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Gin is in a renaissance, with a major come back especially in Australia. In the last 3 years the number of distilleries has grown from under 100 to now over 300. This is an exciting time for Australians to get behind the local gin and help grow the industry.

The Gin Birds, Australia’s explorers of craft gin launched Australia’s first ever Consumer Gin Awards earlier this year and have spent most of the latter half of 2020 organising the awards. GinNation Awards is Australia’s most exciting Gin awards created with one simple purpose – empower Australia’s Gin Lovers to voice their favourite Australian gins and allow the participation of the consumer to judge the gins bringing the authentic consumer voice to the distillers.

The Consumer Choice Award gave the public a say about their favourite Australian Gin and collectively decided which brands deserve the grand title. The winners were decided by 100% public vote following 2000 votes.

Over 100 submissions were judged for the official award categories of Contemporary, Classic Dry, Navy, Matured, Flavoured and Old Tom. Judging was conducted by consumer judges at Brix Distillery in Sydney and remotely for the judges that could not travel interstate due to COVID restrictions. All judging was completed via a professional judging process, judging was conducted as a blind tasting, and all judges were selected via a rigorous selection process and offered training and support throughout.

The Gin Birds believe the best gins are homegrown here in Australia from our unique botanicals and talented gin distillers. They also know the gin loving community are a committed to supporting the best gin, and thoroughly vocal about their favourites.

The Consumer Choice Award gives the public a say about their favourite Australian Gin and collectively decide which brands deserve the grand title. The winner was decided by 100% public vote.

For judged categories there were winners in Best and Class and Gold new and unknown to the gin scene, yet chosen by a team of highly regarded gin judges that went through a diligent recruitment process to showcase their gin knowledge and judging skills.

Best In Class winners included Wolf Lane Distillery and well known distillers such as Manly Spirits with some newcomers such as St Mary’s Wines of South Australia, Heathcote Gin and OMG Distillery delighted to be awarded this prestigious title.

Founders of The Gin Birds Chamaine Lovett and Suzan Temizer announced “We have a flux of new and interesting voices ready to represent the best of what we have and what is to come. We are unique in Australia with the wide array of botanicals from ant pheromones to finger limes, lemon myrtle and kutjera a native bush tomato, pepperberry, strawberry gum, river mint .. Australia is building its own narrative that belongs to us.”

The gin loving community got behind their favourite gin brand and voted.

Chamaine stated ” The feedback from distillers has been overwhelming, each distiller received detailed constructive feedback on each gin from our team of consumer judges, many stating this was beneficial to new product development and knowing what the consumer opinion is on their gin creations”

The winners list is available on The Gin Birds Gindex page

https://www.gindex.com.au/pages/ginnation-awards-2020-awards-results