International Wine & Spirit Competition winners announced

Amarula has added to its growing cache of global awards with a new Gold Medal at the competition. Only those entries scoring a minimum of 90% are considered worthy of Gold and are deemed by the industry panel of experts to be 'setting the standard', according to the IWSC organisers.

The Global GM of the brand, Dino D'Araujo, said the new honour demonstrated an unwavering consistency of excellence, following on last year's Gold for Amarula Cream at the same event, and then, subsequently, Golds at Concours Mondial in Brussels and at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition.

Three Ships

The Three Ships 10-Year-Old Single Malt has become the first South African whisky to be awarded the Worldwide Whisky Trophy and a Gold outstanding distinction at the competition. In a second round of blind tastings, the Gold winners from all the participating countries with the exception of Ireland and Scotland competed for the trophy and judges chose the South African whisky above those from the US, Canada, Australia, the UK, France, Germany, Japan, and Taiwan.

Andy Watts, Master Distiller of the range, said in the 33 years he had been involved in making Three Ships, he had time and again been astounded by the international acclaim for these whiskies.

"Who would have thought back then that we would be able to create such interest in South African whiskies? Traditionally, South Africa is known as a wine and brandy country, and many felt at the time we should rather leave whisky making to those countries in the northern hemisphere with centuries of experience in making it. Thankfully we didn't listen but followed our dream!"

Another Three Ships entry in the competition, its Premium Select 5-Year-Old, took Gold. This whisky is in many ways a tribute to the time Andy spent on the Isle of Islay at the start of his whisky-making career.

Worldwide Brandy trophy

Potstill brandy from The House of Van Ryn's, near Stellenbosch, has been awarded the Worldwide Brandy trophy at the competition.

The Van Ryn's 12-Year-Old Distiller's Reserve has laid claim to the title for the fourth time in 11 years. The award can be attributed to Van Ryn's Master Distiller Marlene Bester, who has custodianship over the Van Ryn's cellars and decides which young brandies will benefit from further ageing.

"Van Ryn's continues to build on our founder Jan van Ryn's philosophy of excellence in maturation. We produce relatively small quantities of brandy and everything is done by hand with careful attention to detail to keep our standards high."

The IWSC aims to promote the quality and excellence of the world's best wines, spirits and liqueurs. Entries are put through a rigorous two-stage judging process of professional blind tasting and detailed analysis. The IWSC competition is unique in that all medal winners are subjected to technical analysis before results are released.