The Story

In Australian spirit land, St Agnes sits in a category all on its own. The distillery has acquired that rare confidence that’s borne out of permanence; borne out of the foresight and commitment of successive generations. They’ve seen the boom times and they’ve seen the busts. They know taste is fickle, but they also know that quality will ultimately prevail. And like all longstanding spirits brands, St Agnes has been both ahead of the curve and behind it at different points in its life.

Carl Angove was a major pioneer in the Renmark region which now houses the St Agnes Distillery. Carl was the son of Dr William Angove, founder of Angove Family Winemakers, and he built what today stands as the St Agnes Distillery in Renmark in 1911.

At that time, the main purpose of the distillery was to produce grape spirit for the fortification of port and sherry-style wines. But Carl saw an opportunity to produce a quality brandy distinct from the cheap medicinal stuff most South Australians were swilling back then.

So in 1925, he travelled to Cognac to learn from the best in the world. When he returned, he made some significant changes to production at Renmark, and the subsequent quality he introduced led to the birth of St Agnes and a more sophisticated take on the Australian brandy style.

St Agnes is now Australia’s oldest family-owned continuously operating distillery. The brand has taken out World’s Best Brandy on several occasions and won hundreds of Australian and international awards. But despite the steady progress of Australia’s leading brandy in recent years, the craft spirits and whisky boom of the last two decades inspired a rethink, and now St Agnes has its sights set on producing some of South Australia’s top single malt whiskies.

The whisky side of the story started in 2015, when fifth generation winemaker Richard Angove and experienced head distiller Ben Horley started laying down casks of single malt spirit using their historic brandy pot stills. The spirit was subsequently filled into several different cask types and then left to slumber in the old St Agnes Barrel Halls.

In August this year, the team felt their whisky casks were hitting a sweet spot and the Camborne whisky brand was unveiled, Camborne being a nod to the English town that Dr William Angove set off from in 1886 bound for South Australia.

Four single cask Camborne expressions were bottled as part of the first release, each over six years old: Tawny Cask, Sherry Cask, XO Brandy Cask and Shiraz Wine Cask.

Distillations of malt spirit at St Agnes – where 27,000 litres of wash can be distilled at one time through the enormous old pot stills – have been carried out most years since 2016 using wort supplied by Coopers Brewery in Adelaide. And like other historic family winemakers who have recently entered the whisky game, Angove has a vast array of casks to mature spirit in that have previously contained brandy, apera, rare fortifieds and numerous premium wines.

Richard Angove says the team are patiently planning to release older whiskies in future, and further whisky releases featuring different casks are in the works.