What better way to honour your mother this Mother’s Day than with a bottle of Amarula? Smooth, creamy and luxurious, the Spirit of Africa is a celebration of women, from those who harvest the fragrant and delicious, sun-ripened marula fruit to the expert hands who embellish the Amarula bottles sold in 103 countries across the world.

Marula trees, indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, grow only in the wild.  Their fruits, borne only by the female trees can be found in abundance from January to March, at the height of the African summer. In Phalaborwa in the Limpopo Province of South Africa, women from the surrounding rural communities collect the ripe, yellow orbs that fall to the ground, heavy with flavour. They take them to the Amarula production plant nearby where they are separated from their hard kernels and the fruit is fermented into a clear marula wine.

The women keep the hard kernels for other income-producing projects. Meanwhile, after a process of double-distillation a spirit is created from the marula that is aged in oak for two years, before it is blended with cream and bottled. The finishing touch is a stylish golden tassle that adorns the neck of every Amarula bottle. In a special job creation project, formerly unemployed women thread, knot, brush and braid the tassles.

As harvesting takes no more two months of the year, Amarula has established a not-for-profit trust to fund community upliftment projects amongst the otherwise marginalised villagers in and around Phalaborwa. These projects have led to the creation of an early learning centre and a clinic for the local communities.

Villagers waste nothing from the fruit, using the oils derived from the kernels to create moisturising oils for the health and beauty industries.  They use the skins for fertiliser and the bark for medicinal purposes. Amongst some groups, marula twigs are burned when babies are born to imbue both mother and child with love and tenderness.

Voted one of the hottest bar brands in an international survey by Drinks International earlier this year for its great taste and versatility, Amarula is an ideal aperitif, after-dinner drink, or cocktail drink.