INDEPENDENT brewer Black Sheep has discovered that success is all in a name, after exporting more than 30,000 bottles of its award-winning Riggwelter beer to Sweden.

The locally-brewed ale takes its name from a Yorkshire saying, which in turn is derived from two old Viking words.

Rigg means back and velte means to overturn, and the expression refers to sheep lying on their backs unable to get up.

Riggwelter, which is brewed at Black Sheep's brewery at Masham, North Yorkshire, has risen to become one of the top 20 best-selling bottled ales in Sweden.

Black Sheep is expecting to have shipped more than 2,500 cases of the ale to the country by the end of the year - a 95 per cent rise in sales on the previous year.

Riggwelter won the silver medal at the recent Brew- ing Industry International Awards.

Black Sheep sales and marketing director Pat Green said: "Our bottled ales are particularly popular in Scandinavia and during the past 12 months there has been a phenomenal increase in sales of our Riggwelter brand to Sweden."