Cinca: A Tequila Brand With 8 World Titles (And a Vowel Swap)
Can five female CT vets run the Balter playbook on spirits?
Hook, line, and… Cinca. Another crew of surfers has entered the alcohol arms race, again out of the Gold Coast, the same boozy breeding ground that birthed Balter and Fizz.
Enter Cinca: a not-quite-real word dreamt up by its five female co-founders, all incidentally CT veterans: Steph Gilmore, Laura Enever, Nikki Van Dijk, Macy Callaghan, and Dimity Stoyle.
That’s five women, eight world titles, a big wave World Record, a popping DJ, and one tequila brand with a custom vowel job.
“It’s a play on ‘cinco’, the Spanish word for five,” Steph explained. “We added the feminine ‘a’ at the end… ’cos we’re females.”
Uno, dos, tres, cuatro… Cinca.
Got it? Good.
As for the liquid, it’s not brewed in a Mermaid Beach garage. Like Champagne and Chardonnay, tequila has rules. Namely, it must be made in the state of Jalisco (and a few surrounding areas), from 100% blue agave. Cinca follows protocol. ‘Dreamed up in Australia, distilled in Mexico’, via a third-party distillery, reads their tagline. Ergo: white-label, but make it surfy.
Still, Steph insists it’s cleaner than the bog-inducing hangovers that come standard with your average supermarket bottle. Fewer additives. Better production methods. A gentler reckoning the morning after.
Cinca joins a growing list of surf-adjacent spirits. Taylor Steele’s Solento launched in 2019 and just threw a gluttonous poolside bash at the Mondrian for its eponymous film fest. Meanwhile, tequila as a category is white-hot: it’s now outselling whiskey and vodka in U.S. bars. According to Forbes, 2025’s been its breakout year.
The plan? BWS and Dan Murphy’s are firmly on the vision board. RTDs are on the horizon. For now, the team’s grappling with ABAC compliance and learning that Australia’s liquor laws make the WSL rulebook look like a napkin doodle.
Personally, I’ve always admired tequila’s unique ability to bestow charisma, courage, and immortality, unlike say soju, which mainly induces tears.
Now that it’s she-GOAT certified?
I’ll take two. Neat. With lime.
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