Callington Mill Distillery — Local services in Oatlands

The dining room here is really very beautiful and has a great view over the whiskey sills. The staff are personable, although sometimes a bit befuddled looking and lost in their touchpad technology.

There is a rather odd note at the top of the menu stating "Callington Mill is a whiskey destination that offers a culinary experience. We do not purport to function primarily as a restaurant." When we read this, it sounded a bit like an up-front apology for the food not being great, i.e. they specialise in whiskey but serve some food. It put a bit of a dampener on our expectations. However, reading the menu, everything SOUNDS really delicious. And it certainly LOOKS like a restaurant. It's a lovely big room and there's a big modern kitchen right there.

We ordered the scallops to share and then for mains, pulled lamb ravioli and one other dish I can't remember and which perhaps is no longer on the menu online, as nothing leaps out when I read it back. Our three dishes were all quite bland unfortunately. Well-presented and decent-enough ingredients, but the flavours just didn't work for us. The taste of the lamb in the ravioli was overshadowed by the blue cheese and the scallops were just a bit "meh".

We ordered both a whiskey flight and a gin flight and there wasn't anything that really leapt out; a couple were decent. All that's just personal taste though.

We were going to order a dessert but decided not to given we hadn't loved the other three dishes. We ordered coffee and again it was completely "meh" - no real taste to speak of. And yet they have what looks like a very fancy Marzocco coffee machine that must have cost $20,000. There needs to be someone who knows how to use it and some good beans (e.g. South Roast Coffee from the Tasman Peninsula or Villino from Hobart are both brilliant).

I think this place is just a bit of a rework away from being a really good culinary destination (that does whiskey) or restaurant, as they have many of the basics down: a lovely room, big modern kitchen, decent staff. They just need to make the food and coffee a bit...

Myself and my wife where in your distillery on Monday 16th January on a road trip and how disappointed we are with your staff. When we got there we ask to do a tasting and we’re told we could only sit on the couch even though there where plenty of tables available

We sat down my wife went to the bathroom came back and had to call someone over to serve us when the guy came over he didn’t interact with us no help with any of the guns or whiskey so already on the back foot We had two gins and two whiskey When the order came it was placed down and he walked away again no interaction we then had to call someone else over to ask for tonic as this was strange it wasn’t included as we taste gin around the world and this was a first tonic wasn’t offered and wasn’t told we had to pay for tonic We finished the tasting no one again came up to us so we went to the counter we stood there till the lady with red hair came out still eating we got the bill and was told the amount and that we were charged $5for the tonic on top she proceeded to be quite rude about it when we challenged her about the charge.

Now I wanted to buy some of them but after the lack of service we got we just walked out and very very disappointed with it all the place is fantastic but yr staff now have made us never want to re visit or buy...

My partner and I happened to stumble across Callington Mills on our way up to Cradle Mountain from Hobart and our experience with them is one that we will be talking about for a long time! We did the self-guided tour with the tasting flights and my partner also did the serendipity experience and safe to say that we felt VERY well taken care of the moment we walked through their doors. We were greeted by José who offered to actually take us through the "self-guided tour" as it was pretty quiet when we came in. So we actually took so much more away from that than we had expected! His warm hospitality towards us went well and truly beyond our expectations and we enjoyed it so much to the point where on our way back down to Hobart, we stopped by again to do the Serendipity Experience. This is something I had never heard of before but definitely recommend for even beginners to whiskey like me! Again, we had such an amazing experience with José and the manager Josh was also an absolute delight to talk to. We also indulged in an amazing lunch at their restaurant with top quality service and food! We could not flaw this place even if we wanted to. We will definitely be back when we visit Tasmania again.

Thank you so much to José and Josh specifically for making it an experience...