When Starward Distillery came online in 2007, it was one of only a handful making whisky in Australia. Founder Dave Vitale had been doing consulting work for the tech industry and was considering opening a craft brewery – however, he was living in Tasmania at the time, and beer doesn’t travel all that well. After he’d shelved the brewery idea, a friend told him about the island’s fledgling whisky industry and suggested he visit some of the distilleries. The friend also introduced him to Bill Lark, founder of Lark Distillery.
“I walked through the doors of [Lark] Distillery and it was like a lightning bolt hit me and I fell in love with whisky,” Vitale recalls. “Growing up, my world of whisky was Johnnie Walker and Chivas Regal and Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam… So all of a sudden, seeing this craft distillery before it was even called craft whisky made me really excited
