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

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He founded The Winefront, is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion (and former editor of Halliday magazine), and is the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He is 100% independent, and tastes between 5,000 and 10,000 wines each year, blind and in comparative brackets as often as is practicable.

More about Campbell Mattinson

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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