VAN DIEMEN

• New World Vodka
• Raspberry Liqueur

Van Diemen Distillery belongs to a special order of oddities. Their status in the Australian distilling industry is something akin to the black sheep: unabashedly peculiar and driven by all manner of bizarre and whimsical notions. Van Diemen have an inkling this has something to do with their homeland, Van Diemen's land, now known as Tasmania.

During the most recent ice-age (a mere 10,000 odd years ago) Mother Nature saw it fit to wrench Tasmania from the mainland. This cleaving of the continent had a profound effect on the inhabitants and landscape. While the rest of the world busied themselves with an industrial revolution or two, Tasmania remained pristine in its isolation.

In Tasmania, the air reaches a purity unattainable anywhere else on the planet. Time (when occasionally observed) unravels at a snails pace. Pristine rain water collected from the zenith of Cape Grim, in the remote north east falls abundantly. Van Diemen Distillery owes its namesake to this untainted and often eccentric isle.