Style: Brandy | ABV: 35% | Size: 500 ml | Standard Drinks: 13.8
Limited Release: Match made in heaven.
Sticky date and brandy have been finding each other on Australian tables for fifty years. We just stopped pretending they were two separate decisions and put them in the same bottle.
A 35% ABV brandy made from flood-rescued wine, two years in a Pedro Ximenez sherry barrel, then steeped with dates and house-made pecan brittle. Vanilla, caramel and sticky date pudding on the nose. The third course you pour instead of plate.
252 bottles. One-off. When they're gone, that's it.
Some pairings are inevitable
Pudding goes on the plate, brandy comes off the shelf. One on the way, one already there. This one just lives in the same bottle now.
It's a familiar move for us; Peachy Gin, Pavlova Gin, Apple Pie and Christmas Pudding have all come before it. Our head distiller Luke has a sweet tooth and a long memory for the desserts you grew up with, and the line between dessert and drink has been narrowing here for years.
A longer story than usual
The brandy at the base of this bottle started as wine. A wine recovered from bottles damaged in the 2021 Brisbane floods. Luke distilled it into spirit and rested it for two years in a Pedro Ximenez sherry barrel. By the time it came out it was already oaky and bold, with a touch of deep red fruit.
Then we got the dates out. Pitted dates and house-made pecan brittle, steeped in the brandy for a week, then cooked down with brown sugar, vanilla and cinnamon into a dark, velvety syrup and folded back in. Two more weeks of rest. Then bottled.
What it tastes like
- Nose
- Vanilla, caramel and sticky date pudding.
- Palate
- Sticky date pudding with a sophisticated oaky finish. The PX sherry barrel keeping the sweetness honest underneath.
- Finish
- Long, warm, slightly buttery. The kind of close that asks for one more.
Three ways to drink it
The Short — 30ml over ice, dehydrated orange slice. Start here.
The Long — 30ml topped with Long Rays Dark Soda, dehydrated orange slice. Sunday afternoons were invented for this.
Sticky Business — our signature serve: 45ml with spiced brown sugar syrup, a touch of triple sec, vanilla bean ice cream foam, grated nutmeg and a shard of pecan brittle on the side. (At home: swap the triple sec for orange bitters or a splash of OJ, and the foam for a little cream.)
All recipes can be found here: Stickydate Brandy Recipes: Cocktails, Sticky Date Pudding & Pecan Brittle
Where to find it
Online here, at the Distillery Door (45 Lemana Lane, Miami, Gold Coast), and from 16 June at Granddad Jack's Bar Experience in Newcastle.
252 bottles. We are not running a second batch. Some bottles only get to happen once.
Look out Sara Lee. Take a break, Mum. We've got this sorted.
