Midlands Brewery Wins Gold At Prestigious French Competition

Wednesday, 29 March 2023 13:29

It is their first set of international medals.

A midlands brewery is celebrating after winning gold at "prestigious" competition in France.

Ballykilcavan Brewery had three of their beers win medals at the Concours International de Lyon beer contest.

The Stradbally company won a gold medal for their Brickyard red ale.

They have previously won 9 medals in the Dublin Craft Beer Cup.

Brewery founder and owner David Walsh-Kemmis explained: "The Lyon beer competition is one of the most prestigious in France. This year they got over 9000 entries from 17 countries, so to pick up three medals there is really exciting and a great credit to Joe and Dave in the brewing team. We’ve always been very happy with our beers, but it’s good to get some external validation of their quality as well. We’ve been exporting to France for about a year now, and these awards will be a big help in marketing the beers to French consumers. Our new distributor has two bases in France: one near Paris and one near Toulouse, so our beers are now on sale in the North, West and South of France, as well as Northern Italy and shortly in the Czech Republic. Export sales will take up 30% of our production this year, and we’re looking to expand that to 50% by 2025.”