Ep. 236: The New Zealand Whisky Collection with Greg Ramsay Show Notes

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May 12

The New Zealand Whisky Collection: Willowbank, Dunedin, and the Long Way Back

The story of New Zealand whisky is not a straight line. It starts in Dunedin, disappears for decades, survives in forgotten casks, gets rescued by people stubborn enough to believe it mattered, and now returns to production in a city that once stood at the center of New Zealand’s commercial and cultural life.

New Zealand whisky has become a recurring thread on the podcast over the last few years, with conversations featuring Pōkeno, Thomson, and Waiheke helping sketch out a young but increasingly serious whisky scene. Greg Ramsay entered that conversation by way of Bill Welter at Journeyman Distillery, which feels fitting. Greg’s work has always seemed to sit at the intersection of old stories, new production, practical collaboration, and the kind of whisky-world connective tissue that makes this industry far smaller than it looks.

When Greg came on the podcast, the conversation stretched across two related but distinct projects: the New Zealand Whisky Collection, built around the remaining stock from the old Willowbank/Wilson’s distillery, and the new Dunedin Distillery at Speight’s Brewery, where the next chapter is already being made. It’s a story of preservation, reinvention, and the strange luck that sometimes determines whether a whisky tradition survives at all.

Dunedin before whisky was “new world”

Dunedin has always had the right bones for whisky. Scottish roots, serious brewing history, high-quality barley, and a landscape connected to both sea and agriculture. In the 1800s, it was one of New Zealand’s wealthiest and most important cities, fueled by gold, farming, trade, and a deep bench of immigrants who brought technical knowledge with them.

There was distilling there early. Serious distilling, not just someone hiding a still behind a shed. Greg talked about an 1867 image of a major production distillery in Dunedin, complete with copperwork, cooperage, pumps, vats, and a level of industrial ambition that makes it clear whisky was not an afterthought.

Then, like so many young colonial distilling industries, it was legislated out of existence. Scottish banks wanted railway business across the Empire, and one of the tradeoffs in multiple markets was legislation against local distilling. Railways won. Local whisky lost.

For nearly a century, that was mostly that.

Wilson’s, Willowbank, and a distillery reborn in the 1960s

The modern New Zealand whisky story restarted in the 1960s with the Baker brothers, successful tea and coffee businessmen who saw an opportunity in Dunedin’s barley, brewing knowledge, and copperworking skill. They sent Dick Borerman around the world to study distilling, and when Scotland proved less than generous with its secrets, he found his education in old technical manuals, chemistry, and trial.

The result was Willowbank Distillery, licensed in 1965 and operating in earnest by 1966. Its flagship brand, Wilson’s, launched in 1974, named through a public competition and tied back to James Wilson, an important figure in Dunedin’s brewing and malting history.

That connection matters because the new Dunedin Distillery now sits at Speight’s Brewery, tying whisky back into the same local brewing lineage that helped make the city such a natural home for it in the first place.

The stock that survived

The New Zealand Whisky Collection begins with survival.

After years of ownership changes, including Seagram’s, Foster’s, and eventually the Preston family, the remaining Willowbank stock came up for assessment. Greg and Bill Lark were brought in to value it, expecting perhaps a straightforward inventory. What they found was more interesting: single malt, blended whisky, and a large amount of spirit that had been moved into New Zealand red wine casks.

That wine-cask stock became one of the Collection’s defining signatures.

The Dunedin DoubleWood, later stretched to 18 years old, developed deep ruby color and a rich, tannic, fruit-driven profile from long maturation in New Zealand red wine barrels. The Omaruvian pushed that even further at cask strength, becoming an almost ink-dark expression built around the idea that the whisky should spend more time in red wine wood than it had in its original bourbon casks.

That was not a typical finish. That was full-scale second maturation.

Stretching the last of a finite treasure

The original Willowbank stock was always finite. There was no new production coming behind it, so each release carried the same uncomfortable question: how do you keep a whisky alive when every bottle sold brings the end closer?

Over time, bottle sizes shrank to stretch the inventory. The whisky became rarer, older, and more expensive. That approach worked because the stock had genuine historical value. New Zealand became only the third country, after Scotland and Japan, to offer 30-year-old single malt whisky.

But even rare stocks eventually reach the end. Greg said there are now only a small number of vintage casks left, plus some already bottled stock, totaling roughly 1,800 bottles from the remaining 1987 to 1993-era whisky.

That creates a natural pivot. The old whisky can help introduce the new, but it can’t carry the business forever.

Spirit-forward whisky and the value of tired wood

One of the most interesting threads in the conversation was Greg’s preference for spirit-forward whisky.

Color sells, especially in markets conditioned by bourbon and sherry-forward Scotch to read darkness as depth. But the old Willowbank single malts often leaned pale, bright, and driven by grain and fermentation rather than heavy oak. Greg sees that as a strength, not a weakness.

That philosophy carries into the new production as well. Tired barrels are not useless barrels. They can act more as maturation vessels than flavor bludgeons, allowing the spirit to develop without being buried under wood extract, caramel, or old wine.

It’s a style that recalls distilleries like Wolfburn, where relatively pale whisky can still carry real complexity and structure. The point is not to avoid wood entirely. It’s to keep the wood in its lane.

New Zealand as its own whisky identity

Greg’s projects cross several worlds. He is Tasmanian, has worked on distillery projects in Tasmania and Scotland, has a connection to Kingsbarns in St. Andrews, and now works deeply in New Zealand whisky. But the center of gravity here is New Zealand.

That matters because New Zealand whisky has to become more than a footnote to Scotch, Australian whisky, or Tasmanian whisky. It has its own climate, agricultural base, brewing culture, wine industry, and identity.

That’s also been the through line in the previous New Zealand conversations on the podcast. Pōkeno, Thomson, and Waiheke all approach whisky differently, but together they point toward a scene that isn’t simply importing Scotch logic into the Southern Hemisphere. New Zealand whisky is still young in modern terms, but it already has multiple voices.

The country’s craft beer scene plays a major role in that. New Zealand has long had a strong regional brewing culture, with local breweries tied to local communities. That beer infrastructure, along with high-quality barley and distinctive wine casks, creates a natural foundation for whisky.

The goal isn’t to copy Scotland. It’s to make something that tastes like it could only have come from New Zealand.

New Zealand as calling card

There’s also something powerful in the word New Zealand itself.

For whisky, that matters. Scotland carries centuries of expectation. Kentucky means bourbon before the bottle is even opened. Japan suggests precision, elegance, and scarcity. New Zealand, by contrast, still feels open. It carries associations of purity, isolation, agriculture, rugged landscapes, wine, craft beer, and a kind of clean-slate creativity that works beautifully for new world whisky.

That gives producers both freedom and responsibility. New Zealand whisky doesn’t have to drag a fixed historical style behind it, but it also has to earn recognition in real time. The name on the label becomes part of the story before anyone reads the mash bill or cask type. It tells drinkers to expect something tied to place, climate, grain, wine, and water, even if they don’t yet know exactly what New Zealand whisky tastes like.

That’s part of what makes the category exciting. Pōkeno, Thomson, Waiheke, and the New Zealand Whisky Collection are not interchangeable, and that’s the point. Together, they help build New Zealand into a whisky identity that can stand on its own: not Scotch from somewhere else, not Australian whisky with different scenery, but a distinct national voice still being written bottle by bottle.

Dunedin Distillery at Speight’s Brewery

The new Dunedin Distillery brings that idea into production.

Built in partnership with Speight’s Brewery, it gives the New Zealand Whisky Collection something it lacked for years: new make spirit, new casks, and a future beyond the old Willowbank inventory. Production is still in its early stages, running well below full capacity, but the framework is there.

The setup includes a 3,800-liter pilot still and a 1,650-liter spirit still, with a current output around 52,000 liters at cask strength, roughly 30% of capacity. The ambition is to eventually run around the clock.

The ingredients are New Zealand-focused: local grain, local peat, ex-bourbon casks for base maturation, and French oak New Zealand red wine casks for finishing and secondary maturation.

That combination ties together the country’s agricultural, brewing, and wine traditions in a way that feels authentic rather than engineered for marketing copy.

South Island Single Malt and Dunedin Double Cask

The first new releases are designed to bridge past and future.

South Island Single Malt sits closer to the classic bourbon-cask single malt profile: pale, grain-led, bright, and familiar enough for Scotch drinkers while still carrying a New Zealand accent. It is the cleaner line back to the old Willowbank/Lamalaw/Milford style.

Dunedin Double Cask carries forward the red wine influence that became central to the New Zealand Whisky Collection’s identity. It keeps that deeper, darker, fruit-and-tannin profile alive, but now with new spirit and a more intentional production model behind it.

Together, they give the range two clear entry points: one spirit-forward and one wine-cask-driven.

The Journeyman connection and cask character

The Journeyman connection isn’t just how this episode happened. It also shows up in the whisky itself.

Greg has been refilling ex-Journeyman casks in New Zealand, including rye, bourbon, and wheat whiskey barrels. Those casks behave differently. Ex-bourbon brings sweetness and familiar vanilla-caramel tones. Ex-rye adds spice and pepper. Ex-wheat, surprisingly, brings a softer cereal and porridge-like character that has evolved over time.

That kind of cask work fits the broader New Zealand Whisky Collection approach. It’s experimental, but not random. The barrel is a tool, not a costume.

A whisky country still finding its local market

New Zealand whisky still faces a challenge at home. The country has excellent producers, a strong craft beverage culture, and a growing whisky identity, but domestic demand is still developing. Export has often been the more obvious path.

That’s changing gradually, helped by producers like Pōkeno, Thomson, Waiheke, Scapegrace, Cardrona, Divergence, and others building awareness across the country. But freight costs, small population, and distance from major global markets remain real constraints.

For Greg, the answer seems to be focus. Not trying to be everywhere at once, especially in a tougher global whisky climate, but choosing markets carefully and building the brand around what makes New Zealand distinctive.

Cost control, humility, and not believing your own bullshit

There was also a practical streak running through the conversation.

Whisky invites romance, sometimes too much of it. Heritage, provenance, rare casks, lost distilleries, revived brands, island climates, red wine barrels, Scottish connections. It’s easy to start floating away on the story.

Greg’s view is more grounded. You can’t control the market. You can’t control global demand. You can’t control every tariff, freight increase, or category shift. You can control your spending, your focus, and whether the liquid makes sense.

That may be the most important lesson for new world whisky right now. The story gets someone to the glass once. The whisky has to bring them back.

What legacy looks like

The legacy of the New Zealand Whisky Collection is already partly written. It rescued and preserved a major piece of New Zealand whisky history, carried old Willowbank stock into the modern era, and showed the world that New Zealand could sit in the same conversation as older whisky nations.

The legacy of Dunedin Distillery is still being made.

If it works, it won’t just replace the old stock. It will give that old stock a future. A through line from 1860s Dunedin, to Wilson’s and Willowbank, to the Preston family’s red wine casks, to the new stills at Speight’s Brewery.

That is the long work: not freezing history in glass, but letting it ferment again.

The New Zealand Whisky Collection / Dunedin Distillery at Speight’s