The Latvijas balzams (LB) beverages Riga Black Balsam® Element and the coffee liqueur Moka® have received double gold medals at one of the most prestigious beverage industry competitions, the China Wine & Spirits Awards 2015 (CWSA 2015). Gold medals were also awarded to the beverages Riga Black Balsam® Currant and Moskovskaya® vodka, while the sparkling beverage Cosmopolitan Diva® and its flavor versions received three silver medals.
“Each such international award is a high appreciation of the quality and uniqueness of the brands produced by Latvijas balzams. The Asian region is one of our strategic export directions where we are already working and the awards at the largest industry competition CWSA 2015, with more than five thousand brands participating, certainly help us to open new doors and to grow in the Asian markets, where great value is placed on traditions of quality, natural products as well as innovation,” said Valters Kaže, Strategic marketing director for Latvijas balzams and Amber Beverage Group.
5 375 beverage brands from 35 countries participated in CWSA 2015 and were evaluated in blind tastings by 100 well-known, independent industry professionals selected from a group of 500 candidates.
The high achievements of the coffee liqueur Moka® affirmed that classic values and naturalness are appreciated in Asia. Moka® is a coffee liqueur with more than half a century of production traditions and it is made from high-quality coffee beans using a classic coffee liqueur recipe.
The double gold and gold received by the Riga Black Balsam® beverage line is an appreciation of this unique product, especially of its contemporary version from a totally different consumer viewpoint in the Asian region.
The gold medal awarded to the vodka Moskovskaya® affirms that this brand, created at the end of the 19th century, is viable and able to attract consumers even today. The vodka is produced with classic Russian technology, based on filtering the water and spirits mixtures through columns of activated charcoal and quartz sand. The largest export markets for Moskovskaya® are the Baltic countries, Canada, Spain, Italy and Portugal.
The sparkling beverages awarded silver medals Cosmopolitan Diva®, Cosmopolitan Diva® Citrus Fusion and Cosmopolitan Diva® Berry Fusion are among the newest and most innovative AS Latvijas balzams products that were created directly for export markers. Cosmopolitan Diva® is the first sparkling beverage filtered through gold and is being successfully exported to China, Israel, Great Britain, Lithuania and Estonia.
This spring LB also was awarded four medals at one of the most prestigious beverage industry competitions in the US, Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America. Moskovskaya® vodka received double gold while the sparkling wine drinks line Cosmopolitan Diva® and the vodka Amber Gold® received silver medals.
For additional information about the competition: http://www.cwsa.org/china-wine-awards/