Kristy Lark has been part of the organising committee for the last eight years. She has seen Tasmanian Whisky Week grow from a volunteer-led event with just 12 distilleries at the first Showcase to this year’s 10th edition: nine days, more than 30 events spread all over Tasmania, and over 40 distilleries at the Showcase. Some events return year-after-year, like Meet the Maker, which Lark likens to “speed dating a distiller”. Others were new, like this year’s sensory pairing of whisky and perfumery, a collaboration between Sullivans Cove and Tasmanian perfumer the Raconteur.

Proximity is what keeps people coming back. A visitor can meet a distiller at the Showcase, while also visiting their stillhouse or bond store on a cold August night during the week. “You hear the story from the person who made the decisions,” says Sullivans Cove CEO Andy Gaunt. “Tasmania is small enough that you can get around a lot of distilleries in a week.” Lark points to the same inside access: the industry is still young enough that guests can become part of the family and “have conversations with distillery founders and even industry founders.”

At Waubs Harbour, a distillery in the coastal town of Bicheno, co-founder Bec Polmear says the effect is sharper still. “It’s rare for guests to have Rob, Tim, and myself plus our team in the same room at the same time.” Teague sees two kinds of visitors drawn in by it: seasoned attendees checking how a distillery’s staff and expressions may have shifted since last year, and first-timers taken aback by the “unexpected depth and breadth” of what’s made by “folk of diverse backgrounds and differing motivations.”

That openness runs between the producers too and has survived the industry’s growth. “With so many more producers now, it would be easy for everyone to focus only on their own business,” Gaunt says, which is part of why Sullivans Cove hosted Hellyers Road, Callington Mill, Waubs Harbour, and Spring Bay at its own site this year, each presenting their own whisky. “Our reputations overseas are linked, so recognition for one Tasmanian distillery draws attention to others as well.” Polmear puts it more bluntly. “Without one another, there is no Tasmanian whisky industry and the more we work together, the better we become.” While true, it doesn’t erase a friendly competitiveness. At Teague’s Single Cask Odyssey, an event sold out within the hour, there’s a healthy sense of one-upmanship. Distillers turn up wanting to pour “their best expression on the night.” But it’s a rivalry that sits comfortably alongside cooperation.

The years on, the spirits industry has almost quadrupled to around 80 distilleries. Sullivans Cove won World’s Best Single Cask Single Malt at the World Whiskies Awards for an unprecedented fourth time. A bottle of the 18-year-old French oak ex-Chardonnay cask was opened at the distillery during Tasmanian Whisky Week. The trophy had just come back from London and Heather Tillott, Sullivans Cove’s director of whisky creation, presented the whisky to guests. “Looking around the room and seeing the community […] coming together to celebrate alongside us, recognising that this bottle has helped Tasmania, summed up the event for me.”

The event has resisted losing its scale to the industry’s growth, Lark says, this year leaning into small gatherings at distilleries around the state. Compared with the first year, she says, “it shows how the industry has grown and… is a world-class whisky producing region where there are still opportunities to see and meet the people that started it all.” The clearest version of that showed up at the Showcase, where a Waubs Harbour team member overheard three well-known figures from other distilleries recommending the whisky to each other and to other people standing nearby. It was, Polmear says, “a moment where competition was put aside in favour of sharing a good dram.”

Tasmanians like to say a rising tide lifts all boats. After 10 years of Tasmanian Whisky Week, there are a great many boats and the harbour is still open.