About
Australia's first second-generation whisky distillery, founded by Kristy Booth-Lark, daughter of Bill and Lyn Lark (founders of Lark Distillery, the 'First Family of Australian Whisky'). One of the few distilleries worldwide owned and operated by a woman. Uses a 600-litre copper pot still. Boutique production of premium single malt whisky near Richmond, 30 minutes from Hobart.
Production Details
The Killara Distillery Tale
In the rolling hills thirty minutes north of Hobart, where Richmond's sandstone bridges have watched over the Coal River since convict times, Kristy Booth-Lark made a choice that would define Australian whisky's next chapter. The year was 2016, and she was stepping out from beneath the considerable shadow of her parents, Bill and Lyn Lark—the couple who had awakened Tasmania's whisky dreams three decades earlier.
This was more than inheritance. When Kristy founded Killara Distillery, she created something unprecedented: Australia's first second-generation whisky distillery, where the craft would pass from one generation to the next like the ancient traditions of Scotland. Yet this was unmistakably Tasmanian ground she claimed—land where the Southern Ocean's winds carry pristine air across paddocks that have never known industrial smoke.
The 600-litre copper pot still she chose speaks to intention over ambition. In an island where some distillers chase volume, Kristy's single still represents boutique precision, each batch small enough to know intimately. The copper gleams in Richmond's clear light, drawing local Tasmanian water that has traveled through ancient rock and clean air to reach her mash tun.
Here, in one of the world's few distilleries owned and operated by a woman, the extreme swings of Tasmania's climate work their magic on maturing spirit. Summer heat that can surge past forty degrees, winter cold that drops below freezing—each season driving the whisky deeper into oak, faster than the patient maturation of northern climates would allow.
The Lark name opened doors, but Killara's reputation must be earned barrel by barrel. This is the Australian way: no centuries of tradition to lean upon, just the fierce determination to prove that world-class whisky can emerge from the earth at the bottom of the world.
In the stillhouse, surrounded by the quiet hum of fermentation and the gentle bubble of distillation, you can feel the weight of legacy and the lightness of possibility. Kristy tends her copper still like a craftsperson, not an industrialist, knowing that each decision echoes forward into Tasmania's whisky future.