Bill Lark crunches along a gravel path skirting Callington Mill, an 1837 sandstone flour mill with white sails that still turn in the crisp Tasmanian air, to embrace his friend John Ibrahim. “Good to see you, maaate,” says Ibrahim in his chewy south-west Sydney accent. Lark flashes his gnomish, apple-cheeked grin. Together the bearded distiller and the tracksuited businessman represent the rootsy DIY past and the ambitious corporate future of Tasmanian whisky.

Ibrahim’s new Callington Mill Distillery, an imposing brick-and-glass structure with a soaring sawtooth roofline, stands beside the old flour mill. His $46  million investment in Oatlands, a Georgian sandstone barrack town roughly halfway between Hobart and Launceston, includes the whisky distillery built around two locally made copper pot stills, a cafe and restaurant, and a sprawling bond store on the town fringes in which some 14,000 imported port and sherry casks filled with new-make whisky are stored.