The Whisky In Isolation Story

The global pandemic has been tough on many people mentally. To keep himself engaged outside of his day job Justin Farmer, the founder of Whisky In Isolation, was encouraged by his wife to pursue his passion for whisky and writing to start a blog.

The origins started in isolation but it was about turning this negative into a positive. It was about sharing stories, reviews and this passion with other people across Australia and the world. Isolation in fact led to more connections with people than Justin could ever imagine.

It was through this that he started talking with Australian distilleries and, utilising their skills and expertise, the first cask was laid down in Easter 2020.

Tasmania has been instrumental in the foundations of the business.

The first cask, and indeed second cask, were laid down in Tasmania at Hobart Whisky (Devil’s Distillery) and Old Kempton Distillery respectively, while the first release was created in collaboration with Spirit Thief Distilling Co in Hobart.

Since then further casks have been filled in Tasmania in partnership with Killara Distillery, Launceston Distillery and Spring Bay Distillery with conversations constantly occurring with others in the birthplace of the Australian whisky industry.

Production

Whisky In Isolation don’t do simple barrel picks. Conversations and collaboration with distilleries are integral to the creation of distillery firsts and limited editions that are a little bit different.

All their whiskies either start from scratch or are created by marrying casks, put through a secondary maturation process – or a combination of the three!

But it is not experimentation for experimentation’s sake. The ultimate aim is to always create Just Great Whisky.

‘Nearly New York Sour’, for example, the first release created in collaboration with Spirit Thief Distilling Co., saw three French Oak Shiraz casks married together as the base. These casks were part of an internal experimentation to look at the differences between oak and wine varietals across a set of casks; Spirit Thief will not commercially release a French Oak Shiraz whisky under their label. With 3 summers of maturation behind them, the casks were transferred to a 120 litre Bourbon barrel, which previously held Buffalo Trace, to finish the whisky for a further 12 months; a “reverse finish” never done previously by Spirit Thief.