The Tickford Racing ace today launched his Waters Whisky brand and the release of his first batch, limited to 450 bottles.

Waters has teamed up with a Hobart-based distillery to create the product while his focus is on branding and marketing.

According to Waters, the concept was inspired by seeing other drivers embrace their passions outside of driving, such as Chaz Mostert and his GT4 team and Nick Percat’s growing karting empire.

“I’ve been kind of looking at different stuff that I can do on the side to use my brand and to make something that’s cool,” Waters told Speedcafe.

“I love whisky. So I thought, you know, some drivers do merchandise, Chaz has his race team, Nick’s doing the go karts. I’m like, why don’t I do a bit of whisky stuff?

“I teamed up with a distillery in Hobart to help me with it. Essentially I’m doing the marketing and I buy stuff off them to brand and sell.

“I wanted to team up with a premium, high-end whisky – and that’s what it is.

“For now it’s just going to be small batches. My first edition is 450 bottles.”

Waters landed on the Tasmanian distillery after careful research.

“I did my research and needed someone that was open to what I was doing,” he said. “A few distilleries aren’t willing to sell their aged stock. This distillery was really helpful when I approached them, and really keen to help me get it off the ground.

“And, obviously, there’s a lot of good single malt whiskeys coming out of Tassie.”

The product itself is something Waters is very happy with.

“It’s aged in a port cask, single malt, and being from Tassie it’s all really good ingredients,” he said.

“I love the product, I think it’s awesome. And I spent a lot of time on the branding, I wanted to make sure that it was as good as the product itself.

“It’s just cool to do something on the side. And I think doing the smaller batches, it could be a bit of a collector’s item as well. So we’ll see where it goes.”

Both Waters and Tickford teammate Tom Randle are running Waters Whisky branding on their helmets this weekend.