Mike Tawse is New Zealand's only cooper and hails from Scotland. Photo / The Pōkeno Whisky Co
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 tōtara wood - unique barrels for a unique single malt whisky distilled in the Waikato that is about to be launched to international markets.
The tōtara cask single malt has been made by the passionate team of 14 at Pōkeno Whisky, who are determined to put New Zealand on the map as a whisky-producing country.
Pōkeno 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 mānuka and pōhutukawa were way too powerful, for example, but tōtara 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 tōtara casks and thought about shipping the tōtara 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 Pōkeno, 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 Pōkeno 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 tōtara on-site, the venture faced another challenge.
Matt says: “Tōtara 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 tōtara, 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 tōtara 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 tōtara casks, so there will be more coming in the near future.
The tōtara cask whisky being launched this week was first aged in an ex-bourbon cask before it was transferred into the tōtara 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 pūriri, 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.”
Pōkeno Whisky’s Exploration Series No. 1 Tōtara Cask Single Malt Whisky will cost $249 a bottle and is available for pre-sale from July 13 via the company’s newsletter. People may sign up for the newsletter online.
A limited number of bottles are also available from the distillery from Saturday, July 15. The distillery, at 22 Gateway Park Drive, Pōkeno, is only open on Saturdays from 11am to 5pm. They offer distillery tours as well.
Other single malts in the Pōkeno Whisky range are matured in former bourbon casks, but they also use wine and sherry casks. The full range is available at the distillery’s online shop.
To mark the launch of the Exploration Series, Pokeno Whisky will host a whisky lunch and masterclass on Sunday, July 23. Tickets are limited and cost $149 per person. Email matt@pokenowhisky.com to book.
Matt founded Pōkeno Whisky in 2017 with his wife Celine. “There is a growing interest in new world whisky... Why should New Zealand not be a part of this? We have the ideal conditions to make a good whisky,” he says.
When the whisky matures, the outside temperature will expand the liquid in the cask, which causes the whisky to take on the flavours from the wood as well.
“In a cold country like Scotland, the whisky moves slowly and therefore requires a long maturation. But thanks to New Zealand’s subtropical climate, the whisky is working hard in the barrel and we get a very accelerated maturation,” Matt says.
However, he says this also means his whisky can’t be judged by age.
The natural alcohol evaporation off whisky in barrels is known in the business as “the angel’s share”. In Scotland, the loss is between 2 and 3 per cent of the whisky per year.
“In Pōkeno, it’s 9 per cent a year. After three years, we lose 27 per cent, which means the whisky matures so quickly, I’m never gonna get to 10 years because there would be next to nothing left,” says Matt.
“For us, it’s all about the flavour profile.”
There are currently around 10 whisky distilleries in New Zealand, and most of them are also producing gin and other liquor. Pōkeno Whisky only crafts single malt whisky.
“Single malt is different - it’s the only spirit that takes so much time to produce. It’s a craft product; there is so much variety and it has complexity.”
Matt says there are a couple of other things that set Pōkeno Whisky apart. “Our mashing process is longer ... and we have a long fermentation process. Normally, this process takes 40 hours, but we do 80, which adds fruity notes to the end product.
“We also have a slow distillation process which means the product will have more copper contact ... [this] makes the whisky sweeter and smoother.
“This process usually takes six hours. Ours [takes] eight and a half hours, but we only collect spirit for two, which means we only put the purest whisky into a barrel.”
Traditional Scotch whisky barrels have to be oak by law. “This doesn’t allow for any real innovation. In the US, the legislation only states ‘wooden casks’, so in New Zealand, we decided to follow that.”
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 fruit-forward as it is not spending long periods in [the] barrel, like Scotch and Irish whisky, for example.”
Establishing the company in Pōkeno 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 Pōkeno 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.”
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