Tasmania

The genial Bill Lark with some of his single-malt whiskies. Photo by David Lansing.

I was talking yesterday how I really wanted to get back from the Oyster Lovers Tour (sin oysters) so I could go to the whisky tasting on-board the Orion. The whisky tasting was being done by Bill Lark. He’s another of the guest lecturers on our cruise and is often described as “the grandfather of Australian whisky.” You didn’t know Australia made whisky, did you? I didn’t either. But they do. And Bill makes the best of it. The other night Ross, the Bruny Island pig farmer, and Bill and I shared a table at dinner and Bill brought along several bottles of his Tasmanian whisky, and I have to tell you I was quite impressed. I’ve spent a fair amount of time visiting distilleries in Scotland and writing about them and, as I told Bill, his single malt is as good or better than anything you’ll find on Islay or in Speyside or anywhere else in Scotland.

In fact, Bill has gotten so good at making whisky in Tasmania that he is now called on by Scottish distilleries to act as a consultant. Imagine that: A Tasmanian wild man telling the Scots how to make a good dram.

I asked Bill at dinner how he got into the business. It’s a typical Bill Lark story. Back in 1988, he said, his wife wanted to drag Bill to an auction in Hobart. “It’ll be fun,” she told him. “They’ve got some old chests and beds and lamps and a whisky still.”

Say that again, Bill said.

“What, about the chests and old beds?”

“No the last thing.”

“A whisky still?”

“Let’s go.”

So they went. And for $65, Bill got an old illegal copper still. Mind you, he had no idea what he was going to do with it. But he took it home and started doing a little reading and learned that in order to make whisky you only needed three things: malted barley, yeast, and water. So he started making whisky. And, his friends told him, it wasn’t half bad. A few years passed and he became so competent in making good whisky that he thought, Maybe I should try doing this on a commercial basis.

Only problem was that while there had once been a thriving distillation business in Tasmania back in the day, no one had legally made whisky—or any other spirit—in 139 years. All because of some very complex restrictions that made it virtually impossible to distill spirits unless you were a mammoth concern. Still, Bill thought what the hell. So he applied for a license. Which was denied. So he called up someone in Sydney who was in charge of alcohol and exports and licensing—all the things Bill needed—and after hearing Bill’s story, the bloke told him he’d change the law. Which he did. And in 1992, Bill Lark was granted the first distiller’s license in Tasmania since 1853; this year Bill’s whisky was recognized by whisky expert Jim Murray as one of the top ten whiskies in the world. Not bad for a little guy from Tasmania who started out with nothing more than $65 copper still bought at auction.

Bob prefers drinking to talkiing when he pours at Spring Vale Winery in Cranbrook. Photo by David Lansing.

There’s more to life than just oysters. There’s also wine. Good wine. Dry wine. To go with the oysters. So our tour dude, Brad, his body half turned to face us while he spins stories about Cole Bay and the Aborigines who first took a liking to the oysters, guns his minibus through the hairpin turns as if he were driving a Ferrari as we all lurch first left and then right, hoping like hell there isn’t another car coming the other way down this twisted country road, delivering us to Spring Vale Winery in Cranbrook.

The first thing everyone does when they exit the minibus is flee for the restrooms. Perhaps to take a pee, more likely to recover from the drive. “My god,” one woman confesses to me, “I thought for sure we were going to die.”

I don’t tell her that one reason Brad the Tour Dude is rushing us is because I took him aside at the oyster farm and told him that we absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt had to finish the tour by four because there was a scheduled whisky tasting on board the Orion at five. Priorities.

After everyone has a little private time in the loos, we gather inside what looks like an old sheep barn that has been converted into the Spring Vale tasting room where we are greeted by…no one. The place is empty.

“Bob must be out in the vineyard,” says Brad the Tour Dude. He walks out to his minibus, thrusts an arm into the open window, and starts honking the horn incessantly. Within a couple of minutes, a balding young man pulls up on a tractor in front of the tasting room. This is Robert Elliot, the vineyard supervisor and, today, in charge of the tasting room. Without saying a word, Bob sets out a dozen tasting glasses on the bar and starts pouring a Riesling. We all stand there, waiting for him to tell us about the wine. But Bob tells us to grab a glass and start drinking.

I don’t like to talk much about the wine, he says. If you’ve got a question, ask it. Otherwise, I’ll just pour and you can just drink.

I like that approach.

Down the hatch go tastings of a sparkling wine, a couple of Reislings, Gewürztraminer, Pinot Gris, and Chardonnay. As we’re sampling the Reislings, someone asks Bob what the difference is between the two wines. Bob shrugs. “Some people say one thing and others say another,” he says.

Well, I can’t really tell much difference, says the guy.

“That’s okay,” says Bob, “I can’t either.”

After the whites, we get pours of three different Pinot Noirs and a Cabernet. “Any questions?” asks Bob. No one has any questions. “All-righty, then,” says Bob. And he leaves the tasting room, climbs back on his tractor, and heads back out into the vineyards.

“Time to go,” says Brad the Tour Dude. And we climb back into the minibus for the one-hour tortuous drive back to Cole Bay and our whisky tasting.