Time for the Small Batch Spirits Awards

by Leon Gettler

The Champion Australian Small Batch Spirit Trophy and three new classes in the 2016 Australian Distilled Spirits Awards (ADSA) seeks to acknowledge the uniqueness of certain blends.

These awards, which opened on Monday, allow distillers to benchmark their blends against their peers.

ASDA competition manager Damian Nieuwensteeg  said the awards were designed to look after unique style distillations.

Those distillations can come from a certain cask or barrel. The bottom line is that the production is limited, it’s not for the mass market.

The aim of the awards are to acknowledge specialty small-scale production spirits and liqueurs that are not readily available.

“Paramount to that is that it comes from a distillation that is not available in vast quantities,’’ Nieuwensteeg said.

“It’s very much about the one-off and not a typical recipe.”

This is the second year that ASDA has been running the awards as a standalone outside of the Royal Melbourne Fine Food Awards.

In 2015, there were 115 entries.

But the industry has grown since then. “We’re expecting more this year,’’ Nieuwensteeg said.