World-Spirits Online Guide Abo – order now

Luding Group: Vodka Tchaikovsky as a high-spirited homage to the famous composer

At the beginning of the 1990s, the modern distillery ‘Fortuna’ was launched in a green field in the south of Russia – in the Krasnodar region, a strip of land with spa resorts and health centres. The distillery has specialised in unusual products, in a region with a particularly green fingerprint. The vodka created in honour of the great Russian composer Tchaikovsky is special. The concept for this exceptional product is comparable with one of his musical scores: the work ‘Swan Lake’ served as an inspiration. Art enthusiasts can thus immerse themselves in the history of Russian estate life in the 19th century. The traditional white and blue colours underline the purity of this vodka.

The technical particularities span a wide quality-orientated spectrum: from the selected wheat, their own well water and the special treatment of the distillate with skimmed milk powder to the crystal-clear filtration with active birch coal. With so much perfectionism and monitoring of the individual production steps, the result is an especially gentle, animating and very typical vodka based on wheat. After the diluting of alcohol and pure distillate, the production process is continued with maturation in steel tanks. The aim is to ‘wed’ both ‘waters’, resulting in an especially harmonious vodka.

At the World Spirits Award 2022, Vodka Tchaikovsky was awarded double gold and honoured as the best vodka with the title ‘Spirit of the Year’.

Breaks Premium Dry Gin – Extraordinary recipe

Breaks Premium Dry Gin is manufactured in a small distillery in Karlsruhe in the traditional London Dry style. By hand, in many single stages, from the careful inspection of the hand-picked ingredients to the bottling and numbering of the elegant bottles. The naturally secret recipe is extraordinary: as well as juniper berries, there is also fennel, camomile, cardamom, coriander, cubeb pepper, lavender, larch needles, orange blossoms, liquorice, cinnamon flowers and lemon peel. All botanicals come from controlled organic farming and are macerated in organic agricultural alcohol.

The ‘man behind the distillate’, Harald Reinholz, began his first distilling efforts in 2014 – his grandfather was a passionate distiller. After a year of experimenting, he settled on a final recipe: a harmonious composition of herbs, fruits and spices, fresh and fruity, gentle and mild. How you drink Breaks Gin, whether neat, on ice, with tonic or in a cocktail (recipes on the website!), is your own personal decision – either way, it’s grounds for a small timeout under the slogan ‘Take Your Break’. Anyone wanting to enjoy a ‘holistic’ gin experience, will also find glasses, mugs, T-shirts, caps and other accessories as well as aromatic liquid soaps in the Online Shop.

At the World Spirits Award, there was gold for Breaks Reserve Dry Gin, and silver for Breaks Reserve (barrel-matured) Dry Gin.

Edelbrennerei Friedl Mair – Fruit classics from a professional amateur distiller

In the small community of Flaurling in the Inn Valley, between Innsbruck and Telfs, lives a successful amateur distiller. He discovered his love of spirits over 25 years ago – and this has now become his great passion. Friedl Mair started out with a small licensed distillery which has been successively expanded and enlarged over the years. Investment in modern technology has given rise to a high quality bonded distillery. Further training and curiosity eventually transformed a hobby into a profession! Success did not take long to come and Friedl Mair is now the proud recipient of numerous awards for his products – as well as winning the Tyrol State Prize twice.

His product range of around 50 items is based on ripe, high quality fruit: from pip fruits (especially apples, pears and quince) to stone fruits (in particular damson and as a cigar brandy, apricot, cherry, sour cherry, sloe, greengage and Mirabelle plum) as well as berries (cranberry, rowanberry, elderberry, raspberry, jostaberry, strawberry and juniper berry), pomace and grape marc and specialities such as gentian, carrot and Jerusalem artichoke. Following processing and distillation in the distilling column, these ‘treats for the taste buds based on traditional Tyrolean fruit distilling’ are left to mature in glass balloons. The brandies are sold in hand-painted bottles and on request can be packaged in gift boxes and wooden boxes.

Participation in the World Spirits Award brought classification as a Master Class Distillery 2013. There was gold for the quince, berry cuvée and muscatel grape and silver for the Williams red and damson cuvée.