Sullivans Cove Distillery is celebrating once again after collecting another global award, winning the World’s Best Single Cask Single Malt title for the second year running at the World Whiskies Awards.
The 10-year-old French Oak expression, TD0217, claimed the prestigious award and follows the 16-year-old American Oak expression winning the same award last year. Sullivans Cove won the World’s Best Single Malt in 2014, making it the only distillery in the world to ever win World’s Best Single Cask Single Malt twice, and bringing its total of World’s Best awards to three overall.
Managing Director, Adam Sable said: “This is one of the younger whiskies that we’ve bottled at ten years old, and it just goes to show that the whiskies we’re bottling now are as good as anything we’ve ever released.”
About half of the winning cask was packaged in 200ml miniature bottles and sold as part of a gift pack released to Sullivans Cove’s mailing list members last year, with only 147 full-sized bottles made available from the distillery’s cellar door.
“There’ll be some pretty happy people out there. I love the idea that it went into the gift pack in the 200ml bottles, because it gives more people a chance to taste it. Huge congratulations have to go to our whole team, including our tasting panel, who check every cask at regular intervals to determine when and if they’re worthy of a Sullivans Cove label, and the optimal time for bottling,” Sable added.
Distillery Production Manager Heather Tillott said: “We identified this cask as a really special one as soon as we tasted it. We knew it was worth entering in competitions as a really beautiful example of a younger Sullivans Cove French Oak style with all the dark maple syrup and treacle character we look for, combined with lots of prunes and plums and a lovely weight to it as well.
“That richness comes from the beautiful Australian fortified wine that was previously aged in the cask, which balances brilliantly with the dried spice tannin of the French oak timber.”
“We can’t get the smiles off our faces. Especially because this is number three for us, it’s really solid proof that these wins are no fluke. We’re here to stay.”
Australia’s position as a growing force in the international whisky market was further cemented at the awards with Dan Murphy’s picking up the award for World’s Best Supermarket and John Rochford of McLaren Vale Distillery winning World’s Best Distillery Manager.