Share
When the founders of Bass & Flinders Distillery on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula started making brandy in 2009, they decided not to call it brandy. Instead, they described their ambitious new product made from local chardonnay and matured in fine oak barrels, Ochre, as an “aged grape spirit”.
At the time, co-founder Bob Laing told me this was because Australian brandy suffered from a terrible image problem. Too many people, he said, thought of brandy as cheap, low-quality and old-fashioned.
“We’ve come a long way since then,” says Holly Klintworth, daughter of Bass & Flinders co-founder Wayne Klintworth, and now head distiller. “When we started we were one of the first of the modern-day craft distillers. People were challenged by the whole concept of premium local spirits. Now things are different, there’s a thirst for premium products and much more knowledge.