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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’.

Organic Juniper: Purism for true gin lovers

Sometimes it seems as though many distillers have forgotten what gin is all about. Why else would we have all these complicated aromas that don’t just sing, but shout? This is the view at Juni Gin Lab in Nottingham, the place to be for dedicated gin fans – an exclusive location with a carefully stocked bar. As well as their own Juni gins, there are innovative cocktails, wines, beers, ciders and alcohol-free drinks to choose from.

The ‘lab’ can tell you about the history of gin, about Juni 93 and its home in Serbia, as well as offering an insight into distillation techniques, mixing and harmonising botanicals for home recipes that can be produced in traditional copper stills. Of course, there are also tastings and even a Cocktail Master Class.

With Juni 93, Alyasir Mendly, Sales Manager at Organic Juniper, together with the Master Distiller, Tom Masters, has put an original London Dry made entirely with natural ingredients on the market. Made with hand-selected, Serbian organic juniper berries from their own land in the highlands of Pest at nearly 5,000 feet above sea level. And, instead of transporting the berries all the way to England, they have settled in Serbia to meet the locals and to get involved in all the work, from picking to sorting to distilling.

At the World Spirits Award, there was silver for Juni 93 London Dry Gin and Juni 93 Cask-Aged Gin.

Elch Edelbrände: Brandies, whisky and beers from Franconia

Georg Kugler (born in 1977) used to stand in wonder in front of his godfather’s still as a child and wanted every single step explained to him in detail. In 2002, he fulfilled his dream: he took over his godfather’s renowned restaurant, including the distillery rights, and he added a brewery. In 2013, the now father-of-three replaced the original distillery from the 1960s with a highly modern system with one of the largest stills in the country (1,000 l).

This passionate distiller has experimented with different fermentation temperatures, distilling methods and different yeasts, and developed his own line of straight brandies that are clearly defined in taste. As one of the first fine brandy sommeliers (2012) and beer sommeliers (2013), he is fascinated by the nuances of flavours, and he also combines the worlds of brewing and distilling. And so, you can find brandies maturing in wooden casks besides Williams pear, quince and cherry brandies in historic rock caverns. A few years ago, Georg Kugler began to work more intensively with whisky. He has been producing the smoky Single Malt Whisky since 2017, for which the malt is kiln-dried for the first time over German peat. The storage in sherry, bourbon and acacia wood barrels provides the Elch whisky with its special aroma.

At the World Spirits Award, there was double gold for Fass 41, gold for Fass 1, Fass 24, Torf vom Dorf, and silver for Akazienfass Nr. 15.