Inzalo Agave Spirits Batch One, has won four international awards within months of its debut. The wild “red agave” spirit took a Double Gold at the International Spirits Challenge, Gold at the International Wine and Spirit Competition, Gold at the Agavos Awards, and Silver at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition. Together the results place a South African spirit alongside established international names at a moment when the agave category is expanding well beyond its traditional borders.
What gives the haul its weight is the range of juries behind it. The International Spirits Challenge, founded in 1995, awards its Double Gold only when every judge on the panel scores a spirit Gold, a unanimous verdict reached through weeks of blind tasting.
The International Wine and Spirit Competition, in its sixth decade and often called the Olympics of the drinks industry, pairs blind tasting with technical analysis and a second round of judging for its Gold candidates.
The Agavos Awards, run by the team behind Tequila Matchmaker, is judged by dedicated agave specialists from bottles bought anonymously at retail, making it the most trusted verdict within the category itself. The San Francisco World Spirits Competition, the largest blind spirits competition in the world, completes the set.
“Four different competitions, four different sets of judges, four different ways of tasting, and they arrived at the same place,” says co-founder Sebastian O’Keefe. “The International Spirits Challenge Double Gold means every judge in the room agreed, which for a first release of a first in-category is extremely validating.
“However, the award that means the most to us might be the Agavos Gold, because there is no call to entry – the jury anonymously tastes a bottle off the shelf, as any customer would.”
Inzalo is neither tequila nor mezcal. It is a new class of agave spirit, built on provenance. It’s made from wild “red agave” that has grown in the ancient seabed soils of the Klein Karoo, near Ladismith, for more than three hundred years. Agave was first brought to South Africa by the English and Spanish some three centuries ago, used in part to stop cattle crossing the railways, and later spread inland as hardy, drought-resistant feed during dry years. Left to adapt to intense sun, high soil salinity, and one of the country’s harshest growing climates, the plant developed characteristics found nowhere else, including the red-tipped leaves that give Inzalo’s “red agave” its name.
The spirit is the result of a two and a half year journey across Mexico and South Africa. “We spent two and a half years identifying different species and taking measurements from both plants and soils from around the country,” says co-founder Diego Avila, a trained biologist. “We narrowed this down to four different species before we found the profile we were looking for.” That search ended roughly three and a half hours from Cape Town.
Avila likens the approach to winemaking. “The plant responds to its environment. The UV exposure, the soil, the stress on the plant, all of those factors contribute to flavour.”
The judges at Agavos described Batch One as opening with ripe and dried pineapple aromas, a first hit of sea salt, then chalky mineral and citrus zest, settling into a floral, fruity expression with vanilla and pear on the finish. Judges at the IWSC noted the palate as creamy and full, layered with mineral chocolate, spice, and a fresh aniseed note.
Production remains deliberately small. The wild agaves are hand-harvested at between eight and twenty years old, with a team of three bringing in around a ton a day. The piñas, the actual hearts of the agave plant, are slow steam-cooked over three days, fermented on a locally isolated wild yeast, distilled in small batches in a copper column still, and rested for at least thirty days.
Nothing is added. Batch One totals roughly five thousand bottles.
“We’re not trying to make a copy of tequila,” says Avila. “We want to create a unique expression that reflects what happens when agave meets South African terroir.”
Drawing on the Cape’s wine heritage, the team has already released a single-barrel expression aged in a Beyerskloof Pinotage barrel, with future expressions planned in casks that have held a particularly famous sweet wine.
Beyond the bottle, the founders are building toward a first for the continent. Twelve hectares of agave have already been cleared and planted, with the aim of more than one hundred within five years, establishing Africa’s first agave farming for spirits and a drought-resistant source of income for farmers in the Ladismith area.
Inzalo, meaning “descendant” in Zulu, honours both the plant’s Mexican origins and its evolution into something distinctly South African: locally made, yet globally distinctive, with a reach and a standing now mirrored in the calibre of these international awards.
Batch One is available now, priced at R1,049, through the Inzalo website and selected stockists.
The Fabulous Awards in Question!
- International Spirits Challenge: Double Gold (embargoed until 9 July 2026). Founded 1995. Its Double Gold is awarded only on a unanimous Gold vote from every judge on the panel.
- International Wine and Spirit Competition: Gold. Founded 1969, known as the Olympics of the drinks industry, pairing blind tasting with technical analysis.
- Agavos Awards: Gold. Run by the team behind Tequila Matchmaker and judged by agave specialists from retail-bought bottles, the most respected verdict within the agave category.
- San Francisco World Spirits Competition: Silver. Founded 2000, the oldest and largest blind spirits competition in the world. All awarded to Inzalo Batch One.
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