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The Story
Old Court Whisky was once Australia’s most successful whisky brand. It was first released in 1924 as the core whisky expression of Federal Distilleries Pty Ltd, which had been established in the same year after the amalgamation of Victoria’s four major distilleries.
With prodigious amounts of blending stock from these distilleries to work with, the company set out to create a whisky that would be equal to the world’s finest in quality and maturity.
From the start, Old Court was a pure malt whisky, made exclusively from malted barley, distilled in pot stills and matured for a minimum five years. Federal Distilleries avowed that, owing to Australia’s strict whisky regulations, namely the Spirits Act 1906 – where a number of laws came into force around the production and labelling of whisky and other spirits – Old Court was clearly equal to the great whiskies of the world.
From the Spirits Act, terms were introduced to demarcate blended whisky (distilled in columns from various grains) and ‘Australian standard malt whisky’, which meant the following:
(a) It must have been distilled wholly from barley malt by a pot still or similar process at a strength not exceeding thirty-five per cent over proof;
(b) It must have been matured, while subject to the control of the Customs, by storage in wood for a period of not less than two years; and
(c) It must have been certified by an officer to be pure whisky containing all the essential elements of pure malt whisky
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1925
Old Court became the benchmark Australian standard malt whisky, and the public drank it up. Wooed by a pervasive marketing campaign, sales of Old Court skyrocketed in the years after its initial release. Lloyd Brind, the managing director of Federal Distilleries, and one of the most experienced distillery managers in Australia, went on record a number of times about his unwavering confidence in the future of Old Court and Australian whisky:
The foregoing looks to me like the writing on the wall, and in my opinion is the beginning of the end of imported whisky. It goes to show that Australians will have an Australian whisky, for which they can rely, owing to our stringent laws, on its being an absolutely pure malt spirit…
– Lloyd Brind, 1927, The Register
But in the same interview, the reporter raised the upcoming construction of Distillers Company Limited’s (DCL) new Corio Distillery in Geelong. The Australian whisky industry had been well aware of increased interest from Scottish whisky companies, so important was Australia as an export market. The chief chemist for Federal Distilleries, N.J.M Brelaz, had toured the great distilleries of Europe and the UK throughout 1927. He even presented multiple samples of Old Court Whisky to Scottish distillers, recounting how impressed they were in an article he published on his travels:
‘Samples of Old Court whisky were submitted to many of the leading Scotch experts, who were frankly astounded that such a spirit could be manufactured outside of Scotland.’
– N.J.M Brelaz, The Recorder, 1928
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1927
Whether a traveller’s hyperbole, or a chemist’s pride in his work, the Australian article was certainly standing up to scrutiny. But Distillers Company Limited were keen to give Old Court some competition, and they began producing spirit at their Corio Distillery in 1929. A year later, they changed the game and acquired Federal Distilleries Pty Ltd, irrevocably altering the Australian distilling industry.
The first Corio whisky, Treble ‘A’, was released in 1934, and by the late 1950s, Corio began to dominate the Australian whisky market. Now, the writing was on the wall for Old Court.
By 1938, Old Court was being bottled as a 10 to 14 year old whisky, serious age for a whisky of that time, but suggestive of its status as the old-timer in the portfolio. United Distillers (the parent company of Corio and Federal Distilleries) were throwing their energy and resources behind Corio whiskies, and by the 1960s, bottles of Old Court were becoming increasingly rare.
The Federal Distillery then closed up operations in the 1970s. With that closure, the home of Old Court officially fell silent, and so to the story of a foundational Australian whisky.
The Sydney Morning Herald, 1940