Riverland distiller releases Australia’s ‘oldest’ bottled spirit
To celebrate its 100th distilling season in 2025, St Agnes Distillery has released what it claims is the “oldest bottled spirit ever produced in Australia”.
St Agnes Distillery has made 500 bottles of its new XXO 50 Year Old Exceptional Reserve to celebrate 100 years as a distillery.
The spirit – crafted from parcels of brandy distilled in the early 1970s – attracts a $4800 price tag, which the family-owned distillery said made the product one of the most-expensive ever made of its kind in Australia.
XXO 50 Year Old Exceptional Reserve will be released alongside the slightly younger, but still ‘extra old’, XO 30 Year Old Centenary Reserve at the Australian Wine Centre this evening to celebrate the milestone for St Agnes.
St Agnes, owned and operated by the Angove winemaking family, is one of the country’s oldest continuously operating distilleries.
The Renmark business sits along the banks of the River Murray and has been handcrafting and ageing brandy in the St Agnes Barrel Halls since 1925.
Speaking to InDaily, fifth-generation family member Richard Angove said the Exceptional Reserve was “most than just a brandy”.
“It’s been sitting in a barrel for a very, very long time – well before I was born,” Richard said.
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“My dad, who is 78 now, was only 22 or 23 years old when the distillations for this product were occurring, which is incredible.
“Distilling and then putting that raw spirit into oak and then it literally sat there for 50 years. For us to have the opportunity to blend it over the last year or so and getting it into a bottle is amazing.”
He said making brown spirits like brandy takes time and patience.
“It’s a craft. It’s not like making gin where you make the gin today and you can bottle it and sell it tomorrow.
“You have to put it in oak and then understand it’s going to take a long time and understand that concentration process.
“A 50-year-old XO is almost halved in volume and that’s where you get the concentration and the flavour and the intensity. That’s where the quality comes from; that long-term maturation.”
Richard said the final product tasted “exceptional”.
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“It’s got depth, it’s got intensity, it’s got lovely fruit character, it’s got length, it still has vibrancy and I think that’s the key with aged spirits: they should still have freshness and vibrancy,” he said.
“Really lifted choc-orange aromatics, really lifted stone fruits, but also a really nice fresh palette that still zips through and has a lovely lingering length.”
He said the price point matched the quality of the spirit and that “it’s packaged to compete with the best cognacs in the world”.
The product speaks to the heritage of St Agnes, which is proudly Riverland-based.
“We’ve only had six master distillers which speaks to the nice culture that we have,” he said.
“We’ve got lots of long-term employees that have worked really hard over the years through any number of challenges whether it’s floods, wars or recessions.
“I think the longevity of the business is due to the really fantastic team that we’ve got behind us and in particular my father John and his father Tom; conservative, consistent and really focused on quality.
“I hope that we can continue to be a brand that has provenance and has quality first and foremost at the front of our minds whenever we’re making our spirits.”
The XXO will be the centrepiece of St Agnes XO: The Ultimate Collection – a special Tasting Australia event held on Sunday 11 May.
It will be the only public tasting of the product alongside the full suite of St Agnes brandies.
