Tasmania’s booming distilling scene is showcased at this smart harbourfront bar with a special focus on whisky – a collector’s den of rare spirits and even rarer artefacts.
The location alone makes drinking at Evolve something special. This is prime uninterrupted wharf-front real estate, on the ground level of MACq 01 Hotel. The views of bobbing yachts, dockside foot traffic and ocean to the horizon are among the best in the city.
While the wine list is serviceable and the cocktails interesting and well made, this is a specialty spirits bar and among the best places anywhere to come to grips with Tasmania’s booming distilling scene. The focus is Tasmanian whisky, though there are extensive lists of local gin (try Abel Gin Co’s elegant Essence) and vodka (we like Hellfire Bluff’s smooth potato vodka).
And then there’s the bar’s museum-like interior – the oldest bar décor imaginable. An extraordinary collection of fossils, skeletons and artefacts dating back 550 million years is dramatically lit and displayed in glass cabinets and shadow-box tables, so you find yourself reaching for your drink atop a cabinet filled with fossilised trilobites, crinoids and ammonites. Bigger artefacts include the nose horn of a triceratops, the enormous teeth of the shark-like megalodon, a mammoth tusk and the skull of a giant pig. A favourite is the dinosaur egg, a thing of beauty and wonder, from the nest of an armour-plated saltasaurus. Maintaining the museum vibe, the dazzling line-up of spirits bottles is lit and displayed in glass-fronted cases behind the main bar, like an extension of the natural-history collection.
Team your spirits with a share plate of Tasmanian cheeses or house-made pork and fennel sausage rolls. There’s also the likes of pulled-duck sliders, pork-belly bao buns and bite-sized pancakes topped with crab.
Even higher than the top shelf, Evolve maintains a spirit keep for private collectors. If you discover a spirit you love on the list and can’t bear to share it, the idea is you buy the bottle and store it in the bar’s keep for the kind of special occasion that calls for a first-release, last-cask or otherwise rare drop. The keep’s shopping list makes good reading. Fancy a 50-year-old Balvenie single-malt whisky ($60,000 a bottle), a 100-year-old Cognac ($2,800), or one of two bottles left in the world of an 1875 Armagnac ($29,000).
Less eye-wateringly expensive but still special is a dram of Evolve Cask 192 single malt, a recent limited-edition collaboration between the bar and Lark’s head distiller, Chris Thomson, in a bottle stamped with a fossilised paw of a cave bear. As the story goes, it was one of a couple of casks discovered at an old bond store in the Tasmanian Central Highlands town of Bothwell.
Whisky lovers (and whisky bores) will swoon over a liquor list that shouts “let the good times roll” – perfect for sealing deals and celebrating Sydney to Hobart race wins. The line-up of dinosaurs, meanwhile, inspires quiet contemplation over a solo cocktail and is guaranteed to buoy flagging conversation during awkward early dates.
