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News
The week in pictures: 2-8 December
This week in pictures saw The Drinks Business Green Awards ceremony take place, Louis Thomas in Marsala, Douglas Blyde enjoy a festive lunch, Johnnie Walker launch a new travel retail whisky, and the co-founder of Mermaid Gin undertake a tough trans-Atlantic row.
The Drinks Business Green Awards
This week saw the finalists of the db Green Awards gather at The Ivy Club to crown the best in the business for drinks industry sustainability.
Winners included Head of sustainability at Grupo Avinea, Andrés Valero, as Green Personality of the Year, and Green Lifetime Achievement Award to DO Penedes president, Joan Huguet.
Marsala
While holidaying in Marsala, db staff writer Louis Thomas took advantage of the city’s rich wine heritage and visited historic fortified wine producers Cantine Florio and Cantine Intorcia (pictured above) to delve into Marsala’s maturation, food pairing potential, and commercial future.
He also visited Fina to discover more about how varieties that might not necessarily spring to mind when one thinks of Western Sicily, such as Gewurztraminer, have found a home there.
The Ivy
Douglas Blyde attended the annual event, “The Ivy Festive Lunch” at the original restaurant on West Street (1917) located opposite St Martin’s Theatre which has staged “The Mousetrap” since March 1974. There, in the private room, replete with stained glass, he tried the “Festive Citrus Sparkler”, a spritz coalescing Paul Matthew’s Everleaf Forest with a blood orange shrub, passion fruit and soda.
In January, Everleaf will be spreading like ivy, the plant, across all brasseries within The Ivy collection to deliver a quintet of non-alcoholic drinks according to brand manager, Matt Price.
Johnnie Walker
Johnnie Walker launched Johnnie Walker Blue Label Xordinaire – an all-new luxury whisky exclusively for travel retail – at a star-studded event in the Chinese resort of Hainan last week.
The all-new blend has been created using only 1 in 10,000 casks from the unparalleled Johnnie Walker reserves of aged Scotch. A blend of our rarest Scotch whiskies finished in hand selected XO Cognac casks.
Isle of Wight Distillery
Xavier Baker, co-founder of Mermaid Gin produced at the Isle of Wight Distillery has travelled to the Canary Islands, ahead of competing in ‘The Worlds’ Toughest Row’, rowing 3,000 nautical miles across the Atlantic with two teammates to raise awareness of ocean pollution.
The three crewmen will be rowing across the Atlantic in their Ranoch 45 rowing boat named Mermaid Atlantic, taking the name from Mermaid Gin, the lead sponsor of the team.
They are raising funds for three organisations: Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust, Surfers Against Sewage and The Seahorse Trust. They are hoping to communicate the detrimental effect of waste in the ocean with plastic being the biggest culprit along with other materials that don’t decompose, polluting the water, damaging eco-systems and threatening marine life.