Vickers Gin Comes Home to Twenty Third Street Distillery

Bickford’s Group of Companies opened the doors to its new Twenty Third Street Distillery, barrel hall, visitor centre and cellar door in Renmark, South Australia in September. The former Renmano Winery was under construction for two years and is now the home to a new range of craft spirits, Australia’s largest brandy trademark and from 2017, Vickers London Dry Gin.

The $6.6 million build was supported by a grant from the State Government to help secure the local production of Black Bottle Brandy and is set to become a world-class tourist attraction with distillery tours and tastings and the support of the South Australian Tourism Commission.

The distillery will also be used to build a premium portfolio for Bickford’s alcohol business, VOK Beverages, with three pot stills installed on the site that combine seven and a half thousand litres in production capacity per year.

The distillery has been open for a month now and has already begun producing the Twenty Third Street Signature Gin, two Twenty Third Street brandies, a hybrid whiskey, and Black Bottle Brandy.

Black Bottle Brandy is Australia’s biggest brandy trademark and was acquired by VOK Beverages from Accolade Wines in 2011. The Group sees strong potential in the spirit’s future and believes that Black Bottle and its new and contemporary Twenty Third Street ‘Not Your Nanna’s’ and ‘Prime 5’ brandies will help to attract a younger audience to the category.

Over the last two years, Black Bottle Brandy has been made at Bickford’s Beenleigh Rum Distillery in Queensland. Production at Twenty Third Street will ensure a constant supply of grapes for the brandy and the focus for the group now will be to build inventory.

Chris Illman, Group Marketing Director at Bickford’s told drinks bulletin, “We have high aspirations for this category and a need for more material. The focus first and foremost at Twenty Third Street will be brandy and getting it into barrel.”

Bickford’s had originally planned to call the distillery the Black Bottle Brandy Distillery but decided that a new name and brand was necessary to help refresh perceptions of the category. The Twenty Third Street brandies will be pushed into influencer on-premise venues, which VOK Beverages will work with to showcase how they can be used and mixed differently. The Group hopes that this will carry the Black Bottle brand and lift the perception of the category overall.

“This will start in South Australia, the home of Renmark and where Black Bottle Brandy has high penetration from a volume perspective,” Illman said.

“We’ve also had some really good conversations with independent retail and everyone’s really excited about that because we are taking a slightly different approach; what we haven’t done is just brought out new flavours or sizes of brandy, we’ve really tried to bring a new slant to brandy to bring new consumers to it.

“For a long time, brandy has had a little bit of a stigma around it - it’s a spirit the older demographic has grown up with - and we need to bring new drinkers into the category. So far it’s been really successful, given the fact that we’ve been open going on just a month now, and our number one seller is our Twenty Third Street brandy. Number two is our Twenty Third Street Gin, which is closely followed by Black Bottle Brandy in the business centre.”

In 2017, Bickford’s will also move the production of Vickers Gin to the Twenty Third Street Distillery. The gin is currently made overseas and will become the largest Australian made gin when it moves to local shores.

“We have a core offering that’s relevant to all customers in all locations, and that’s a fact with the biggest gin trademark and the biggest brandy trademark, and both of those brands are highly sought after,” Illman said. “So those two brands in the new year will be made at our facility and that will help us further develop those trademarks as wonderful Australian trademarks made by an independent business here in Australia.

“When you look at the Twenty Third Street portfolio, we’ll take a little bit more time with that, the reason being is that we’ve taken a slightly different approach to the production of those products, and that just takes time to build up inventory. So we’ll take a slower approach with these in regards to distribution, starting with influencer venues in the [Adelaide] city centre, then we’ll start with key independent retail customers, and then we’ll build it out slowly but surely.”

Illman said that Queensland would be the next state the Group would look to begin distributing Twenty Third Street products to, followed by the Eastern Seaboard. “But that’s once we’ve got our distribution right in South Australia,” Illman concluded.

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