Limeburners (Great Southern Distilling Co) – the Western frontier

Limeburners (Great Southern Distilling Co) – the Western frontier
Albany, WA.
ABV: Varies by release – core single malts around 43%, with single-cask and cask-strength expressions running higher (to ~61%).

Limeburners is proof that Australian whisky is not just an eastern-states story. Cameron Syme grew up in the WA wheat belt on family tales of Scottish relatives and their illicit still, and spent 16 years researching distilling – while working first as an accountant, then a lawyer – before moving his family to Albany, on WA's wild southern coast, to chase it. His first distillation ran on Christmas Eve 2005; the first Limeburners single malt followed in 2008 – which was, incidentally, the first whisky legally made in Western Australia, and only the fourth in the country. This landmark whisky proved that the industry had a western frontier; Syme has since built it into a serious craft-spirits house across three WA distilleries. The whisky earned heavyweight regard along the way: Jim Murray's Whisky Bible called Limeburners the best whisky in the southern hemisphere in 2018, it twice won the US ADI trophy for Best Craft Whisky in the World (2017 and 2020), and Whisky Magazine named the operation Australian Distiller of the Year in 2019 (part of 140-plus awards all told). Limeburners is a foundational name for the whole western side of the country.