“Tasmania’s Best Whisky, One Cask At A Time”

Each Tasmanian distillery has a unique quality, as all distilleries do in fact, and Dark Valley aims to show how well the new make spirit from each one works in different casks and at precise maturation times. Alex monitors each and every cask to ensure that they are all released when they are at their peak quality. Each different cask filled by different distilleries and stored in different bond stores will require different length maturations. It is impossible to base the decision on numbers, it relies entirely on the one thing that matters: craft.

“It Begins And Ends With Flavour”

Tasmania is a unique environment for rich and complex whiskies bottled at cask strength. The atmosphere and climate allows the wood to breathe vivid life into the liquid. The angels are more conservative than in Scotland and they take more water than alcohol, which means that as the whisky ages it does evaporate but what remains gets stronger and stronger. The maturation process, which is also a lot faster than Scotland in general, leaves a viscous and smooth whisky at very high natural cask strength.

Dark Valley concentrates on small casks, which means the angels take a lot more proportionally, but in exchange the high wood contact imparts intense flavour and spirit quality after a relatively short period of time. Due to the high percentage of evaporation combined with the small cask size, the yield from each barrel is very small.

Some Scottish distilleries refer to “limited” or “exclusive” releases as between 9,000 and 13,000 bottles. World whisky independent bottlers may release single casks at 500 to 700 bottles. Australian limited releases may be between 200 and 400 bottles. Dark Valley releases are exclusive with only 30 to 40 bottles per cask. The liquid is natural colour, cask strength, and unfiltered. It is the closest thing to walking into the distillery bond store and drinking straight from the choicest barrels.