Cooper puts Po¯ keno on whisky map
Scotsman Mike Tawse moves to NZ to take on vision of to¯ tara wood barrels
Scotsman Mike Tawse has come all the way to New Zealand to keep alive the ancient and close-to-lost art of making wooden whisky barrels. He is a cooper, steaming, bending and firing wooden staves to create watertight vessels.
In New Zealand, Mike has crafted the world’s first whisky casks made from to¯ tara wood — unique barrels for a unique single malt whisky distilled in the Waikato that is about to be launched to international markets.
The to¯tara cask single malt has been made by the passionate team of
14 at Po¯keno
Whisky, who are determined to put
New Zealand on the map as a whiskyproducing country.
Po¯ keno Whisky founder Matt Johns says his new product has been three years in the making, and there’ve been several challenges along the way.
“I wanted to create a unique New Zealand product. We did trials with different types of native wood to find what types work well with the whisky,” Matt says.
“We tested six different native woods, but only two ticked the boxes. We found ma¯nuka and po¯hutukawa were way too powerful, for example, but to¯tara worked perfectly.”
This put the team in front of the second challenge: there was no cooper in New Zealand, meaning whisky barrels are usually imported.
Matt wanted native to¯tara casks and thought about shipping the to¯ tara overseas to have it transformed into casks. But the Forests Act 1949 largely prohibits the export of native wood, so he had to get creative.
“I worked in the single malt industry for over 20 years, so I just randomly rang up one of my former contacts in Scotland to ask if they knew a cooper who would like to work in New Zealand.”
When Mike heard about the opportunity, he couldn’t believe his luck.
“I always wanted to go to New Zealand or Australia, but there is no [coopering] industry, so I didn’t know how,” he says.
“It’s exciting to know that I can bring this tradition back to New Zealand.”
With Mike, in Po¯ keno, Matt and his team are able to create a truly local product, with every part of the whisky-making process done on-site: from the malting to the mashing to the distilling to the casks to the maturing to the bottling.
The water is from a spring near the Bombay Hills — it’s the same water that is bottled under the name NZ Pure Spring Water. The barley is grown in Canterbury.
Matt says: “We built a cooperage on-site... We had to import some of the tools from Scotland and even had to make our own barrel shaving machine.”
Mike also brought a few of his own tools, some of which have been in his family for years, as his father was a cooper as well.
“It’s a unique trade, hard on your body, very physical. I’ve done it on and off for 15 years,” Mike says.
Back in Scotland, he only crafted the barrels, making around 160 a week. At Po¯keno Whisky, Mike has also trained as a distiller.
“Coming to New Zealand almost feels like being retired, because lots of coopers back home go into distilling when they retire,” Mike says.
With the cooperage set up and the sustainably sourced to¯tara on-site, the venture faced another challenge.
Matt says: “To¯tara wood is very hard. When you make a barrel, you have to steam the wood before it can be bent so it doesn’t split. This takes usually about 30 minutes. With the to¯tara, we had to steam it for two and a half hours.”
Mike adds, “Bending the wood was the most difficult part, but it’s exciting to see that we can achieve it. It has never been done before, it’s unique.”
For the first batch of the to¯ tara cask whisky, to be launched on Thursday, July 13, Mike made around eight barrels.
“It’s pretty special”, Matt says. “The taste will be very different, creamy, coconutty and sweet. There will be only 1900 bottles available worldwide, 450 of them in New Zealand.”
However, those that miss out don’t have to wait too long: Mike is already working on 12 more to¯tara casks, so there will be more coming in the near
future. The to¯ tara cask whisky being launched this week was first aged in an ex-bourbon cask before it was transferred into the to¯ tara cask for a second maturation period of several months.
The final product has an alcohol content of 46 per cent.
Matt already plans to further develop the native cask whisky series. “We are looking into kahikatea and kauri, which we haven’t tested yet, and we trialled pu¯riri, which was promising.”
Looking ahead, Matt says: “When you make whisky, you are part of a journey. This is my part of this journey, and hopefully this journey carries on in the future.”
Matt says he puts the growing interest in world whisky down to a new generation.
“The young consumer wants something different. They are interested in the story behind the brand. World whisky tends to be very fruitforward as it is not spending long periods in [the] barrel, like Scotch and Irish whisky, for example.”
Establishing the company in Po¯keno was far from a coincidence.
“The water was a key thing for us.
The climate is ideal, and it’s close to Auckland and has a connection to the Port of Tauranga. It made sense for us,” Matt says.
He says Po¯keno Whisky is currently working at 30 per cent capacity,
distilling about 800 barrels a year. Most of the product, about 80 per cent, is going overseas.
“We are in 14 international markets, including the UK, France, US, China and Dubai.”