Starward

Melbourne whisky brand Starward, owned by New World Whisky Distillery, is planning the UK launch of a wine cask-aged single malt and a range of bottled cocktails.

Nova, a three-year-old single malt aged in red wine casks, will be the first product in coming months, a version of the liquid having been available as a two-year-old ‘spirit drink’ through specialist retailers. It’s flagship single malt, Solera (43% abv), is currently listed in online retailer 31Dover.com (£48.95/70cl).

“We realised when we started making whisky that you can’t ‘out-Scotch’ Scotch, and that if we were going to create something that distinguished itself as Australian whisky, then it needed to speak to the place it was made,” New World Whisky founder David Vitale told The Grocer.

“The two things we have in abundance is amazing barley, which delivers that lovely malty mouth coating and texture, but also red wine barrels that we can mature the whisky in to give it a really distinctive flavour.”

New World Whisky had “something to offer that bourbon, Scotch and Irish whiskey doesn’t” Vitale said.

The brand would not launch older variants, he added. “Three years of age is just right. Melbourne has a highly dynamic climate. It’s also very humid. This gives us a window in which to mature the whisky which is a lot faster thanks to, basically, an accelerated environment.”

Nova will be followed by a range of bottled whisky cocktails, likely be released around Christmas. “We find here in Australia that turning up to a barbecue with a bottle of whisky can spell trouble,” said Vitale. “So we wanted to get our whisky into a format that serves the occasion really well. Everybody wins with an approachable way of enjoying single malt.”

The range would cover “classic cocktails but with an Australian twist” with “red wine influence and things like wattleseed as an aromatic spice”. The first will be twist on an old fashioned.