Bar & Bites: South Fremantle’s Running With Thieves sells bottle for $18,500 at launch of premium whisky brand

Running With Thieves head brewer and distiller Paul Gasmier jokes that the South Fremantle facility can smell like the Raffles Hotel carpet used to after an AC/DC gig.

The pungent aromas can be blamed on the imported Scottish peated malt his team use to make whisky.

Running With Thieves, which opened on the old Sealanes site in late 2019, recently unveiled its premium whisky and bourbon brand, Thieves Collection, at the Royal Perth Golf Course.

Seven’s Mark Readings and Thieves Collection executive director Michael Simm guided a tasting of the new products, which feature single malts using WA grain, including one finished in sherry barrels, a bourbon and the Gold Highland Cask Whisky, made with that stinky peated malt for a flavour comparable to Isle of Skye’s famed Talisker.

An anonymous bidder snared the first bottle of 60 per cent barrel-strength or “platinum” single malt from the first barrel for $18,500 in an auction that raised more than $40,000 for Telethon.

Platinum bottles will retail for $1500, with lower strength gold and silver whiskies selling for $350 and $150, respectively.

For Gasmier, finally having the flagship brand in the market is cause for celebration.

“It’s fabulous,” he told Bar & Bites. “I can’t be more happy. The work that everyone put into it, to now see it reflected in the product, it’s really exciting.

“I feel like it’s the missing piece and the future (of Running With Thieves). Craft beer is finding it quite tight at the moment, but we’ve been able to pivot and go straight into whisky.”

It doesn’t sound appetising, but it’s actually quite delicious.

Gasmier, who joined Thieves after stints at Black Brewing, the Sail and Anchor, Gage Roads and Asahi, currently has more than 400 barrels full of whisky, some in virgin American oak to impart vanilla and caramel flavours.

Other drops are maturing in maple wood, ideal for bourbon, and former sherry barrels. More barrels are on order from the US, including some made with ash hardwood.

The booze guru says that, unsurprisingly, ash wood gives the spirit ashy characteristics — a bit like the old sticky carpet at the Raffles.

“It doesn’t sound appetising, but it’s actually quite delicious,” laughs Gasmier, who looks forward to refilling barrels with stouts.

Gasmier and his experienced team, which includes former Nowhereman brewer Eddie Still and ex-Malt Shovel and Whitelakes brewer Reuben Herriman, juggle beer and spirit production.

“It’s definitely a game of patience,” compared to brewing, Gasmier says of making whisky. “We’re trying to do 10 to 15 barrels a week of whisky, which, while you’re running a brewery, is pretty interesting. It’s pretty stressful, the demands of running two facilities.”

After the widely reported departure of former owner Scott Douglas last year, Gasmier says it’s smooth sailing at Thieves under the new management of Simm Group of Companies.

Thieves Collection, he says, represents the company finding its feet and heading in an exciting new direction.

“We’re getting the opportunity to do the things we always set out to do, create the products we want to create and now the whisky is coming out, it’s even better,” Gasmier says. “It’s great.”

That future includes more beer, whisky and white spirits, plus the long-overdue addition of rum to the brand — once Gasmier works out how to make it.

“It took me a long time to nail the recipe,” he laughed.