By James Atkinson
Despite only having had its whiskies on the market for a matter of months, Tasmania's Old Hobart Distillery scooped the prize pool at the first ever Australasian Whisky Awards on Friday.
Old Hobart Distillery won first place in the standard single malt category with its Overeem Port Matured whisky, which was also declared overall champion of the awards.
Overeem Sherry Matured whisky came in second in the single malt category, while the fledgling distillery also took out the cask strength category with its 60 per cent ABV Sherry Matured single malt.
Established in 2005, Old Hobart Distillery's whiskies have only been on the market since December last year.
Director Casey Overeem (pictured) told TheShout he is "over the moon with the result".
"With good results we hope the bottle shops will start finding us rather than us finding them," he said.
"We had a lot of positive comments from people at the show. A lot of people had never tasted an Australian whisky before – they didn't really believe there were such good quality Australian whiskies as what they were tasting." [continues below]
Organiser Dan Woolley told TheShout the Australasian whiskies ranged from "extremely outstanding to pretty average".
"Overeem really killed it – they were extremely balanced, full-bodied, well matured whiskies, they ticked all the boxes for me," he said.
Single Malt category
1) Overeem Port (overall winner)
2) Overeem Sherry
3) The New Zealand Whisky Company 21 y.o.
Cask Strength category
1) Overeem Sherry Cask Strength
2) Lark Distillery LD 100
3) 3 Capes 10 y.o. Cask Strength