Heller's Road. It's not too bad. Nice little coastal drive. It's about an hour and a half to two hours away, so give yourself plenty of time to get to the distillery a few minutes ahead of time as I make my way up C one 12 Old Surrey Road towards the distillery. Let's take a moment to learn a little bit more about the area we're visiting.

(03:57):
Perched on the rugged northwest coast of Tasmania. The nearby town of Bernie is a port city that blends natural beauty with a vibrant industrial spirit. As you approach Bernie, the dramatic coastline greets you with crashing waves against rocky outcrops while rolling Green Hills, stretch inland dotted with farms and fields. This region is known for its agricultural roots, exporting everything from cheese to timber, but it's also rich with Tasmanian character with modern industries meeting old world charm. At the heart of Bernie's appeal is its creative soul. The Maker's workshop is a great visit for travelers celebrating the area's artisan traditions with exhibitions of papermaking crafts and local history. Bernie is long been famous for its handcrafted paper, an art that ties into the town's industrial heritage. Nature Lovers will be delighted by nearby Emu Bay where white sandy beaches meet clear blue waters. And beautiful bush walks are available all over the area, and for those that enjoy a little wildlife spotting, the area is home to penguins. In fact, Bernie's little Penguin Observation Center offers a front row seat to the evening parade of these charming creatures returning from the sea. Whether you're savoring a local specialty like Tasmanian cheese or soaking in the scenic vistas of table Cape Bernie offers a unique mix of creative energy, coastal tranquility, making it a perfect getaway to your Heller's Road Distillery visit.

(05:44):
Well, over the last few months, I've been getting to know a lot of great craft distilleries around the world. Thanks to my Instagram challenge, the whiskey lore fan favorite craft distillery awards, people have been voting for craft distilleries around the globe. And as we get into finals week, I wanted to highlight two of our platinum level distilleries that are south of the equator. And I've also been pretty fascinated by what's going on in Tasmania, especially after having a couple of our distillery guests on here telling me that it was a trip to Tasmania and visits with Tasmanian distillers that inspired them to start up their own distilleries. Today we're going to be chatting with CEO Derek Charge and head distiller Fiona KZ of Heller's Road Distillery. They have an incredible fan base that hung with them all summer long to get them into the sweet 16. And when it came to choosing a distillery on the island I wanted to talk to, I couldn't think of a better one to chat with. So let's dive right into my conversation with David and Fiona. And I want to get started off by getting a little bit of background on the unique origins of this distillery.

Derek (06:55):
We're up in a remote part in the northwest of Tasmania and people are pretty, I guess independent and self-reliant up in this part of Tasmania. And back in the 1950s, a group of dairy farmers got together to create a dairy cooperative and eventually became Tasmania's most loved milk bread. So selling fresh milk right across Tasmania. In the 1990s, they started to look at diversifying the business and they looked at a few different options and then settled upon, we'll have that whiskey. And with that background in milk, they somehow decided that they could also make whiskey, which is fantastic and invested a lot of money in building a purpose-built distillery. But that background's really important because the distillery itself is completely unique. They didn't really go and say to a consultant, how do you build a whiskey distillery? They draw on a lot of their own knowledge and background from the milk industry and designed and developed a distillery that's genuinely unique in the world.

Drew H (08:09):
I saw some pictures online of your still, but it looks like everybody's probably stepped back to a certain spot and they don't walk around it. I look at it and I don't see the base of it, but it almost looks like a milk can. Is that what it looks like?

Fiona (08:24):
Yeah,

Fiona (08:25):
Yeah. They're really tall stainless pots with enormous amount of copper perched on top. So the copper lantern I think is probably taller than me. Copper line and condensing apparatus, that's all copper. But the actual still bodies are tall, cylindrical, as you say, like a milk can, but that's given the distillery itself great longevity and actually contribute significantly to aspirate style as well, which I can go into.

Drew H (08:59):
I was going to say it's got to, the way that reflux is handled in it would be different. It seems like it would be very difficult probably. It's somewhat slender from what I see. So kind of like the Glen Morgie stills that create a very light character whiskey, is that kind of what you're headed for?

Fiona (09:17):
Exactly, yeah. And also our distillation time, particularly in the wash still is quite extended. We have a hot water boiler rather than a steam boiler. So our distill, it has to really fight to get out because the energy going in is limited, I suppose. But what that means in terms of the spirit character is, as you said, the reflux is quite enhanced above the liquid level. We actually also only partly fill that wash still, so it's about half full. So all those mini distillations in the headspace means that it's quite high alcohol about mid seventies for the first runnings off the wash till, which is incredibly high. So normal short fat wash till would be about 50, 55% the first runnings. So that reflux is definitely enhanced in our wash till. So we do get that light fruity character in our spirit. And also due to that extended cooking time in the wash till we get a lovely cereal note that translates really well over extended aging, which is our mo, I suppose, is the age whiskey.

Drew H (10:32):
Yeah. We'll talk about the grain here in a little bit too, because it's an interesting topic, but talk about where that still came from. Was that something that you just built in house? Was that left over from another piece of equipment that you converted? Because it doesn't look like it came from poor sites?

Derek (10:50):
No, it was specifically built for purpose, and this goes back to the origin. It was actually literally built about 15 minutes down the road at a stain of steel fabrication workshop that made the milk tanks for the distillery. So you get that there's zero copper contact in the liquid phase in the body of the still, but then there's very high copper contact in the vapor phase. But yeah, the still was completely, it is completely unique because it was built locally and designed locally

Fiona (11:25):
As was the mash tongue, which is truly one of a kind.

Drew H (11:29):
So with your grains, are you pulling those in from local farms or, yeah,

Derek (11:35):
So we are lucky there's been a beer industry in Tasmania for a century, well, more than a century. And so all of our unpeated grain, it's a hundred percent Tasmanian grown barley that's malted at a very old malt house, a hundred year old old house, about 30 minutes down the road.

Drew H (11:58):
Okay. And talk about the area there in terms of climate, because this has always kind of interested me being that far. How far are you from the mainland of Australia?

Derek (12:14):
It's about basrai, which is the body of water that separates us from the mainland. It's about 200 miles wide, maybe a little more. And if you look at the latitude you'd say, oh wow, that's not 40. We're 40 degrees south here. That's not that far south if you're thinking northern hemisphere, but we're in the middle. So just to the west of us is the southern ocean. And if you go to our west coast and look Westwood, it's 20 for American audiences, 14,000 miles to the nearest landfall, which is Patagonia.

(12:48):
So you go right round two thirds of the way around the globe, and so that really dramatically impacts the climate here. So Tasmania is a small island. It's about the size of roughly the size of Scotland, slightly smaller than Scotland, not a big island in itself, but there's quite diverse climatic zones within the state and where we are, we have a really, really stable maritime climate. I'm afraid I can't translate to Fahrenheit, but our summers would be no more than 25 degrees centigrade in summer and only a minimum of maybe 15 overnight. And in winter it doesn't get to freezing very often. We might get a frost a couple of times a year, but even overnight so it doesn't freeze. But at the same time, we've got both a very humid and a very saline salty because of just the impact of the ocean here environment. So you've got this very gentle, but certainly warmer than Scotland maturation environment,

Drew H (14:01):
I would say around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. My math is double it and add 30 is what they say. Yeah,

Derek (14:08):
That's probably, yeah. But the big thing is that it does, so it never gets particularly hot and it never gets particularly cold and in the diurnal variation during a day wouldn't be more than 15 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Fiona (14:24):
However, I would add to that though that we very much do have four seasons here.

Fiona (14:30):
So

Fiona (14:30):
Elsewhere in Australia, further north, it's that tropical kind of climate. We are very much temperate and have four distinct seasons, which you might get all in one day. But we do joke in Tasmania that summer will be on the 22nd of February this year. So you do get that seasonal variation, and we do get some crazy weather here that's really brings in that salt air so quite well. Most of our bond soils are actually situated very close to the ocean. So the distiller itself is up in the hinterland, but our bond stores are very close to the bas strait ocean. So I'll probably throw a rock from the bond store and hit the water. So you can imagine those humid sea fogs coming in, they do sort of lend a certain character to our spirit.

Drew H (15:27):
Sounds like you're just a little bit warmer than Scotland, but you're using used cooperage, you're using X bourbon barrels, you're using, as I understand, roso barrels and such. Are you finding that you're having to age for different periods of time that maybe 12 years isn't the kind of standard, or are you kind of falling in that line?

Fiona (15:56):
No, I would say that say a seven or 8-year-old for us would be very equivalent to a Scottish 12

(16:06):
In terms of quality and maturity at that age. So it is faster our maturation, and not just extraction, but the actual reactions that occur in the cast that give that lovely mature character. It is definitely quicker here but not appreciably. So when you compare to other areas around Australia and even in Tasmania, so down in the south of the state, they get very high variations in temperature, Dior variation, and a lot drier and warmer and sun. So their maturation conditions, again, just within our small state are quite different. So we are really an outlier up here in the northwest. We actually find that coal by volume going into the cask on cask entry is quite often the same alcohol content coming out, which is highly unusual. So it would normally go up or down in the cast depending on the relative humidity. So that definitely is something that is unique to us here in the northwest. We still lose our 3% per annum in our angel share, but that alcohol content or the concentrations remains constant in cask.

Drew H (17:24):
What do you tend to put it into the barrel at in terms of proof?

Fiona (17:30):
Historically, we've gone in at 63 and a half. Some of our new make has gone in higher. That's come straight off the still and about 69, which is quite high going in. And due to that, the invariability that we don't have, we're now staggering our entry proof to sort of mimic that change in our alcohol content of maturation so that we have access to those different extractives at different concentrations. But historically 63 and a half.

Drew H (18:11):
So let's talk a little bit about the name of the distill distillery, because Heller's Road is a very interesting name, obviously it's been named after a road. Where does this, what is the background on that name?

Derek (18:26):
So the road itself actually no longer exists, but when it did, it ran directly, literally through the distillery and it was cut. It was the first road or first track really cut by European explorers back in the early 18 hundreds from the coast into the hinterland of northwest Tasmania. Henry Hellier was a surveyor who worked for a company that essentially opened up the northwest of Tasmania to European grazing. And it just happened that the road that was first cut from the coast to the hinterland literally ran through the middle of the distillery.

Drew H (19:11):
Now there is a logo that I have seen on some of your stuff that has a man walking. Is he walking with a dog? Is that what that is?

Derek (19:19):
So we've changed our packaging. You may have seen some of our older stuff. They're still on our current labels. There is a man, he no longer has the dog with him, I'm afraid. But yeah, that's sort of that nod to the history of looking of the road through the country here is extremely beautiful. The forest here is incredibly beautiful forest and globally unique. It is one of those areas where the trees that have evolved in this part of southern Australia have some distant relatives in New Zealand and Patagonia, but they're really unique. And so the character of the forest is something that we're very attached to, and that the man looking into the forest and through the forest, and it is pretty wild country in terms of the, it's hilly and steep and challenging river crossings and all of those things. So there's a sort of a sense of resilience and intrepid nature, which then reflected I guess in our history by those remote dairy farmers who took it upon themselves to build a whiskey distillery at a time when there was really no such thing as an Australian whiskey industry.

Drew H (20:33):
Yeah. Well, you guys were one of the early entries. How many distilleries were there around when you guys got started?

Derek (20:40):
The earliest of the modern era? So there was distilling in Australia way back pre 1930s, but of the modern area era. The first to start distilling was actually a guy by the name of Brian Polk, who was very local to hear us here, and then ended up as our first head distiller. Then quite famously, how Brian was distilling and releasing whiskey we're not entirely clear at this point because it's not clear that you had a license to do so. But he was doing, in 1992, bill La Bill and Lin Lark who founded the Lark Distillery, got the first small license, so to enable boutique production of whiskey in Tasmania. Then in 1995, Sullivan's Cove commenced, and then in 1997 we commenced. So we were the third or fourth distillery. Every single drop of our whiskey has actually been made in this same distillery. So the distillery itself here is the oldest operating whiskey distillery in Australia, but Lark and Sullivan's Cove and Brian, their distilleries have moved around a few times in intervening period. What

Drew H (22:02):
Does Australia, the rest of the island think of Tasmania? Is this the place you go for a vacation getaway? Is this the place that you go to taste wine and whiskey? What is the personality that the mainland thinks?

Derek (22:19):
Tasmania is sort of famous for the purity of its environment. So a third of the state is world heritage listed remote forests. So people come to Tasmania. It really is a tourism destination, and there are local industries, of course, us that have been and a very strong farming community. But people come here for great food and wine, be that boutique cheeses and truffles and wine and whiskey, particularly whiskey, or they come here for white wilderness adventure. But whitewater rafting, very long walks in very remote forests, and certainly the greatest and best known bush walks in Australia are in Tasmania.

Drew H (23:11):
So how many distilleries are there? You had to have passed Isla by now,

Derek (23:17):
There are 70 distilleries in Tasmania, but we are, and we are one of the largest, when I say 70, there might be 69 today or 71, but there's most of those distilleries, sorry, I think there's over a hundred distilleries. There's 70 making whiskey.

Drew H (23:36):
Oh wow.

Derek (23:37):
Most of those distilleries are very, very small. One or two person operations have a small still, and they're genuinely handcrafting their whiskey. They're typically not available even outside the island. They add beautifully to the color and light of the island of the opportunity to go and visit and talk to the distillers in their homes or in their back sheds. So that's one of the great opportunities. There's then a group of more mid-tier distilleries that might have a handful of a couple of employees that are making some really interesting and lovely whiskey, but even the largest of the distilleries. So we'd be amongst the top three or four whiskeys by production volume and certainly heritage in Tasmania. And we are very much boutique distilleries by any international standard in terms of our production volumes.

Drew H (24:33):
Okay. Well, let's talk about the distillery tour and what people can expect when they come to visit you. What types of things will they see on that journey?

Derek (24:47):
Whether they're talking with one of our guides or with Fiona or myself, or they'll get a really good insight into not just the history and the story of how we came to make whiskey in as Hellers Road and in Tasmania, but why that distillery, why our distillery at Hellers Road is unique, and then particularly why it then creates that unique character that is recognizable as a Hell's Road whiskey. They'll also then get an insight into our bond store, and the best way to get an insight into the Bond store obviously is to try whiskey direct from the barrel, which they'll be doing, and then also have the opportunity to bottle direct from Cask. And it's not a fake set up cask, it's a genuine maturation cask that, and that's really one of people's highlights. I suspect it's one of the very few places in the world where you can bottle your own 20-year-old single malt whiskey direct from Cask. Wow,

Drew H (25:47):
Nice. Yes,

Fiona (25:48):
Soon to be 21. That cask actually. Yeah. And the other cask that you can bottle up there at the moment is an 8-year-old port cast mar, which is absolutely lovely. And

Derek (26:02):
What we find is that people love to combine that opportunity to understand the distillery tour, which will take them about 45 minutes, and then the opportunity to bottle their own whiskey if they choose to. And I'll then combine that with lunch in our restaurant, which has a beautiful view out over both local forest and our local farmland, which is quite a spectacular spot.

Drew H (26:25):
Look like you had some finishing flights there too, with some samples of food to taste along with it.

Fiona (26:32):
Absolutely. And whiskey cream. So our whiskey cream lcu, you can do a flight of those with matching fudge that they make in the restaurant.

Derek (26:43):
Wow.

Fiona (26:43):
So if you're a sweet tooth, we've got you covered as well.

Derek (26:46):
Yeah. But the flights for our whiskey are very much foods designed to be paired with our flights of whiskey if people choose to do that, or we have a broad range of whiskeys, a whole of our range, including some special releases that are only available through the distillery.

Drew H (27:02):
Did I see that you had a 20-year-old petered whiskey?

Derek (27:06):
19.

Fiona (27:07):
19-year-old.

Drew H (27:08):
19-year-old. Okay. So talk to me about that, because I was going to ask you about that earlier and I was thinking about it, and sometimes Pete in the cast tends to lose some of it's smokiness, that thing that you're looking for. What do you do with those casks to make sure that you hold onto that personality and where does the peat come from?

Fiona (27:32):
So our petered malt in recent times has come from Inness, so we do import that on a yearly basis as a sort of singular production run through the distillery. So I've got that actually starting this week. It's my favorite time of year in the distillery. The whole distillery smells amazing. So back in 2004, they did do a single petered run. I don't know where that Pete came from.

Derek (28:05):
It certainly came from Scotland. Sorry. So it was Peter Mo. We didn't import the Pete. We actually, okay,

Fiona (28:14):
There's no malt house set up in Australia to actually do petting at the time of malting. There's some post malting things going on here, but the flavor profile is just not the same. So that's the reasoning behind importing in the petered malt from Scotland. We get that big beautiful peak profile which matches actually beautifully with our spirit. So that 19-year-old, yes, we do have a number of Peter cast from that year that we're having a close eye on. I still have wonderful Peter character, but perhaps it is one of those education things around Peter mob people constantly asking about PM, what's the pp MA misnomer, because that timing cast does change the character, but

Derek (29:12):
Certainly there's no question that they are big. Yeah, big. They're big petered whiskeys nice. And that's also helped by the fact that unlike, say if you were looking at a Scottish whiskey, a scotch single mal, you'd be after 20 years, your alcohol content's likely to be down in the 40%, whereas ours hasn't changed. And so whether that enables the Pete character to be maintained or not, we're not sure, but there's no question they are big petered whiskey. They're certainly much more on the campfire smoke character side than on the sort of Islas it's iodine and burnt rubber character. They're a much more campfire sort of style of whiskey

Drew H (30:07):
With a little, I

Fiona (30:07):
Think that depends. Some of them are more medicinal than others, and I love the medicinal side of Pete.

Drew H (30:14):
Yeah, well, I'm guessing being down there by all that salty air that maybe they pick up a little brininess from that too.

Derek (30:23):
Oh, there's definitely, yeah.

Drew H (30:25):
Yeah. So then the question is when do I plan my visit? Because I'll want to know when you're going to have that still house filled with the smoky character, because that is one of my favorite smells going through it. And it's definitely, I think what people need to understand about petted distilleries or distilleries when they're running Pete through it is a completely different scent in that distillery than it is when you're just running your regular runs.

Fiona (30:57):
Absolutely. Even the spent wash from the end of distillation, it smells like smoky bacon. That's just

Derek (31:04):
Amazing. So to your question, when this time of year, so early November, early to mid-November is really when we run those feeded mashes in terms of the other times to join, this is probably, unless you're a D in the world, cold ocean swimmer, this is also a good time to visit Tasmania and right through probably our most stable seasons and the long days and beautiful weather is really January, February, March.

Drew H (31:39):
Very nice. Derek and Fiona, I really appreciate you coming out and talking about the distillery and giving us a feel of Tasmania because you're our first stop along the way and so much to discover and so many distilleries. I mean, I'd have to devote a whole year, I think just to going to Tasmanian distilleries the way it sounds. Absolutely. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, thank you for sharing your story, and thank you so, so much for being on.

Fiona (32:09):
Thanks, drew. Thanks for having. Thank you.

Drew H (32:12):
Well, I hope you enjoyed this virtual flight to Heller's Road Distillery in Tasmania. If I piqued your interest in traveling to the distillery, make sure to head to whiskey lore.com/flights where you can view the profile of Heller's Road and the growing list of worldwide distilleries we're featuring on the show. And dig deeper into the whiskey lore online distillery travel guide. Use the heart feature to show your interest in a distillery or log in with a free membership and bookmark your favorite distilleries to add them to your own wishlist. The site features, planning tools, maps, tour dates, and booking links for nearly 600 distilleries worldwide. Start your journey@whiskeylord.com slash flights. Now stay tuned because in just a moment, I'm going to have some closing travel tips if you plan on visiting Heller's Road. But first, it's time for this week in whiskey lore.

(33:10):
It was 72 years ago this week that the radio and television industry received thanks from a US Congressional Committee for its cleanup efforts in regards to its programming choices. The head of the committee, representative Orrin Harris of Arkansas suggested that the number of crime shows and advertising in poor taste had gotten out of control over the last few years. Yet while there was one time concern over the industry being able to clean itself up, things looked to be improving. The committee had received over a thousand letters from the general public protesting against beer and wine ads, low neck lines and other objectionable content not suited for children. The distilled spirits industry was praised for their efforts at self-policing. Apparently, out of all of the industries, the hard liquor industry had voluntarily all but removed themselves from radio and television advertising. And the so-called self-policing wouldn't see its first cracks until 1996 when Seagram's ran an ad for Crown Royal on television in Corpus Christi, Texas. The move sparked significant debate among lawmakers, advocacy groups and broadcasters. Critics worried about the impact on underage drinking while advocates argued for fairness pointing out that beer and wine advertisements had long been allowed. By the early two thousands, whiskey ads started filtering onto major networks like NBC and today they're still limited in number, but are in no way restricted.

(34:50):
Well, as we're prepared to leave Heller's Road Distillery and make our way to our next destination. Lemme give you another suggestion for your whiskey travel based on our nominations for this year's Whiskey lore. Fan favorite craft distillery awards. Just a few kilometers Further down the road is the town of Table Cape where you can check out the Tulip Farm and Lighthouse and then walk down the trail to the family, run Alchemy Distillery, and meet Matt and Sarah and try out some of their gins and whiskeys. Make sure to tell 'em Whiskey Laura sent you. And as we close out our trip to Heller's Road Distillery, if you're still on the fence about a visit here, let me give you my three reasons why I think you should have this distillery on your whiskey lower wishlist. First Hellers Road is a great introduction to Tasmanian whiskey renowned for producing some of Australia's best single malts and carrying a distinctive signature style.

(35:45):
And second, the Whiskey Walk tour will have you snipping not only sea air, but the wonderful sweet grain smells that'll fill your nostrils. You'll be able to see the milk can still that we talked about. Enjoy pulling up spirits straight from the barrel and bottling your own. And third, you'll be able to finish your tour with a meal in the restaurant with a combined taste of Tasmania through pairings of local delicacies and their amazing spirits. Well, since I'm south of the Equator, might as well visit another platinum winner and our Fan Favorites awards. It's time to head east over the sea to the land of the Kiwis, and in three weeks, join me as I start an epic year of distillery hopping as I start my great 48 tour that will include at least one distillery from each of the 48 contiguous states. Make sure you're subscribed to the Whiskey Lore podcast so you don't miss a moment. I'm your travel guy, drew Hanish. And until next time, cheers and slung of ah, for transcripts and travel information, including maps, distillery planning information and more. At to whiskey lore.com/flights. Whiskey lore is a production of Travel Fuels Life, LC.