Dunedin sits at the very Southern reach of New Zealand’s south island, and that is where I set off for earlier this summer. It may have been summer for me, but it was the dead of winter for Otago. The atmosphere, the plants, animals, buildings, roads: everything felt like a blend of Scotland, New England, and the Pacific with an invigorating chill. It was disorienting at times, but oddly familiar at others (especially the more Pacific-influenced aspects).

I was in New Zealand for work, and did not have a chance to see much of anything beyond Dunedin and airports, but I still managed to make some time for whisky. Whether stopping by the shops I found on maps, or dropping in various bars to see whether they had any local malts on offer, I did my best to get a lay of the whisky landscape. All told, I was a bit disappointed not the find more, especially considering the Scottish influence; though to be fair, Dunedin is not a roaring metropolis.

New Zealand’s single malt scene has undergone a renaissance since 2010-2015, as something like a dozen new distilleries have opened. Renaissance may be selling it short though, as there were no malt distilleries left operating in the year 2000. Whiskies from some of those lost distilleries can still be found, and the New Zealand Whisky Company got their start buying up and releasing whiskies from Willowbank, formerly a distillery in Dunedin. Today, New Zealand malts can be found the world over, especially Pōkeno, Thomson, and Cardrona.

Most of the whiskies I reviewed this week were from the Dunedin Distillery, an operation that the New Zealand Whisky Co set up with in collaboration with Speight’s Brewery. I appreciate that the New Zealand Whisky Co released 100ml bottles of their products, including some of the whiskies from Willowbank. In the absence of a bar to try the whiskies, those samples were perfect.

So here we go, a week dedicated to all things New Zealand whisky!

Artwork this week is my own: here we have a pair of Kākā attacking the Otago Universityʻs scenic clock tower building; I loved the old Victorian buildings at the University, but the whole campus was scenic and delightful.