An original Nant Distillery barrel, finished in Brisbane

Nant Distillery at Bothwell, in the Tasmanian highlands, filled many barrels for private owners in the years before the company’s collapse. One of them, a 100 L ex-port cask of single malt, belonged to our friend Mikey Hilburger. In early 2020, with owners still working to recover their casks, Mikey asked us to help get his out of Tasmania. We did, and that cask is where the Broken Chain Single Malt Whisky begins.

What arrived

Five and a half years in a small port cask had left the whisky with more oak than it needed. At the same time we had a two-year-old Jamaican-style rum resting in ex-chardonnay French oak, with all the brightness the whisky lacked. So we swapped barrels: the whisky went into the rum’s chardonnay casks, and the Nant cask took the rum. We called the project Tales of the Broken Chain and gave it two and a half years.

What happened in March 2022

Both spirits were to be bottled in March 2022 and released in April. On 3 March we opened the warehouse and found the rum tank on its side in the flood water. The first rum made in Milton in more than 130 years was gone, lost to the same river that closed the original Milton Distillery. The idea was to release the two spirits side-by-side to show the influence the spirits had on each other. The whisky, still in its casks and above the flood water, survived; the rum, not so lucky…

What is in the bottle

An eight-year-old Tasmanian single malt from one of the original Nant barrels: five and a half years in ex-port, two and a half in ex-chardonnay French oak that had held our rum. Bottled in Brisbane in 2022 at 51% ABV, 500 mL, in a burnt-timber presentation box with a tasting glass. Crème brûlée, banana and toffee on the nose, then dried fruit, leather and tobacco; a quiet, changing sweetness on the palate with vanilla, spice and overripe tropical fruit.

We bottled one cask, once, and the stock count on the product page is what is left. The Broken Chain Single Malt Whisky is $649, shipped Australia-wide.

The photo: Asa Boardman, who founded Milton Distillery with Alex Bell in 2018, carrying the Nant cask into the distillery in 2020.