???The wait is finally over for one of Tasmania's most respected distillers. This week saw the launch of McHenry Single Malt Whisky, the newest addition to the Australian malt whisky fold.
It's been a long time coming for its creator, William (Bill) McHenry, who founded what is now the McHenry Distillery back in 2011.
A few years before its founding, McHenry, approaching 50, crashed into what you might term an awakening or, less poetically, a midlife crisis (Bill seems to describe it differently almost every time I speak to him). 
This crash followed a literal car accident, which McHenry walked away from wondering what his 30-year career as high-flyer in the pharmaceutical industry amounted to.
In the weeks following, he aired this discontent with his neighbour, Graham, who jokingly piped up with a solution: with a name like William Fraser McHenry, surely Bill should be making whisky and learning the bagpipes.
The bagpipes side of that equation didn't really appeal (sorry pipers). But making whisky, well, what could be more gloriously rewarding than making your own whisky?
  Forget the sports car  
McHenry became infatuated with the idea. Work trips suddenly morphed into whisky research trips, while his biotech labs suddenly became playgrounds for distilling experiments.
For McHenry, there was only one thing left to do: find the ideal space and environment to bring this whisky dream to life. And when he found a Scottish distiller in his family tree, it was like a magnetic sign from the grave. It told him the location of the distillery had to resemble a Scottish climate; it had to be near the poles.
Soon enough, the Sydney-based father of three had purchased a property about as close to the South Pole as you could get near Port Arthur in Tasmania. The whole family then relocated to Tassie, and McHenry created Australia's most southerly distillery in the process.
  The whisky isle  
The first time I visited the McHenry Distillery was back in 2012. I'd just walked around the Port Arthur site, and was still getting over the shear trauma and beauty of the place when I drove up the bumpy dirt track that leads to the distillery.
The affable Bill McHenry showed me around the property, tucked into the side of Mount Arthur, which makes for one of the most stunning locations for a distillery I've come across anywhere in the world.
Vistas aside, the site is also perfect for making whisky: five natural springs exist on the property, supplying all of the required water needed for production.
The stunning location was just about matched by McHenry's bold ambition for the site.
"I want to turn this into a family business I can leave to my kids," McHenry told me back in 2012. "A sort village of activity and employment for the region, which has one of the highest unemployment levels in the country, despite something like 250,000 visitors coming down here each year."
Further north, other Tassie malt whisky producers were just starting to grab the world's attention with their rich, flavourful whiskies. But McHenry sensed that he needed a point of difference, so he acquired a pot-column still suited to producing a lighter style of spirit.
The still was also perfectly suited to gin production, and McHenry started releasing an array of quality gins to bring in some cash flow, often sleeping in the bitterly cold distillery just to keep up. But the gins were so well-received - winning numerous awards and plaudits - that McHenry suddenly turned into one of our star Aussie gin distillers.
  Tassie terroir  
When I visited the distillery again two years later in 2014, McHenry gins were continuing to win awards. But McHenry had noticed that some weird things were going on with his whisky.
For one, he was losing alcohol by volume (ABV) in the spirit over time. This is normal in the freezing, damp dunnages of Scotland, but it's unique in Australia: our warmer, drier climate sees the ABV increase (water evaporates out of the spirit faster than alcohol) and maturation normally occurs twice as quickly as a result. This is the case even just an hour up the road at the distilleries dotted around Hobart.
"But we have a unique microclimate here on Mount Arthur," McHenry said. "The Southern Ocean is our neighbour, and we have significantly higher rainfall than in other parts of the state, with the average humidity level around 72 per cent."
McHenry had basically replicated the Scottish climate he was after. But now there was a downside: his whisky was taking much longer to mature than he'd anticipated.
"I was so infatuated with the idea of becoming a whisky maker that I hardly even thought about how long it would take to produce this whisky," McHenry told me.
His Three Capes 10 year old whisky, which shares its name with the picturesque walking trek that's recently opened to the public, had been released at the same time, utilising stock from the Tasmania Distillery (Sullivans Cove) to build the whisky side of the business.
But the pressure was on: McHenry needed to bottle his own whisky and recoup some return on what was a substantial initial investment.
  The launch  
That pressure was finally eased this week with the launch of McHenry Single Malt Whisky. The expression was initially matured for four years in ex-Maker's Mark barrels, before undergoing a further finishing period in smaller ex-Australian apera (sherry) barrels.
The apera maturation has lent some rich, toffee and burnt sugar characters, which build on a grassy, floral, slight raw malt backbone.
It's a tasty first peak, but only around 100 bottles were released from this first batch, with around half of those available to bars and specialist retailers. But if you're keen to try a midlife crisis worth toasting, other batches will be bottled in the coming months.
Luke McCarthy travelled to Tasmania courtesy of Tourism Tasmania.
A professional barman in one of Australia's most revered whisky establishments, Luke McCarthy has also travelled the world to learn more about the spirits he serves. The result is two parts drinks culture and one part global trends, served with a dash of critical assessment.
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