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Son Tinh – Tradition with a future

In 1993, ethnology student Markus Madeja travelled to Vietnam as a tourist – and he stayed. He went on to become a successful entrepreneur – with no start-up capital or bank loan, simply a convincing business idea. Today he has seven restaurants and a large distillery with more than 200 employees and a sales volume of 2 million dollars. Tradition is very important to him as are the Swiss virtues of quality and continuity.
His distilling started out on a small scale with 2 litre containers. His home was his production site. Following the opening of his first and second bars, the products began to gain in popularity and he decided to shift to a bigger scale. Today, the company has a modern distillery on the edge of Hanoi with a European level of technology. The secret to the schnapps: time to mature. They are produced according to Vietnamese recipes but marketed with western concepts and an innovative look: “The glass contains the soul of the schnapps but a pretty face sells it better!” The offer includes traditional herb schnapps with ginseng and other herbs and roots, sweet fruit liqueurs based on rice wine and a premium range with fruit distillates. The latter range will be expanded further in the future.
These schnapps varieties are unaffordable for the majority of the local population; a bottle costs around one tenth of the average monthly salary. However, the affluent young elite are benefiting from the economic boom and buying luxury goods. This luxury has brought about a renaissance for Madeja. He is now working with the farmers to further develop the traditional cultivation methods for the raw materials (e.g. rose apples) and the image of the products.
The World Spirits Award brought success for these exotic products: three golds for N?p Phú L?c (Phu Loc Sticky Rice Liquor), Minh Mang and B? Sa Pa.

Ko-Milla SpA: Patagonian brandy distiller

Born in Bavaria, Alex Wopper once sailed around the world in his yacht for four years. In Chile he decided to settle down and founded a shipyard for luxury yachts (export). About 16 years ago he discovered his passion for distillation. Three years ago, after many attempts, journeys of discovery, courses and seminars on distillation, he found- ed the official distillery Ko-Milla SpA, with an emphasis on single malt whiskies.

At the northern end of Patagonia, barley is grown, which is then processed in his small malting plant: currently 200 kilograms per week. The malt mash is processed in a 200-litre pot and, after a slow, open fermentation, is distilled in a 200-litre still (built by Tiroler Kupferschmiede). The first result is collected in a stainless steel kettle and distilled into a fine distillate in a 100-litre still from the same manufacturer. It is then matured in 125-litre barrels that previously contained sherry and 55-litre barrels that previously contained bourbon, made of American white oak. The brandies are stored for at least three years, with a view to much longer maturation periods.

In late summer in southern Chile, fruit brandies are distilled from his own farm produce. Quinces, various apple and pear varieties, damsons and hazelnuts are used. There are also a variety of berries and spices here that he is experimenting with. From 2020, Wopper wants to concentrate on the fascinating world of distillery, to expand and professionalise the malting plant, and to build up his own professional, independent distribution business.

At the World Spirits Award, there was gold for Cuvée Pera Cigar Brandy, and silver for Single Malt Whisky.

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’.

Georg Hemmeter – XUXU, Escorial, SILLA EL FUERTE

Georg Hemmeter – strawberry drinks with exceptional flavour guaranteed

The name Georg Hemmeter – a company of the Underberg Group – stands for innovative spirits, in particular the XUXU range. The fresh and fruity strawberry drink contains 66 percent fruit plus crystal-clear vodka, rounded off with a dash of lime. The harmony between the sweetness of the fruit and just 15% alcohol by volume is created using a special production method. XUXU Ten, the little luxury in a 250 ml aluminium bottle with only 10% alcohol by volume, is dressed to party – it is still relatively new to the market, yet is already at home in all the world’s top party venues.
XUXU can be served in so many different ways: chilled, neat, on crushed ice, as a dessert topping, with sparkling wine or with other mixers – XUXU tastes heavenly and offers fresh and fruity pleasure. Welcome to Berrydise!

Initially the absolute top star in Greece, XUXU is now also number 1 in Russia, and extremely popular in Turkey and Italy too.


XUXU Strawberry & Vodka Drink and XUXU Ten won Gold at the World Spirits Award 2014.