We are delighted Bertha was awarded the ‘Irish Drink Award’ at the prestigious ‘Irish Food Writers’ Guild Awards 2017’ at Restaurant Patrick Gilbaud in Dublin on Thursday, 09 March 2017.

We are absolutely delighted to have received this award and we would like to thank the members of the Irish Food Writers’ Guild for their support. We have been celebrating!

Six IFWG award winners were announced together with the Guild’s first posthumous award, which honoured a pioneer of the Irish craft beer revolution, the late Oliver Hughes.

Since 1993, the IFWG Food Awards have celebrated Ireland’s food producers and organisations. They recognise those great Irish producers and products that are integral to Ireland’s fine reputation in food and drink, both at home and abroad.

The IFWG Food Awards were one of the first of its kind in the country and remain unique. No one can enter themselves or their product into the awards and no company knows it has been nominated or shortlisted for an award. The Guild is the sole nominating and decision-making body.

Irish Drink Award: Bertha’s Revenge Irish Milk Gin: Justin Green and Antony Jackson, Co. Cork

This highly original craft gin is produced by Justin Green of Ballyvolane House together with his old school friend and business partner, Antony Jackson. Where most Irish gins use imported grain-based alcohol, Bertha’s Revenge is distilled with whey alcohol sourced from the local Carbery dairy plant and derived from cow’s milk produced by Co. Cork dairy farmers.

Using specially developed yeasts to ferment the milk sugars in the whey, Carbery first brew and then double distill the whey in large column stills. Justin and Antony then distill the 96% proof whey alcohol a third time in their custom-made 125 litre copper stills along with their chosen botanicals. These include coriander, bitter orange, cardamom, cumin and clove as well as foraged local botanicals such as alexanders, elderflower and sweet woodruff. The resulting aromatic and warmly spiced gin has won local and international acclaim since its launch in 2015. Bertha’s Revenge is now exported to the UK, mainland Europe and even South Korea – and, later this year, to the US. This truly Irish gin continues the strong field-to-fork tradition that has long been at the heart of Ballyvolane House, a former dairy farm turned award-winning country house hotel. www.ballyvolanespirits.ie

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