Whisky Without a Safety Net: Whisky Flights - Travis Lawrie’s High-Wire Acts in a Glass.

If whisky tastings were rock concerts, Travis Lawrie would be the audacious impresario who somehow books the stadium headliners, the cult underground acts, and that one mysterious opener who turns out to be the night’s revelation. Through his ventures at Whisky Flights and Whisky Capital, Travis doesn’t just curate tasting line-ups - he engineers experiences that veer from the comfortably familiar to the “wait… we’re drinking what?” kind of memorable.

He’s the sort of host who can make a seasoned Islay devotee feel like a wide-eyed newcomer again, and coax a cautious first-timer into falling for a dram they swore they’d never touch. His approach is part palate psychology, part theatrical misdirection - placing a left-field whisky just where it will do the most damage (in the best possible way), then watching as scepticism melts into admiration. In Travis’s world, rules are more like polite suggestions: a heavily peated Octomore might share billing with a delicate pot still Irish, or - should the mood strike - turn up in a Dr Pepper cocktail, just to see who’s brave enough to keep sipping. And when drams of Octomore 1.1 and 6.3 appear, it’s not just a tasting - it’s a masterclass in passion and generosity, the sort of gesture that reminds you great whisky is meant to be shared, not hoarded.

Underpinning the mischief is a sharp awareness of whisky’s breadth - regional nuances, cask alchemy, and the stories that give each dram its swagger. Travis knows that a great flight isn’t just about liquid in a glass; it’s about momentum, contrast, and the occasional jolt to remind you why you love whisky in the first place. We sat down with him to talk narrative arcs, dismantling snobbery, and why sometimes the most unforgettable tastings are the ones that gleefully colour outside the lines.

Whisky Flights curates some pretty covetable line-ups - how do you strike the balance between crowd-pleasers and the odd left-field dram that makes people raise an eyebrow before falling in love?

Travis Lawrie: I basically try to design my tastings around the principle of them being ones I'd like to attend and pay money for.

One of my favourite things about whisky is the breadth of styles and flavours available, and the differences that can be found either across a brand, or across different distilleries if you're looking at a single style - such as peated, or sherry cask, or pot still, etc. So to me, being able to showcase some outliers that still fit in the category of the tasting makes the whole experience a lot more fun.

If someone raises an eyebrow at the choice to include a whisky, and then likes the whisky as part of the lineup - regardless of whether it's their favourite; I reckon I've chosen well.

Once a year I run a tasting called "Blashpemy", in which every whisky breaks "the rules". Over the years we've had whisky banned from sale in Scotland, a pairing of a "black" whisky & a "white" whisky, grains that cause some debate as to whether they should be allowed, the use of cask types that aren't allowed in certain countries, and then whiskies that don't fit in their pigeon-holes - such as this year with everything from unpeated Caol Ila to Octomore X4+10 after starting with an Octomore & Dr Pepper cocktail (that one certainly raised some eyebrows, but if you get the ratio right it's delicious).

When you’re planning a tasting, is there a “narrative arc” to the line-up, or is it more about throwing in curveballs to keep palates on their toes?

Travis Lawrie: Usually there's a journey to the tastings - even if it's not always obvious at first glance. Certain flavour profiles work better before or after others, and some whiskies just overpower others.

I'm not necessarily a big fan of hard and fast rules such as going youngest to oldest, lowest ABV to highest, or least peated to most peated, etc. All of those attributes need to be taken into account, but whisky is art - and it doesn't always follow straight lines.

One of the reasons I like to have food on the table at my tastings is so that we can pause, have discussion time, and reset palates a bit.

This helps if you want to go from say a first-fill Port cask to a refill Bourbon cask, or from peated to non-peated. You can only take this so far though - jumping from an Octomore to a Singleton is just not going to work well.

Take the first tastings of my big Octomore series for example; they're all super heavily peated - so I don't need to worry about peat levels (although they vary wildly in actual numbers, they're all at an insane level). So I've gone with an order that escalates with the impact of the whisky flavour - a combination of cask influence, alcohol, and other factors. With this sort of tasting, I don't have any set longer breaks to reset palates - but rather take time between each whisky to discuss.

We start with 07.4 - the first of the "Virgin Oak" Octomores; as it has a relatively soft flavour profile with a combination of sweetness and spice - but almost no cask influence in terms of flavours. Then 09.2; which is at a more standard peat level for Octomore of 156ppm, and has an ex-Bourbon cask base, with a year finished in wine casks - again softer on the palate, but introducing some flavour from the wine casks. Then we have the 06.3; which was the first of the "Octomores from Octomore" and despite being entirely ex-Bourbon casks, hits you like a sledgehammer.

After the 06.3 we went with the 14.2; a much more refined whisky compared to the earlier Octomores, and doesn't pack as much of a punch as the 06.3 - but being entirely aged in Oloroso and Amarone casks - no Bourbon or virgin casks involved, it stands up to the 06.3 by introducing more flavours again.

Then we had the one whisky that I'm sure most were attending for; the 01.1. This whisky would have been murdered if we went to it straight after the 06.3, but with switching again from the wine casked 14.2 you notice the flavours from the Bourbon casks. You also notice how raw a whisky it is compared to how refined Octomore has become by the 14th series.

Whisky snobbery is alive and well - how does Whisky Flights create an environment where seasoned aficionados and curious newcomers can sip shoulder-to-shoulder without intimidation?

Travis Lawrie: I think there's really two points here that need to be separated - not all whisky aficionados are whisky snobs; and snobbery I've got no time for. Whisky is made to be enjoyed, and nobody should gatekeep how someone else enjoys their whisky.

That doesn't mean I never judge - after all if you mix your Macallan 18 with pineapple Fanta, I'm really going to wonder how you don't realise it goes much better with ginger ale. :)

Balancing a tasting between seasoned drinkers and those just starting out on the other hand can be pretty challenging.

Playing things by ear is really the only way to go - if you start off with the basics, and everyone seems to all be on-board, then you can just speed through to more detailed information about the distilleries, the whiskies, etc.

Interesting side stories are also often good - especially when dealing with more than just "what makes a single malt single malt"; such as when pouring Pot Still, going into a bit of the history of how the category of pot still whiskey came about in the first place - as despite the love for it now, it was really born out of necessity rather than desire.

Octomore is famously not for the faint of heart - what’s your own approach when introducing high-peat expressions to guests who might be peat-shy?

Travis Lawrie: It depends on the tasting. With my current series of Octomore tastings - where every whisky is an Octomore; I'm going to assume that those attending have done a little bit of research, or already know about Octomore, before arriving.

For other tastings though where only 1 or 2 whiskies are Octomore, describing how the series came to be can important in describing how it relates to other peated whiskies.

How you lead up to it can make a big difference as well - other than when the whole tasting is Octomore, it's unlikely to be the first whisky of the night; or at least not the first straight whisky of the night. In my Blasphemy 2025 event, we started with an Octomore and Dr Pepper - which has a kick as far as cocktails go, but doesn't grab you by the throat the way starting with a straight Octomore would.

There is just no getting around someone's very first introduction to Octomore though. It's just not like any other whisky.

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If Whisky Flights was a whisky itself, what style would it be - a sherried Speysider, a maritime Islay, or something completely unclassifiable?

Travis Lawrie: This is a hard one, and it really does depend on the day - but my two favourite styles are a young punchy heavily peated single malt aged in Bourbon casks and finished in a dessert wine cask; or a well aged pot still - again aged initially in Bourbon casks, but finished in something heavier such as PX Sherry or Port casks.

In saying that, a whisky that doesn't exist (as far as I know) that I would absolutely love to get in a glass would be the Swagman's Ghost from Backwoods - apera casks and "corn whisky" casks, with some of the spirit being red gum smoked; but with the spirit being some of Midleton's softer pot still that they use for Redbreast. It would either be phenomenal or terrible.

Your events appear to be more like gatherings of friends than formal tastings - is that intentional design or just the alchemy of good whisky and good people?

Travis Lawrie: I've always wanted my tastings to be more on the informal side - with lots of discussion.

One of the reasons I started running my tastings was the lack of Aussie whisky distilleries that ran tastings in Canberra at the time - as very few of them had the resources to organise things "on the ground" hundreds of kilometres from where they were. And I've always felt that if you've got the distiller at the event, people want to be able to actually talk and discuss things directly with the distiller.

There's little point in having the distiller present and then having them just talk at a crowd like a lecture.

When I was first getting in to whisky, I spent a lot of time for work in Sydney - and attended quite a few events at the Oak Barrel; and some of my favourites were the events where Scotty barely managed to maintain control of the room as people debated tasting notes and discussed just about anything and everything.

The Australian whisky scene has been gaining international attention - how do you see Whisky Flights contributing to shaping that story?

Travis Lawrie: I think an important step before a distillery can get its product in front of an international audience, is to grow a local supporter base - and I hope that my many events that have brought distillers to Canberra have helped in that.

I'd also like to think that the smaller events that I run help the distillers get feedback directly from people drinking their whiskies - so often the only feedback brands see is those online that have complaints; as we're all far more likely to whinge about something we don't like than we are to go out of our way to praise something we do like.

Have you ever had a bottle or cask sample that completely rewired the way you think about whisky?

Travis Lawrie: I'd say there's probably 4. The first one was Laphroaig Quarter Cask. At the time I first tried it I had mostly had some blends, and a few malts; but QC blew me away. It was the first single malt Scotch that I bought a bottle of.

The second one was my first single pot still whisky - a Redbreast. I don't really know how much more to say about this one. I've always loved Irish whiskey - the first bottle of whisky that I bought (not my first bottle of single malt) was a Bushmills Black Bush. By the time I tried Redbreast I was nearly entirely drinking single malt Scotch, and yet the combination of sweetness and spice without the heaviness that any Scotch would have trying that, just blew me away.

Another was Amrut 100. I'm generally not a huge fan (at least so far) of Indian whisky, and at that point I hadn't had a single virgin oak casked whisky that I would have bought a bottle of. But the Amrut 100 - a virgin oaked Indian whisky - was damn tasty.

The last is an Aussie - cask 032 from Black Gate. A 3 year old single cask single malt aged in a cask with tawny staves and red wine heads. Medium weight, but oh so juicy and full of flavour. Up until that point I don't think I'd had an Aussie whisky with that much flavour that didn't also just clobber you over the head. Brian & Genise are masters at whiskies that drink way easier than you'd expect from the ABV.

Finally, if you could host a dream whisky flight with no budget, no boundaries, and no rules, what would be in the line-up - and where would you pour it?

Travis Lawrie: I'll start with the where - Islay; particularly somewhere around Loch Indaal. The 2 specific that come to mind that aren't an actual distillery is a restaurant in Bowmore called Peatzeria, and on the other side of the bay is a camp ground south of Port Charlotte called Port Mor.

If I was in Australia; pretty much on any beach - although not sure how the sand would go in the whisky. If I was in Canberra, I'd love to run one at the top of Telstra Tower whenever it re-opens - with views over great swaths of the city.

As for the flight; I'd love to pick one or two from different countries/regions. Maybe do it in two parts - peated an unpeated.

For a peated/smokey tasting there would have to be an Octomore - either Octomore Black Arts or Polyphonic. When I was on Islay for Feis Ile 2023, I got to try a single cask Kilchoman that IIRC was a decade in sauternes casks then finished for 2 years in first fill Bourbon - that would definitely be included as well. Santis in Switzerland make a "triple smoked" whisky that is just amazing. It'd be hard to go past Balcones Brimstone from America. And Connemara from Ireland.

Australia on the other hand; I'm honestly not sure how I'd narrow it down. If you haven't had Supremacy from Riverbourne, you're missing out big time. Black Gate's peated whiskies are just amazing - I'm never going to forget BG 072 Covid Edition. And find me someone who likes peated whisky who doesn't like Limeburners' Darkest Winter. Then there's the classic peated releases from Bakery Hill & Lark. And there's Backwoods' Swagman.

For unpeated, I think I'd need to choose 3 from Scotland - Bruichladdich's Rock'n'daal 2023, Edradour SFTC Sauternes, and a well-aged Bourbon casked Craigellachie.

I suppose with no budget I should swap one of them to some ridiculously priced Macallan - despite the crap they cop for their high prices and over the top marketing; I do like their whisky - especially some of the more aged releases.

A crazy old Glenlivet if you could get one would also be awesome - I know Gordon & MacPhail have announced an 85 year old Glenlivet - how could you not want to try that?

America would have to be a Bourbon - and for me that would be a Weller Antique - although with no budget, I should probably go with a Pappy Van Winkle 23 (I've never had one).

Australia at the moment would be either the Overeem PX Cask they released recently, or a Sullivan's Cove Double Cask - it seems to be the ugly forgotten child in the lineup, but they're often my favourites. Plus Backwoods Red Gum Cask single malt.

Maybe a bonus dram of Transportation pot still - I’m still very very carefully drinking my way through Johnny’s Flogging Molly release; it’s so good.

Ireland would have to have a 30+ year old Redbreast in a single Port pipe make the list without a doubt. And 21 year old Bushmills. And although not even close to being in the same category (the lack of operating distilleries for so many years makes old Irish hard to come by from anyone else); the pot still whiskies from both Teeling and West Cork, Killowen's Rum & Raisin, and Writer's Tears Mizunara Casks all deserve consideration. I wouldn't quickly look past Jameson 18 or Dunvilles either. Maybe in another decade the choices from Ireland will be much much more difficult. At the moment an old Redbreast and the Bushmills 21 would be my choices.

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Words and questions by AW.

Answers by Travis Lawrie.