LARK Fighting Inflation

LARK’s Christmas Cask No.125 is back for its eighth year, and this time it’s bigger, with the same unapologetically festive attitude - with 200ml more at the same price as 2025.

If your idea of a Christmas whisky tastes like it was matured next to a fruit mince pie, plum pudding, and a bottle of brandy butter, this could be the bottle you’re looking for.

The Hobart-based distillery's Christmas Cask No.125, its annual limited-edition single malt, is now in a new 700ml format. That’s 200ml more whisky for the same $250 price, a rare case of Christmas inflation working in the drinker’s favour. The release is the latest chapter in a collaboration that began in 2019 between LARK, Frogmore Creek and Hobart patisserie Jean-Pascal. E

ach year, surplus fruit mince pie jus from Jean-Pascal is fermented in Frogmore Creek red wine barrels. Those barrels then finish a LARK single malt that has already spent time in sherry and port casks. It’s an unconventional process, even by Tasmanian standards, but one that has turned the Christmas Cask into one of the distillery’s most anticipated seasonal releases.

The result, according to the distillery, is a distinctly Tasmanian take on the festive table. Official tasting notes (not tasted by Whisky Magazine) open with plum pudding, brandy butter and mulled wine spice, plus a hint of gingerbread. On the palate it moves into buttery coconut shortbread and baked custard before landing on spiced apple and caramel sauce, finishing with candied walnut and orange cream. It’s the kind of flavour profile that either makes perfect sense once you understand the casks, or confirms that LARK’s whisky makers have fully committed to the bit.

“Christmas Cask is our chance to bring the whole of Tasmania’s festive table into a single glass – the community, the craft, and a little bit of something special,” said Emma Richardson, Marketing Director at LARK Distilling Co.

The packaging continues the storytelling. A wrap-around illustration shows Pontville’s historic horse stables under a starlit Tasmanian Christmas sky, with Bill and Lyn Lark sharing a toast and Master Distiller Chris Thomson inspecting a cask. Gold foil and gloss varnish highlight details, while the inside cover features additional festive etchings.

In a category that sometimes treats packaging as an afterthought, LARK has treated it as part of the experience. The whisky itself is bottled at 43% ABV.

It is available today [October 21, 2026] through larkdistillery.com, LARK’s Hobart venues, selected retailers and Global Travel Retail. As with previous editions, it is positioned as something to be poured and shared rather than squirrelled away; though with only a limited number produced each year, that advice is easier said than done.

LARK’s approach to the Christmas Cask has stayed consistent since the first release: take local produce that would otherwise go to waste, involve neighbouring producers, and finish a single malt in a way that leans into the season rather than away from it. Whether that produces your idea of a Christmas dram is a matter of taste.

What’s clear is that after eight years, the formula has settled into something of a local tradition. One that now comes with an extra 200ml of encouragement.