Travel to Tasmania promises pristine wilderness, pure air, untouched coasts and virgin forests. So why am I beginning this story on an industrial estate?

We’re a little way off the Tasman Highway on the other side of the Derwent river, northeast of Hobart. In this workmanlike milieu there are bodyshops, a fire training school, sausage enterprises – and the place we’re here to visit.

It’s a grey, two-storey building. Inside, there’s the kind of functional front office you’d expect, made more homely with a Persian rug, a leather sofa and framed awards. There are a lot of frames, a lot of awards and a lot of visitors from Australia and Asia. For this is the home of Sullivans Cove, the best single malt in the world, as voted by the World Whiskies Awards three years out of the past six.

It’s a small premises which doesn’t take long to tour with production manager Heather Tillott. We won’t go into the detail of what makes Sullivans Cove special: single spirit runs, slow dilution, the way they cut that spirit and treat the decanted liquid. Let’s focus on the stuff that makes the whisky: water and barley. They are, says Tillott, ‘pretty damn good’. In Tasmania, the raw material is as pure as it gets.

Sullivans Cove’s story is a very Tasmanian one. When I first started coming to this island in the last years of the past century, there were people who knew that the natural stuff of the place – the air, the water, the produce – was pretty damn good. But they were a niche bunch of foodies, travel writers and environmentalists.

Now the world, not just the whisky world, is taking serious notice. Visitor numbers for travel to Tasmania grew by 15 per cent in the year ending September 2018 – faster than any other Australian state. They come to Hobart, sure, and for the food; but also for bushwalks, farm visits and one-off experiences – like the Meadowbank winery tour.