Double rewards for newcomers

New owners of Koast Limoncello, Chris Barber and Bec Kay, have won a Double Gold medal at the 10th Annual Spirit International Prestige (SIP) Awards in the United States with the first production of Limoncello they distilled just weeks after purchasing the business.

“We had some great coaching from previous owners Ingrid and Bryan Chew and we knew we had a pretty special product on our hands, but Double Gold is more than we could have hoped for,” Bec said.

The 2018 (SIP) Awards attracted entries from 783 different spirit manufacturing brands around the world.

It is the only international spirits competition judged by consumers who blind taste all entries.

The Double Gold medal was introduced in 2018 for the first time in response to the judges desire to be able to acknowledge ‘an outstanding rank of spirits that qualifies in the top percentile of their given categories and justify strong recommendations’.

“The award has given us great encouragement to continue with our plans to develop and grow the business here on the Ka¯ piti Coast.

“We have some exciting ideas in development.”