Distillery Botanica Triple Sec Valencia Liqueur: Review

Written By Campbell Mattinson

Distillery Botanica Triple Sec Valencia Liqueur
$59, 34% alcohol, cork stopper, NSW Central Coast.

For years, if not decades, I waltzed through duty free at airports without a care in the world – other than worrying if I still had my passport on me – until one day it occurred to me that I could probably snaffle a bottle of Cointreau while I’m there. Oh boy. I loves me an orange liqueur, mostly for margarita purposes but really, served neat, on ice, it’s just such a beautiful tipple. Now my waltzing days are over, at airports, which is a good and bad thing; lugging bottles is such a pain. Anyway, when I saw that Distillery Botanica from the Central Coast of NSW had released a new orange liqueur, I jumped at it. If ever there’s a drink that Australians should be champion producers of, it’s orange liqueur.

The Distillery Botanica Triple Sec version – well, it’s beautiful. It has the orange flavour, of course, all sweet and summer-rich, but there’s just enough rind-driven bitterness, and an almost blood orange-like vividness to the orange flavour itself, which works beautifully with the clean, cleansing exhibition of the spirit. Hats off to Distillery Botanica here; they done good.

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All photography by Mattinson Photography.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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