The rise of premium and super-premium varieties of gin is creating a major buzz in pubs. Richard Woodard reports
The rekindled interest in gin has spawned a slew of premium and super-premium launches in the past few years, many trumpeting their bizarre botanicals and mixology credentials.
Bartenders, tiring of the samey neutrality of many vodkas, are thumbing through the history books in a quest to rediscover classic cocktail recipes from the pre-war days when vodka had scarcely moved beyond Eastern Europe.
All in all, you'd expect to see gin sales rising as consumers respond to the increased enthusiasm for this most British of white spirits. But they're not: Nielsen indicates a 4% decline in on-trade gin volumes in the year to the end of March, while value is flat (and off-trade volume and value are both similarly static). So what's going on?
"The on-trade as a whole has been declining across all spirits," says Kathy Sawtell, gins marketing manager at Diageo GB. "From a value perspective, spirits are down 1% year on year, but gin is flat. So what we are seeing is the premiumisation of gin as people move up from own-label to Gordon's, and from Gordon's to Tanqueray." To illustrate the point, in the on-trade Tanqueray is up 30% by volume, and 33% by value.
Others tell a similar story. Hendrick's global brand manager Nick Williamson says premium and super-premium gins — by which he means Bombay Sapphire and up — have registered an 8% total sales increase; Hendrick's, meanwhile, is up 50% across the board, and even more in the on-trade.
"On-trade gin is broadly static," concurs Plymouth Gin brand manager Andy Jack. "Standard gin, dominated by Gordon's, is declining. However, premium gins such as Bombay [Sapphire] and Plymouth are growing. Niche gins such as Hendrick's and Martin Miller's are also growing, albeit off a small base." Similarly, Beefeater, claimed as a premium gin but on the cusp with standard, points to a 9% rise in the on-trade, quoting AlcoVision data.
Mostly this is part of the general premiumisation trend — the same dynamic that has seen the rise of single malt Scotch at the expense of blends, and vodkas like Grey Goose over cheap proprietary brands.
Other trends have helped too, including the onset of the smoking ban, even though it hasn't been good news for large parts of the sector. Sawtell sees a positive here for gin, as the change to the law has encouraged more women and older consumers back to the bar — good core customers for gin.
Food has also become an even more crucial part of on-trade business as a result of the ban. Jack talks — perhaps not entirely convincingly — of the food-friendly qualities of
gin with salads and white meat, but it is in gin's role as a pre-dinner
drink that it can take advantage of the expanding importance of food
in pubs.
In less concrete terms, the anecdotal evidence of more and more super-premium gins entering the market — from all over the world — is creating a buzz behind the category and en-suring that gin is, to use a hideous marketing term, increasingly "top-of-mind" when people walk into a pub or bar.
The brand owners without exception welcome this new breed, which they believe is creating huge interest in the category. "Gin seems to be following in the footsteps of the vodka market, where there are a number of new vodka brands launched, claiming new techniques of distillation and purification all the time," says Pernod Ricard UK (Beefeater) head of marketing Patrick Venning.
"New arrivals to the market ignite excitement within the category and grow sales, so we see this as a positive factor," he adds.
But the arrivals also warn that the marketplace is becoming more and more crowded, meaning that only the strong will survive - thanks to taste, not "fancy packaging and marketing", according to Williamson.
This is true particularly when the economic picture is looking anything but rosy at the moment — the one possible blight on the current rise of premium gin, as Sawtell concedes. "We're positive about the trends that are going on, but any overall economic decline has to affect gin," she warns.
Nielsen stats
UK on-trade to end of March 2008: value £283m, flat; volume 4m litres, down 4%
UK off-trade to end of March 2008: value £251m, flat; volume 19m litres, flat
Gins with a twist
With the sector seeing new gin launches all the time, distillers are letting their imaginations off the leash to make their product unique
A new name joins the swelling ranks of super-premium gins almost every week at the moment. As the marketplace grows ever more crowded, each new brand has to work hard to get itself noticed, usually by aping the example of Hendrick's and including an array of strange botanicals. Here's a rundown of some thoroughly modern gins:
The London Gin: distilled in London for Spain's González Byass, London's unique selling point is self-evident - its pale blue colour. Despite this, and its thoroughly modern packaging, at heart this remains a staunchly traditional gin, heavy on the juniper. Unusual botanicals: gardenia and bergamot.
G'vine: Another colourful bottle, but the vivid pale green comes from the glass, not the liquid. The hook here is that it's produced in France's Cognac region from grape spirit, not grain, lending it a soft, rounded and feminine character. Unusual botanicals: Ugni Blanc grape flowers.
Saffron Gin: It's a vivid orange colour and has a pungent, almost vermouth-like aroma, but this offering from Burgundian micro-distiller Gabriel Boudier is in fact based on a 19th-century French colonial recipe. Unusual botanicals: iris, fennel and saffron.
Whitley Neill: Johnny Neill, scion of the Greenall Whitley gin and beer dynasty, wanted a London gin with a twist; he found botanical inspiration via his South African wife, resulting in a well-balanced London dry style. Unusual botanicals: baobab fruit, Cape gooseberry.
Bulldog: Freshly arrived from the US, but distilled in London, this quadruple-distilled gin touts sippability and uses botanicals including dragon eye, said to boost skin vitality and to aid sexual stamina. Check out
the bottle's studded "collar". Unusual botanicals: poppy, dragon eye.