Winners emerge in Jabulani cocktail competition

Three Nigerian barmen have emerged winners in the maiden Jabulani cocktail competition organised to announce the new make-over bottle for the Amarula cream. Mr. Ferdinand Obule, of La Cour Hotel, Cooper Road, Ikoyi, Lagos, came tops at the end of the three-month contest. Obule beat his colleague, Razak Yusuf, also of La Cour, to second place while Anthony Oriyomi of Shadez Lounge came third. Speaking shortly before presenting cheques to the winners, Mr. Roelof Stoltz, country manager of Distell, producers of Amarula, said the competition was organised to usher in the new bottle, which looks like the face of an elephant, and discover Nigerian barmen who were talented and have the knack to mix a variety of cocktails using Amarula. He explained that the move was to sustain the image of the product and also to reduce faking of Amarula, now considered South Africa’s gift to Africa.
“Amarula recently had the bottle upgraded to a perfectly intricate detailed bottle, shaped by Africa, called the Jabulani bottle. To introduce this bottle to the bars in Nigeria, we embarked on a three-month nationwide cocktail competition, where the stakes were high and everyone won a prize. The competition involved 60 outlets selected from three major cities in Nigeria, namely Lagos, Port Harcourt and Abuja, and held between April and June 2017.
“Two barmen per outlet were chosen by the bar owners to make and serve the cocktails, which were purchased by consumers. We created a polling page on our Facebook, where we uploaded the profile of the barmen, and the consumers who bought the cocktails got to vote for their favourite barman.”
According to him, there were monthly winners among the barmen who got N5,000 recharge card per month. The overall winner received a cash prize of N100,000, the second prize was N80,000 and third placed contestant got N50,000.