Liqueurs take centre stage
The workhorse behind many major cocktail serves, liqueurs have been slightly invisible for some time. Some may even say, unexciting. But as consumers seek out better quality, differentiated drinks, as well as lower ABV serves, they seem poised for the spotlight. So what routes are brands taking to put themselves centre stage, and reach the modern consumer?
As shape-shifting vessels for flavour, liqueurs are better placed than most categories to move with the times, to speedily update themselves for changing consumer preferences. Simply requiring a sweetened spirit base, they are a blank canvas for brands to play with.
And though the category has, until the past few years, been lacking dynamism and investment, right now there’s many factors playing in their favour. Yes, they’re sweet and sugary… something consumers have been increasingly turned off from. Yet that sweetness is the very thing that makes their flavour more accessible than straight spirits, to a much broader consumer group.
As a lower strength option, brands are increasingly pushing their consumption beyond shot, sipper, or a cocktail moment. Instead many are being repositioned as something to drink long with a mixer in their own right. De Kuyper has added zero ABV versions of its products, to allow for the mixing of non-alc cocktails. While ‘with soda’ serves are on the rise, from orange liqueur to Kahlua. All things considered, for liqueurs as a whole, it seems like now should be their moment.
Hero ingredient
Current cocktail trends are also helping brands to hero their liqueurs as the key, rather than a background ingredient. Visit a decent pub in the summer and you’ll now be hard pressed to find a liqueur brand not pushing its product as a spritz, from elderflower to Italicus. Add soda and prosecco to rose liqueur Lanique for example, and it’s still the rose flavour that’s the top note.
Speaking of flavour, more than any other category, liqueurs are able to track and tap into emerging trends. Traditional French brand, Giffard, added Caribbean Pineapple to its premium range last year, aimed at the continuing shift to tropical fruits. In particular the liquid, which combines sun-ripened pineapples, macerated for six weeks in alcohol, with nutmeg, clove and a seven-year aged rum, targeted the Daiquiri.
Retro is so right now
Perhaps it is in the steady resurgence of retro cocktail serves that liqueur brands also a renewed opportunity to shine. As we see serves such as the Cosmopolitan, darling of the 80s, then revived in the noughties by Sex and the City, beginning its third wave, its an apt moment for orange liqueur brands in this case, to champion the drink, claim it as its own, and get consumers to think of it as the cornerstone of the serve. As economic, political and international turbulence loom large in people’s lives, to need to let off steam and be playfully nostalgic is only set to grow. And therefore so too will new takes on these old serves, to which liqueurs are key.
Coffee rules
But, aside from the new wave of cream liqueurs previously explored here, it is perhaps coffee that remains the most dynamic area of the market. The flavour continues to dominate new launches from brands including Mr Blacks to Copeland, et al, as well as revivals. In an announcement this week Patron announced it was reinstating the daddy of coffee liqueurs, Patron XO Café, after a three-year hiatus, albeit in a limited US run. Remember the public reaction when this one (a mix of Patrón Tequila and Arabica coffee) was retired? People love it. With coffee – and high quality coffee at that – already such a strong part of younger drinkers repertoires, their interest in coffee liqueurs makes sense.
Seeking recognition
Yet as a whole, the category has played the bridesmaid for some time. Though key cocktail ingredients, liqueurs have largely been part of an ensemble than a headlining act. Consumers may recognise specific brand names, but do they – particularly younger ones – actually understand what a liqueur is? And if they don’t, does that matter?
Accessible, at the heart of the booming cocktail market, clearly able to target moderation and flavour trends, and nimble, it seems like the stars have aligned for the category when it comes to the opportunity. Yet the convergence to domination, to mass brand name recognition for even some of the most successful brands, seems as yet untapped.
The task at hand now for brands to find a way to shine the spotlight more closely on themselves. Taking ownership of retro-serves as they trend again, or championing a simple serve to which they are they key ingredient are just a couple of ways of getting their names on consumer’s lips. To ensure loyalty, now more than ever, brand recognition is king.