Hellyers Road – Anniversary Collection Grain 21 Club Blue Gum

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of Hellyers Road – Anniversary Collection Grain 21 Club Blue Gum.

Hellyers Road – Anniversary Collection Grain 21 Club Blue Gum
Burnie, Tasmania.
ABV: 49% (21 Club Blue Gum, the featured 21-year-old; 700ml, ~16 years American oak ex-bourbon then ~5 years tawny port cask).

Hellyers Road is on a great streak. It has won at the World Whiskies Awards every year for more than a decade – an unbroken run of category wins reaching back beyond 2016 that no other Australian distillery can match. In 2026 alone it took four Australian categories, among them the 21-year-old Blue Gum (Australian Single Malt 21 Years and Over) and the 20-year-old Anniversary grain (Best Australian Grain). What makes the record remarkable is that Hellyers Road does it at scale and at age: it is one of Tasmania's largest and most established distilleries, it sits on unusually deep stocks of properly old whisky – releasing 20- and 21-year-olds while much of the industry is still waiting for its spirit to grow up. And it isn't only in the game of rare old casks – back in 2022 a Hellyers Road entry-level 12 Year Old was named Best Australian Single Malt outright.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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