Another ‘finish great’ moment for KWV Cape Town, 14th May, 2015

KWV garnered 35 international wine awards across three global competitions this week. Yesterday KWV won 2 golds, 5 silvers and 3 bronze from the International Wine Challenge (IWC) hailed as the Oscars of the wine trade. This comes hot on the heels of the IMBIBE Sommeliers Wine Awards and Concourse Mondial de Bruxelles earlier this week where KWV was awarded seven golds, 12 silvers and 2 bronze medals across these two award shows.

From the nine gold medals received, KWV The Mentors Range was awarded five, followed by Roodeberg with two.  An ecstatic Johann Fourie, Chief Winemaker, KWV says that these global awards across most of the KWV brands are important for KWV. “KWV stands for quality and these competition awards are an outside measure that proves we are on the right path of creating quality products, with international appeal.” The IWC, now in its 32nd year, is accepted as the world's finest and most meticulously judged wine competition, he explains. Every wine is judged on individual faithfulness to style, region and vintage.

Throughout the rigorous IWC judging processes, each medal-winning wine is blind tasted on three separate occasions by at least 10 different judges. Fourie says that he is proud that KWV continues to win awards in domestic and international wine competitions “Our wines are special because we have the opportunity to source fruit from the best producing areas suited to each varietal we want to work with,” Fourie explains.

"We are fortunate enough to be able to experiment with new wine techniques, varietals and new terroirs, in order for us to always stay relevant, fresh and innovative.” On winning 2 gold, 2 silver and 2 bronze in the prestigious IMBIBE Sommelier Awards earlier this week (11th May) Fourie says: “This was the first year that we entered the competition and forms part of our fine wine strategy for the UK.” Since it started in 2007 The Sommelier Wine Awards has become the first point of reference for the UK’s on-trade wine buyers. Wines are blind tasted by judges from all sectors of the on-trade and judges include Master Sommeliers and Masters of Wine.

This year over 2,500 wines were entered and judging criteria included food-friendliness, versatility, typicity, personality and value for money. “This is a proud moment for us as only 9 gold medals were awarded to South African wines, with only KWV and Kleine Zalze winning 2 gold medals each,” says Fourie.

“The wines entered into this competition are perfect for the British on-con segment and being a serious competition, helps to raise our profile as a major contender in this market.” Held in Italy this year, the results of the independent global Concours Mondial de Bruxelles Awards were released last week (8th May) and KWV was awarded an impressive 5 gold and ten silver awards compared to last year when they won 2 gold and 6 silver. “We did fantastically in this year’s competition,” says Fourie.

“This is in line with our winemaking philosophy of increasing quality year on year.”   Globally Popular These latest awards follow KWV being named last month as one of Drinks International ‘World’s Top 50 Most Admired Wine Brands’ for the fourth successive year, the only South African Brand to attain this global accolade. From 2011 to date, KWV now boasts over 960 awards for its wines with 350 achieved in the past year alone.

“These outstanding global achievements go a long way in amplifying our new ‘Finish Great’ global positioning, which aims to transform the KWV brand by illustrating our proud pioneering heritage,” says De Bruyn Steenkamp, Global Sales & Marketing Director for KWV.  He says that KWV wines are becoming increasingly popular around the globe. “We are exporting our brands across the globe, with our biggest markets being Sweden, Germany, Canada, Finland and South Africa,” De Bruyn concludes.

For more information visit: www.finishgreat.co.za or join the conversation on facebook.com/KWVWines and Twitter: @KWVWines #FINISHGREAT