The craft spirits revolution has been led by gin – after all it’s the perfect candidate based on its manufacturing history, ingredient complexity, and subtleties of flavour profile. Enter the Sugarbird brand – founded at the end of 2017. Our initial laser focus was on creating a gin with a perfect balance between floral and citrus notes, but with
local ingredients bringing something unique and special. Being based in Cape Town, we knew that we had all the tools we needed – the Cape Floral Kingdom is by far the smallest but is easily the richest of the world’s six floral kingdoms in terms of plant, flower (and therefore flavour) diversity.

Despite occupying a miniscule ±0.1% of the world’s landmass, it has over 9,000 species (most of which are classified as “fynbos”), 70% of which occur only here at this very South Western tip of Africa. Indeed, it is apt that the bird that is our brand, the Sugarbird, is one of 6 bird species that occurs only in this tiny part of the world where “fynbos” grows – it is especially adapted to do so.
 

Our goal was to augment the traditional gin ingredients (Juniper, Grains of Paradise, Coriander, Angelica, Cardamon, etc.) with unique, flavourful and diverse “fynbos” plant species found in the mountains on our doorstep to create a truly special range of gins. One of our founders has a Doctorate in Science and a rather weird passion for fynbos – we’ve experimented with many hundreds of fynbos species for flavour, colour profile, medicinal and other characteristics. We are constantly doing R&D to see what new species can offer and what combinations produce a rare and interesting, (but always pleasant) taste experience.

To take things to the next level, we are negotiating rights to a piece of land in the Bain’s Kloof Pass on which the current owners are already growing some of the many species of fynbos, (as well as other local and needed plants) that we know might provide interesting characteristics for our gins, brandies, and other spirits, as well as cordials for mixing.