Consistency of style and focus paid off big time for the KWV team
who celebrated a truly finish great moment at the Veritas awards in Cape
Town on Friday night, with KWV being crowned Producer of the Year* for fifth
consecutive year. KWV garnered an impressive nine Double Gold medals - Six
Double Gold medals and 9 Gold for its winning wines and 3 Double Gold medals
and 1 Gold for KWV’s award winning brandies.
Now in its 25th
year, the Veritas Awards is the longest running and most prestigious
wine/brandy competition in SA.
“With a record 1,763 entries
competing this year, our brandy and wine teams are truly proud to have taken
home a total of 53 medals - 9 Double Gold, 10 Gold, 24 Silver and 10
Bronze at this year’s awards,” says De Bruyn Steenkamp, Global Sales &
Marketing Director KWV.
He adds: “We are incredibly
proud of our excellent Wine & Brandy Teams for once again securing the Best
Producer accolade at Veritas making us the first producer to win five times in
a row. These teams are a shining example of passion, dedication & teamwork.
We are ever more confident of our ability to produce exceptional quality
products across our porftolio.”
In the Brandy category, KWV won Double Gold Awards for its 10 year
old, 12 year old Potstill brandies and for its 15 year Alambic Potstill brandy
and won Gold for its KWV 20 year Potstill Brandy and Silver for its Imoya
Brandy.
“For our team, it’s not about
winning an award, it is the recognition we get as a team for what we love and
believe in and this comes naturally through our commitment to the KWV strategy
of always finish great,” says KWV Master Distiller, Pieter de Bod.
“Winning these awards is an
exceptional achievement and seals an incredible year for our team at KWV and
for our Potstill brandies, having won Best Brandy at the International Spirit
Challenge (ISC), and Brandy/Cognac Producer of the Year at ISC, and Best Brandy
at Michelangelo International Wine and Spirit Competition (IWSC) and now 3
Double Gold medals at Veritas.”
KWV reaped 6 Double Golds for
its award winning wines – for Abraham Perold Tributum 2013, KWV Classic
Collection Cape Tawny Desert Wine, KWV The Mentors Chardonnay 2012, KWV The
Mentors Orchestra 2011, KWV The Mentors Sauvignon Blanc 2013 and KWV The Mentors
Semillon 2014.
The nine Golds won were for KWV
Abraham Perold Tributum 2012, KWV Roodeberg Dr Charles Niehaus 2013, KWV The
Mentors Cabernet Sauvignon 2012, KWV The Mentors Orchestra 2013, KWV The
Mentors Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2013 and Laborie Blanc de Blanc MCC 2010. In
the Museum Fortified Wines category, KWV garnered gold for KWV Hanepoot
Jerepigo 1975, and for KWV Limited Release Port 1948 and 1961.
“KWV’s wine wins including
double golds across white, red and fortified wines for both single, varietal
and blended wines is an amazing achievement,” says Johann Fourie, Chief
Winemaker at KWV.
He continues: “To win best
producer status five years in a row is a definitive demonstration of the
consistency of styles and focus across a broad range of our wines. KWV is now
delivering, year after year, levels of finesse, elegance and concentration that
consumers in South Africa, and internationally, want.”
“KWV’s success”, he adds, “is
down to the hard work and attention to detail of the entire
team, from the grape growers
and viticulturists right through to the winemakers.”
“The consistency of awards
across the KWV portfolio points to the strength of our fruit sourcing and
winemaking capabilities,” he adds. “These awards affirm that KWV is moving in
the right direction in terms of its constant evolution of wine style and quality.”
Fourie notes that whilst the
rate of stylistic evolution and overall improvement amongst South African
producers has been marked, “The rate of KWV’s wine style evolution in SA over
the last ten years has been especially rapid, some would even say revolutionary.
The focus for the wine making team has been on techniques that promote
vibrancy, freshness and regionality. These attributes can be seen throughout
the entire KWV product range, and it’s this focus that has underpinned our
success at Veritas.”
“We are very proud of the
success we have achieved,” says Fourie. “The winemaking team has worked very
hard at refining its approach to all aspects of winemaking. We know that the
pursuit of excellence is never done, but acknowledgments like these motivate us
to persist in our journey.”
For the 2015 competition, eight
international judges joined the line-up representing various countries and the
judging process was independently audited by Deloitte.
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