WHISKY IN AUSTRALIA 40 YEARS AGO
THE RISE OF MALT WHISKY APPRECIATION DOWN UNDER BY LUKE MCCARTHY
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n the early 1980s, Australia was like a giant, sundrenched playground for the senses. It was a time of perms and mullets and paisley shirts, shoulder pads, power suits and shrimps on the barbie. It was a time when fruity rieslings were kicked to the curb by bold and buttery chardonnays. Australian wine was about to launch its ‘bottled sunshine’ onto the international stage, while local shiraz and cabernet were wooing fine wine fanciers at home and abroad. On the other hand, if you were a malt whisky lover in Australia in the early 1980s, you were living in a barren, drab, wasteland of a place.
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“The world was a blended whisky world then,” recalls Bruce Ferrier, a veteran radio announcer who first got into malt whisky in the early 1980s. Ferrier is also The Laird of The Gillies Club, Australia’s, and possibly the world’s, first single malt whisky appreciation society. It was founded in February 1977, just a few years before the groundbreaking formation of The Scotch Malt Whisky Society, at a time when finding quality malt whisky was nowhere near as simple at it is today. “All that was around in Australia was the likes of Glenlivet and Glenfiddich and that’s about it. It was a terrible selection as far as general retail was concerned,” Ferrier says.
