Lark – the origin point

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of Lark Classic Cask Single Malt Whisky.

Lark – the origin point
Tasmania.
ABV: 43% (Classic Cask, the flagship; 500ml/100ml, tawny port casks, double-distilled). Core range also includes Tasmanian Peated (46%) and Cask Strength (58%)..

There is no modern Australian whisky industry without Lark. Bill Lark, widely called the godfather of Australian whisky, was instrumental in overturning the 19th-century laws that had made commercial distilling all but impossible in Tasmania; every distillery on this list exists in the space he opened when he founded Lark in 1992. Lark’s Classic Cask Single Malt – "the single malt that started it all," in the distillery's own words – remains the benchmark entry point: a tawny-influenced Tasmanian single malt with a whisper of local peat. Lark is now an ASX-listed company, which makes it something else useful too: the clearest example of an Australian whisky brand that has scaled up out of the small-producer tax remission and into the full weight of spirits excise. Any and every journey into the glorious new world of Australian whisky starts with and stems from the Lark distillery.

Lark is not only the OG of Australian whisky: it’s a bold, breathing, beautiful legend.

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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