Old Masters
Craftsmen
Whiskey Distiller
Neil Stevens
The Abrolhos Islands might seem an unlikely place to hold a whisky blind taste test.
Two hundred nautical miles north west of Fremantle, the scattered islands – mostly just low coral outcrops – are as much known for their history of mutiny, murder and mayhem as they are for the the multi-million dollar lobster fishing industry they now support.
The islands are the graveyard of the Dutch East India Company’s Batavia, which ran aground on a jagged reef in 1629. One hundred and twenty five men, women and children were progressively murdered over the following months by a bloodthirsty band of mutineers. The bones of the dead are still being discovered beneath the lobster fishing shacks.
These days, the islands are a magnet for superyachts and their wealthy owners. It was aboard one of these yachts that Master Jeweller Craig Peters served a variety of whiskies from among the world’s most prominent distillers, and asked a dozen guests to choose their best.
Every guest chose the same sample.
It was not from among the global big hitters of Scotland, Ireland or the United States. The unanimous winner was an unknown drop, distilled in one man’s shed far to the south, in the coastal resort town of Dunsborough.
This Old Master is Neil Stevens, whose precision in all things he does with his hands led him to ask the question; “What can be more precise than creating the perfect formula for distilling whisky?”
In the large shed beside his home are the old barrels that contain the perfect brew. As one reviewer put it, “the whisky simply pops out of the tumbler.”
Neil Stevens comes from a farming family. In an earlier life, he was a ‘gun’ shearer, capable of shearing more than 75 sheep an hour, for days at a time. In the Australian vernacular, he was the ‘ringer’ in a shed full of ‘gun’ shearers.
That skill came down to absolute precision, a mindset that governs everything he does. From the handsome two-storey timber and iron home he built and finished with his own hands, to the fine furniture he crafts from the local jarrah hardwood, and the whisky he distils in miniscule volumes only for Old Masters clients, everything must be millimeter perfect.
Old Masters whisky cannot be purchased. As it says on the bespoke wooden box that encases every bottle presented to clients, ‘Free to those who can afford it. Impossible to those who can’t.’
As Old Masters, we are technically uninhibited & free of all external parameters. We simply design and craft the ultimate masterpieces, sparing absolutely no cost.