Fiona Coutts’ journey from microbiologist to Hellyers Road Head Distiller

Hellyers Road needs little introduction. A dairy-cooperative turned whisky distillery, for the past 29 years, it has remained consistently committed to its guiding philosophy of producing the very best Australian whisky possible, no shortcuts. This has meant using full-size barrels and a focus on long-term ageing from day one. 

As a result, Hellyers Road is now the proud owner of Australia’s largest bond store of “seriously aged” single malt, including 90 per cent of barrels aged 18 years and above. 

Fiona Coutts stepped into the role of Head Distiller (aka, a custodian of the future of ultra-aged Australian whisky) in 2023 two years after joining the whisky scene. 

For her, falling into distillation after a lengthy career in biomedical science was a happy accident and “a bit of a strange and rapid transition” that started with the death of her father in 2019.

“He was a whisky-loving Scotsman,” Coutts tells Whisky Magazine. “We used to brew beer together in the backyard, and he loved his whisky; I grew up around it … Unfortunately, he developed dementia and passed away in 2019. That was a fairly big moment for me personally.” 

This prompted Coutts to reconsider her career path, and whether she would be happy retiring having only done biomedical science. The answer was no. 

“I started brewing beer at home again after not doing it for many, many moons, and I realised how much science there is to it. I started doing some study – the general certificate in brewing – and quickly realised, ‘Oh, there's this other aspect to brewing beer’, and that's making whisky; beer without hops, and then you distill it out.” 

For her, this was a light-bulb moment that came at exactly the right time: “There's so much science in this industry, and I think that's what really grabbed me,” she said. It’s also a way to reconnect with my dad's memory.” 

This led Fiona to a three-day conference in Hobart where she met the former GM of Hellyers Road who was “quite interested with the thought that there's this scientist living on the coast that was interested in transitioning careers,” she explains. 

Following this, the rest of the story writes itself. 

Art and science:

Speak to any whisky fan for long enough and you will eventually arrive at the age old adage of whether whisky is more art or science. Of course, whisky is always a marriage of both, although the different philosophies of different makers can mix up the ratio. 

For Fiona Coutts, a background in microbiology has “certainly been a very handy background to have”, but perhaps not for the reasons most would expect.

“Improving what we already had here in terms of quality control and managing systems and processes – that's the skill set that I really brought to the party,” she said.

On a more whimsical note she added: “There are many things where art and science meet together and make something bigger than either of the parts. Whisky is one of those things where the science and the art really do come together and create something pretty amazing. Yes, it is a little bit philosophical, but I definitely feel that they complement each other.” 

Playing ‘giant jigsaw puzzle jenga’:

Explaining her day-to-day to Whisky Magazine, Fiona breaks her role into two main parts: distilling and cask management.

Since joining, she has already made a number of changes to the distillation process to improve quality and efficiency. This includes introducing a recirculation of the mash during the mashing period to clear up the wort before it gets transferred into the fermenter, a process inspired from her experience brewing beer. 

She describes this portion of her role as “fairly dry”, “very process-oriented”, and “always about quality and consistency.” 

The same is not said when it comes to the cask management portion of her role, however: 

“Cask management is a giant jigsaw puzzle jenga; I don't really know how to describe it. We've got 7,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 casks in maturation over 24 years – our oldest whisky is 24 and still quietly maturing away in our warehouse – but there's so many barrel types and ages and recasking. It's a real brain puzzle sometimes to go, ‘Okay, how am I going to manage this parcel of casks’?” 

To add to this complexity, the casks don’t always mature in a linear or predictable way. Fiona uses the recent Hellyers Road cask 4253.04, a 20yo American oak single cask release, as an example. 

“Some of our casks really don't hit their straps until they're 18 or so, and then they just bloom into this beautiful tropical fruit basket,” she says. 

“I don't know what it is about those ex-bourbon casks and our whisky – they sit there for such a long time, and we taste through them as they're ageing, but some of them just develop this really tropical character, and it seems to happen quite rapidly. It's like nectarines, peaches, apricots, grilled pineapples. It's really beautiful.” 



Finally, to finish off our interview on a personal note, I asked Fiona Coutts what her first five years at Hellyers Road have meant to her.

“As a north-west coaster, it makes me really proud,” she says. “It makes me really proud that this little company, Hellyers Road, has been cracking on with it since the late ‘90s, just getting on with it and laying down all this beautiful whisky. To now be custodian of that whisky, I'm immensely proud. 

“It also does tickle me that my dad, I think, would be looking down and going, ‘Wow, she's making whisky for a living now instead of working in a lab coat in a laboratory’, and I think he'd be really tickled that I'm doing this.”