New-to-U.S. Whisky Brand Is Delicious and Comes From a Surprising Place

New Zealand is an idyllic landscape associated with glaciated grandeur, full-throttled adventure, and hobbits. I certainly never connected the islands with whisky before my first visit in 2018, which seems odd in retrospect. As I worked my way south through the country, I encountered a climate and terrain largely reminiscent of Scotland.

Nostalgia for that familiar environment hit its peak as I drove through the corrugated green earth of the South Island’s Crown Range. Sheep-studded pastures swaddled me on opposite sides of the valley before I eyed a stone-clad structure along the edge of the road: a working distillery adjoined by a dunnage warehouse. 

It was a scene straight out of the Scottish Highlands. I had to pinch myself. I thought I was dreaming. It turns out, both the whisky barrels stored therein and I needed to age for some time more before we could enjoy a proper meet-and-greet.

“Single malt whisky requires deep seated skill and patience,” explains Cardrona Distillery founder Desiree Reid. The native New Zealander and former farmer started laying the spirit down back in 2015. “It’s been patiently maturing in our extreme micro-climate for nearly a decade. And the excitement is growing as we draw closer to the opening and bottling of those original casks.”

A lot has changed for Cardrona since I happened upon it all those years ago. Most significantly, a couple of its expressions now enjoy widespread distribution across the U.S. Imagine my excitement when I chanced my way back to this wondrous part of the world during such an auspicious moment for the distillery.

Head distiller Sarah Elsom crafted the whiskies on-site, in a markedly Old World way—using copper pot stills custom-built by Forsyth in Scotland. She led me on a flight.

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Just Hatched is a floral and nutty delivery of cask strength liquid, representing an admirably complex fusion of ex-bourbon and ex-sherry casks at just three years of age. Growing Wings is a five-year-old variation dialing up the sweet and spice of a cinnamon-dusted pecan pie. Fittingly, we concluded with The Falcon, the distillery’s most mature offering to date.

A combination of eight-year-old malts aged in sherry butts, bourbon barrels and locally-sourced pinot noir casks, The Falcon's a whiskey that stokes provenance, rich in tannins and stewed nectarines. Bottled at a sturdy-yet-quaffable 104-proof, it'll soon be available on American shelves.

My experience at Cardona, six years in the making, culminated in a tour of that same dunnage warehouse I originally only admired from the side of the roadway. Elsom swung open a massive barn door and we tiptoed in to quietly admire the distillery’s oldest stock. She dipped a copper valinch into an upright 500-liter oak vessel and filled my Glencairn with a ruby red juice. Its berry and treacle aromas filled the room. I held the dram high against the open barn door. The South Island sun sparkled through the glass as it peered in over the top of the Crown Range.

Atop the palate, the whisky offered an elegant amalgam of butterscotch, gooseberry, and warmed clove. It finished with creme brûlée and cracked pepper, firm and lasting as the mountains overhead—an elevated sip indicative of the setting.

But even though this particular dram carried with it the gravitas of a fine Scotch single malt, New Zealand as a whole actually owns an advantage over whisky’s traditional Old World breeding grounds. It holds a multitude of climates across a relatively small space. 

In fact, New Zealand crams a whole hemisphere’s worth of ecosystems into real restate roughly the size of Colorado. From the near-tropical northern reaches of the North Island to the snowcapped mountains of Fiordland. And there are now more than 20 whisky distilleries spanning it all.

“I’m excited to see the addition of more distilleries and their whiskies to the New Zealand whisky portfolio,” says Reid, encouraged by the rapid expansion of a nascent industry. “The wide range of New Zealand micro-climates will surely be expressed in more interesting drams for the world to discover."

In other words, watch this space, whisky fans. It’s a beautiful view, indeed. After all, I initially came to New Zealand looking for glaciated grandeur and full-throttled adventure. I left with several bottles of top-shelf single malt. 

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