From the site:

full three days of events, with 30 acts, workshops, films, yummy Brazilian food, scrummy Lebanese, vegetarian and Jamaican scran, phone boxes full of poetry and jazz jam sandwiches

Sounds good, no?

The dust has settled on an epic weekend of art, sunshine, inanity and lots of caipirinhas down in Abelha’s home turf, Hackney Wick. Highlights of the Braziliality’s party included a giant floor piece by Abelha friend Milo Tchais, alongside the prolific Stik and Prozak (BR), as well as some incredible pieces in the exhibition at Formans (which is on until the end of August).

Featured here on Epoca Sao Paolo or there are loads of pictures on Formans site here

Class Magazine is a world reknowned magazine for the drinks trade, focusing on top quality spirits, bars and cocktails. So we are dead chuffed that the new batch of Abelha has scored a whopping 4.5 out of 5.

Taste: Crystal clear. The nose has appealing gluey, fermenting fruit, vegetal aromas. The fruity palate has of stone fruit, unripe pear and cactus juice. Vegetal, fruity notes last through to the peppery finish. 4.5*

We’re super excited about this, and we look forward to commissioning a load more art in the future.

Earlier this year we printed a few of these superchic t-shirts, featuring the Abelha Dog in a representation of the classic wolf-moon t-shirts. To bag a free one, all you have to do is go write an online review of Abelha. You can do it on an online retailer site, e.g. TheDrinkShop.com, or any other suitable drinks-related site/blog. We have lots of sizes, girls and boys.

Rules

1. You must have tried Abelha and it must be a truthful review! We do not support spamming the Internet with fake nonsense.

2. Reviews will be judged on how helpful and accurate they are, regardless of whether they are positive or negative about the product. It doesn’t need to be anything dreadfully long or intelligent either. Keep it about the product and company.

3. Judges decision is final. Send a link to your review to anthony@abelha.co.uk

Kirsty and her company Love Drinks have done amazing things in the UK with brands like Goslings and Haymans, and have already secured our first national listing, at one of Ant’s personal favourites, Gaucho Restaurants (Ant secretly believes himself to be a South American cowboy).

But we are especially glad to be working with Love Drinks because we share similar values, and work well as a team. What this means is that Ant and Hal will still be around the on-trade in London, but as brand ambassadors, working alongside Emily Williamson. Kirsty will be looking after national accounts and wholesalers.

Kirsty (left) and Emily (right) who will be looking after Abelha in the UK alongside Ant and Hal.

Earlier this year, Hal decided to run the Marathon des Sables. It’s 250km across the Sahara desert, on foot, over a week. So it’s sort of the equivalent of running a marathon each day for 6 days, only you do it in the desert, carrying all your own food and gear. If you’re Hal, you also carry a sample bottle of Abelha.

Hal ended up finished an incredible 23rd out of over 1000 people, making him the 2nd highest place Brit in the event (one of the olympic rowers beat him) – pretty amazing.

Check out Hal’s photos from the Sahara here.

Exciting times for us, launching new labels for Abelha Silver in 2 versions, one featuring the traditional art from our friend Holly Wales, and also the new scraperboard illustration by Jonathan Chadwick.

As a brand, we are committed to art, and our eventual plan is to have a series of artworks celebrating different illustrators, artists and styles as much as possible. The constant features are the colours (the teal background), the logotype, and the bees. And of course, the cachaça remains exactly the same winning formula.

Check out more of Jonathan’s work here, and you can even see the process by which we got to labels on his blog at Artistic Type.