Forget the Old Rules: How 23rd Street Made One of the World’s Best Whiskies

23rd Street Distillery’s Australian Single Malt has just scored 96 points and Double Gold in New York. But perhaps the more interesting story is how a former South Australian winemaker, some exceptional Kangaroo Island barley and a rather unconventional approach to oak created it.

There is something wonderfully disarming about tasting a whiskey capable of taking on some of the great names of Scotland and discovering that it comes not from a centuries-old distilling region, but Renmark, South Australia.

Even more surprising is its age. 23rd Street Australian Single Malt Whisky is only around three-and-a-half years old in its youngest components. Yet it arrives in the glass remarkably composed: smooth, aromatic, richly layered and without the aggressive alcoholic edges one might expect from such a young spirit.

My first impression is caramel and vanilla, followed by fruit — apricot, citrus and something approaching fruitcake — with a subtle fortified-wine character underneath. There is richness without heaviness and sweetness without becoming confectionary. The aroma keeps changing in the glass.

It is, quite simply, delicious. Apparently the judges in New York thought so too.

At the 2026 New York International Spirits Competition, 23rd Street Australian Single Malt was awarded Double Gold and 96 points — the highest whiskey score in a field of more than 500 whiskey entries from 39 countries. 23rd Street was subsequently named Australian Distillery of the Year for the second consecutive year.

That put this relatively young Australian whiskey into extraordinary company, alongside names including Glenmorangie, Highland Park, The Glenrothes, Bruichladdich and Crown Royal.

So how did a young Australian distillery get here? Head Distiller Paul Burnett believes the answer begins long before the whiskey sees a barrel.

Start with the heart

“When we distil, you’ve got your three cuts,” Burnett explains. The heads are removed, the heart captured and the tails isolated. At 23rd Street, he says, the team targets “only the purest of the hearts.”

That sounds deceptively simple. Making those cuts is one of the critical human decisions in distillation, and at 23rd Street it isn’t simply Paul standing over the still issuing instructions. Four people run the stills and the team discusses the cuts collectively, looking for the sweet, clean centre of the spirit and avoiding unwanted characteristics from either end.

Then there is the barley. The Single Malt is made with barley grown on Kangaroo Island, where Burnett points to the island’s soils, sunshine and growing conditions as capable of producing exceptional quality grain.

The distillery hasn’t simply accepted a formula and repeated it. Mash bills have changed. Yeasts have been debated and trialled. Barley from other regions has been tested. Burnett talks about small bench trials and experimental distillations in much the same language a winemaker might use when trialling fruit, yeast or oak.

And therein lies an important clue. Burnett was a winemaker for 17 years before becoming a distiller.

He began making wine in 2004, principally in South Australia’s Riverland, and eventually worked as a senior winemaker and manager. Along the way he made fortified wines and developed an affection for tawny port and brandy — experience that now appears almost tailor-made for whiskey maturation.

Whiskey through a winemaker’s eyes

Where 23rd Street becomes particularly interesting is in the barrel room. Rather than relying upon one maturation pathway, Burnett and the team have created a broad palette of oak and previously seasoned barrels: new French and American oak, reworked oak, first- and second-fill bourbon barrels, old tawny, muscat, sweet white, brandy and even dry red wine barrels.

The same whiskey can enter this myriad of barrels before the components are assessed and blended. Burnett admits his own preferences have changed as he has learnt. Initially he was enamoured with new French oak and tawny barrels. Six months later, he found himself wanting less French oak and becoming far more excited by what muscat barrels were contributing. That willingness to change one’s mind may be one of the most important ingredients in this whiskey.

Australia doesn’t carry centuries of Scotch whiskey tradition. That can be seen as a disadvantage — or perhaps it is an extraordinary freedom. There are magnificent and innovative distillers in Scotland, Ireland, Japan and the United States, so it would be foolish to suggest that heritage automatically means stagnation. But Australia’s emerging whiskey industry is comparatively young, and youth brings permission to question things:

Why this barley? Why this yeast? Why this barrel? Why this toast? Why this strength? Why not try something else?

Burnett describes 23rd Street itself as still “juvenile” in whiskey terms, with the first whiskies laid down in 2019. He expects variation between years and readily admits that, four years into distilling, his own thinking can still change quickly. That is not uncertainty. It is experimentation.

Oak is where the magic happens

The award-winning Single Malt is matured for at least three years, with Burnett describing the youngest components in the current whiskey as around three-and-a-half years old and others potentially older. It is bottled at 46 per cent ABV.

The official tasting notes describe toffee, lifted fruit, vanillin oak and a suggestion of wine cellar on the nose, moving into citrus, apricot and malted milk, before butterscotch oak and lingering warmth. That corresponds remarkably closely with my own tasting.

There is an immediate smoothness, followed by caramel and vanilla, then apricot and citrus. I find a darker fruitcake-like richness too, along with the suggestion of fortified wine. Nothing seems to dominate. Instead, aromas appear, disappear and return.

The bourbon barrels contribute some of that signature sweetness. Burnett explains that ex-bourbon oak brings residual bourbon character and those familiar sweet vanilla and caramelised-fruit notes. French oak, meanwhile, is increasingly important to him for the softer, elongated tannin structure it can provide. This is where his winemaking background becomes impossible to ignore.

He isn’t merely ageing spirit in wood. He is thinking about extraction, tannin, barrel origin, toast, maturation strength and ultimately blending — building the final whiskey from components possessing different aromatic and structural qualities. The result is a whiskey that tastes older than its years.

And no, it isn’t a peat monster

South Australia does have access to peat, and 23rd Street has experimented with peated whiskey. Burnett says the distillery prefers to source locally where possible and has made peated spirit, but peat is not intended to dominate the house style. When used in blends it can be an extraordinarily small component — sometimes none at all, sometimes fractions around half to one-and-a-half per cent.

That restraint makes sense when tasting the Single Malt. This isn’t whiskey attempting to impress through smoke. Its personality comes from grain, clean distillation, fruit, oak and maturation. And perhaps that’s precisely why it is so approachable.

Even the packaging seems unusually resolved. One small detail particularly caught my eye: the metallic bronze treatment on the label sits remarkably close to the golden-bronze colour of the whiskey itself. Whether intentional or serendipitous, visually it works beautifully. Bottle and spirit appear to belong together.

More importantly, what is inside justifies what is outside. Burnett told me that selling another 50 or 60 bottles on the back of the award would be fantastic. I suspect he may be underestimating his whiskey.

At an RRP of $108, 23rd Street Australian Single Malt sits in a particularly interesting position. It isn’t inexpensive, but neither is it priced like an international trophy whiskey — particularly one that has just outscored a field containing hundreds of whiskies from across the world.

It is also dangerously moreish. And therein lies the bigger story.

Perhaps Australian whiskey doesn’t need to reproduce Scotland, Kentucky or Japan. Perhaps its future lies in exactly what Burnett and his small team are doing in Renmark: using exceptional Australian ingredients, borrowing knowledge from our formidable wine industry, questioning assumptions and allowing flavour rather than history to dictate the decisions.

The old whiskey nations have centuries of knowledge behind them. Australia has something different. We have permission to start again.

Father’s Day – Where to Buy

23rd Street Australian Single Malt Whiskey is bottled at 46% ABV in a 700mL bottle with an RRP of $108. It is available nationally through Dan Murphy’s, BWS, Liquorland and selected independent retailers, making it an excellent Australian-made Father’s Day bottle for the whiskey drinker who thinks he has tried everything.

For those visiting South Australia, 23rd Street Distillery operates from its historic distillery site in Renmark, where its broader spirits portfolio can also be explored. The distillery itself dates to 1914, while the modern 23rd Street operation combines that historic site with a distinctly contemporary Australian approach to spirits.

23rd Street Distillery
Corner of Twenty Third Street & Renmark Avenue,
Renmark, South Australia
Tel. 08 8586 8500
Web. 23rdstreetdistillery.com.au