Sugarbird Gin

Founded in 2017, led by the craft spirit gin revolution, Sugarbird’s initial focus was on creating a gin with a perfect balance between floral and citrus notes with an emphasis on our special and unique local ingredient. Being based in Cape Town we have the Cape Floral Kingdom on our doorstep, it is by far the smallest (but easily) the richest of the world’s six floral kingdoms in terms of plant and flower diversity and gives us a wealth of flavour profiles with which to create our gin.  It is apt that the Sugarbird brand is named after a small bird that occurs only in this Fynbos kingdom.

Our distillation goal was to marry the traditional gin ingredients (Juniper, Grains of Paradise, Coriander, Angelica, Cardamon, etc.) with the flavourful and diverse fynbos plant species, to create a truly special range of South African gins. Our experimentation with many hundreds of fynbos species has led us to use Graveolens for intense floral notes, P. Crispum for an essence of citrus, the root tuber of P. Sidoides, and Honeybush to round off the rosy floral notes that one might expect from a pink gin with a wild-flower edge and unique sweetness.

In the last 2 years our gins have racked up 16 awards – the most recent being for the best South African gin by Luxury Lifestyle Awards, 2021.