The luxurious Lanzerac Hotel and Spa hosted the sixth SA Women’s Wine & Spirit Awards. Michelle Grimbeek, the convenor of adjudicators, and her team received the all-female panel consisting of some of South Africa’s finest palates during the first week of October 2021. Craft Link was awarded five (5) Gold Award, including trophies for Ginologist Floral, our Intermediate priced Haywards Cullinan and our inexpensive consumer friendly Haywards Pink Gin.

Albert van Wyk. Craft Link, CEO, explains: We are thrilled to see that the care we place in all our products from our flagship brands top those we manufacture under contract and our easy access brands such as Haywards are consistently wining Gold medals. This attests to the quality of ingredients and care of process that we put into our brands. This is important to us as local liquor consumption (including Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Eswatini) decreased by 18% and the pandemic has also accelerated consumption of lower priced brands as consumer confidence and discretionary spend take a down turn. It is therefore particularly rewarding to see that our inexpensive brands are not only finding favour with consumers but also with judges when competing against significantly more expensive products.

The 2021 team that made it all possible.

The judges on the wine panel were Lizette Tolken CWM, Catherine Dillon CWM, Esme Groenewald, Tanja Beutler, Wanda Cronje CWM and Fiona Mcdonald. The judges on the spirit and liqueur panel were Dr. Caroline Snyman CWM, Dr. Carla Weightman, and Anriënka Vlok.

Date: 11/10/2021
For more information: nick@ginologist.co.za
Website of SA Women’s Wine & Spirit Awards: www.sawwa.co.za