Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards 2026
Where taste meets terroir
Seven bartenders. One gin. A Swedish forest full of possibilities. And this year, one unexpected challenge waiting to be revealed.
At the end of August, bartenders from Sweden, Denmark and Hong Kong travelled to Härnösand for the Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards 2026. A competition where creativity, craftsmanship and the flavours of the surrounding landscape come together.
There are no recipes to prepare in advance. No carefully packed homemade ingredients.
Instead, everyone starts from the same place: with Hernö Swedish Terroir Gin 2026, a few hours in the forests surrounding Hernö Gin Distillery in Dala and the challenge of turning whatever nature provides into a cocktail worthy of the final.
It starts with the gin
Before the competition begins, the finalists spend their first day at Hernö Gin Distillery in Dala. It is a chance to get to know each other, discover the place where Hernö Gin is made and, importantly, meet the gin that will become the foundation of their competition cocktails.
Hosted by Hernö Gin founder and Master Distiller Jon Hillgren, the tasting introduces the finalists to Hernö Swedish Terroir Gin 2026 and the thinking behind its flavours.
Then comes the briefing
The rules are deliberately simple and deliberately challenging. The finalists may only use Hernö Swedish Terroir Gin 2026 as their gin, together with ingredients foraged during the following morning and a limited selection of ingredients and equipment provided during preparation.
No one knows exactly what they will find. That is the point.
Into the wild – our pantry for the day
On Saturday morning, competition day begins where much of the inspiration behind Hernö Gin has always been found: outside. The finalists leave the distillery and head into the forests of Dala, accompanied by guides who help identify what can be eaten, what can be picked and, perhaps most importantly, what should be left exactly where it is.
For around three hours, they search
Heather. Rowan berries. Blueberries. Chanterelles. Pine. Herbs, leaves, berries and whatever else catches an eye, sparks a memory or starts an idea.
Foraging is one of the elements that makes Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards different. An ingredient is no longer something measured from a bottle or ordered from a supplier. You have found it yourself. Felt where it grows. Smelled it in the forest. Picked it with your own hands.
And in 2026, you got very, very wet while doing it
Rain followed the finalists throughout the day, turning the forest floor darker, the colours deeper and the entire experience into something hard to forget. Waterproofs were tested and shoes were soaked while ideas began to take shape.
By the time everyone returned, seven collections of ingredients had emerged from exactly the same forest. What happened next was entirely up to the bartenders.
Three hours to turn the forest into a cocktail
After lunch, the competition moved from foraging to experimentation. Back at Hernö Gin Hotell, the finalists were given approximately three hours to transform what they had collected into their competition serves. This is where instinct meets technique.
Ingredients are cooked, infused, crushed, strained and tasted. Ideas are abandoned. New ones appear. Sweetness needs acidity. Something needs smoke. Something else needs less of everything. And all of it has to work with Hernö Swedish Terroir Gin 2026.
But the night before competition day, the finalists had discovered there was another element to consider.
A curveball.
Foodpairing, an extra challenge.
This year, the cocktail would not be judged entirely on its own. Each finalist had to create a cocktail that could stand beside a savoury tartlet composed by guest chef and jury member Tea Malmegård, featuring smoked reindeer bone marrow, summer chanterelles and juniper butter. Part of the taste judging would depend on how successfully cocktail and food worked together.
Complement it. Challenge it. Elevate it.
Suddenly, creating a great cocktail was only half the task. The finalists also had to think about what happened when their creation met another, balancing richness, smoke, salt, fat, earthiness and juniper against the flavours they had carried back from the forest.
Seven bartenders with ten minutes each to shine
That evening, Hernö Gin Hotell became the stage for the final of Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards 2026, as the flavours and ingredients gathered in the forests of Dala earlier that day made their way into the spotlight. One by one, the seven finalists stepped behind the bar.
Each had ten minutes. Ten minutes to tell the story behind the idea, prepare the cocktail and serve it to the jury. The cocktails were judged on presentation, taste, aroma and technique, with the food pairing adding another dimension to the taste assessment.
Watching from the other side of the bar were this year's jury: Jon Hillgren, founder and Master Distiller at Hernö Gin, Danish gin writer Michael Sperling and chef Tea Malmegård. They had watched the same bartenders walk into the same forest that morning. Now they were tasting seven completely different interpretations of it.
That is perhaps the magic of Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards. Give seven creative people the same gin, the same landscape and the same amount of time – and you will never get the same answer twice. However, there could only be one winner.
And the winner is… Bonnie Bonella
The title of Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards 2026 went to Bonnie Bonella of Duck and Cover in Copenhagen, Denmark, with her cocktail Terratorium X.
The name takes inspiration from the Latin word for terroir, while the X represents ten, a nod to this year beeing the tenth edition of the Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards. And the cocktail itself tasted unmistakably of the landscape that had inspired it.
Rich and earthy, Terratorium X brings together juniper and pine with heather, rowan berries, chanterelles, blueberries and birch smoke.
Created to accompany Tea Malmegård's tartlet, Bonnie's cocktail transformed ingredients gathered just hours earlier into the winning expression of this year's competition.
From strangers to friends, from forest to glass
Of course, Hernö Gin Cocktail Awards is a competition. But over three days in Dala and Härnösand, it becomes something more. It is seven bartenders arriving from different bars, cities and countries. It is sharing breakfast before heading into a rain-soaked forest. Helping each other identify ingredients. Comparing discoveries. Watching ideas slowly become cocktails. Standing backstage together before taking the competition stage.
And somewhere between the first walk through the distillery and the final cocktail of the evening, competitors become friends.
The glasses are eventually emptied. The winner is announced. The equipment is packed away. But the flavours, stories and friendships created along the way tend to travel home.