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ISS Awards - The world’s most legitimate celebration of rum & sugarcane spirits
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Monday, 08 February, 2021, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Paris, France
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Judged by an international panel of 40 experts and rum aficionados, with winners spanning 16 categories and 43 countries from all over the world
The ISS Awards 2020 Gold Medal Winners
The ISS Awards - the innovative and single most comprehensive competition of excellence for rums and other sugarcane spirits - has announced the full list of winners for its inaugural year. Following a month of studious tastings from 40 international, expert judges, a total of 16 much-coveted Gold Medals have been awarded in categories spanning every kind of sugarcane spirit - from rums and cachaças to clairins and aguardientes - with a further nine prizes going to the top spirits from each region (Africa, Asia, Caribbeans, Europe, Indian Ocean, North America, Central America, South America, Oceania and Pacific).
The first-ever Canne d’Or - to be awarded each year to the top overall spirit across all categories - has gone to New Grove Emotion, an aged rum from Mauritius.
More than 280 sugarcane spirits from 43 countries were entered into the first-ever ISS Awards, across a range of categories showcasing both the dynamics and the diversity of the industry. These categories include white, aged and vintage variations of fresh pure cane juice rum, molasses and mixed rums, and Cachaça, as well as sweetened rum, craft rum and more.
Based on an idea originated by Rhum Fest Paris and RumFest London, the awards were devised last year to become the most prestigious, worldwide competition for all sugarcane spirits; a category which has previously lacked an extensive award contest. Whereas existing, local competitions often present barriers to smaller brands and categories because of logistics and specificities, the awards have been designed to allow each and every sugarcane spirit brand in the world to enter, big or small. All entries are treated with equal care and consideration and are evaluated on a global scale.
Commenting on the inaugural results, Cyrille Mald, ISS Awards president, said, “Our aim with the ISS Awards is to stimulate the development of sugarcane spirits worldwide by celebrating excellence within the industry and providing a definitive, modern and comprehensive competition for the category for the first time. We tried and tested some truly remarkable spirits this year, and it’s fantastic to be able to shine a spotlight on some very deserving brands.”
Designed to be entirely objective, the awards employ an extensive panel of 40 expert judges from around the world, who each blind-taste up to 70 spirits entered into the competition. These prominent figures, known for their tasting expertise and their involvement in developing the sugarcane spirits industry, are given an entire month to test the spirits in their own homes. This allows them to give an in-depth, comprehensive review that touches on texture, features, and potential defects, as well as nose, palate and final aromas. This scoring process has been developed exclusively for the ISS Awards and is a stark contrast to other spirits competitions, where judges will often have to taste dozens of samples in a single day.
Ian Burrell, ISS Awards vice president, judge and global Rum Ambassador said, “The International Sugarcane Spirit Awards is the most comprehensive Rum and Sugarcane spirit tasting awards ever created. With expert judges sampling rums and cane spirits from all over the world from the comfort of their own homes - and with 30 days to sample - each spirit has been thoroughly analysed and critiqued in a way that no other spirit tasting competition has done before.”
Rojita Tiwari, judge and award-winning drinks writer, recipient of the Most Influential Food and Beverage Industry Professional Award 2020, said, “I was honoured to judge at the first International Sugarcane Spirits Awards in 2020. The competition is certainly one of a kind that brought together the best from the world of rum, cachaça and other sugarcane spirits. Organisers managed to do a fabulous job with the large number of samples being tasted and judged by spirits specialists from various parts of the world remotely. Overall it was a wonderful experience.”
The awards aim to be as transparent as possible in the attribution of medals and the reporting of results, which is why the competition has committed to publishing the overall scores and organoleptic observations for every single spirit entered each year. For 2020, the competition received a total of 280 registrations.
By publishing these score sheets, the ISS Awards also hope to draw up a complete mapping of global supply. Having graded 280 bottles in 2020, the competition aims to exceed 1,000 labels in subsequent years.
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