The Grog Blog

For America’s youngest drinkers, storied undiscovered wines and brews are replacing legacy brands.

First, irreverent Millennials upended the wine industry by turning wine into a social drink rather than a special occasion beverage. Now these experimental drinkers are expanding their influence into other areas of the adult beverage market in a search for new flavors and experiences that extends from spirits to craft beers.

With their taste for adventure, and complete disregard for tradition, Millennials are choosing wines based on their stories — how they were made and what makes them unique – instead of their reputations.

Born between 1982 and 2004, there are over 60 million Millennials. Those who are now reaching the legal drinking age make up about 30 percent of wine drinkers, according to the Wine Market Council.  Although their spending is lower than boomers – up to about $20 a bottle – they’re a generation with high spending power due to their size.

Millennials  purchase more imported wines, are willing to try new wines from lesser known regions and producers, and are more open to new experiences, such as drinking wine over ice or out of a box, says Stephanie Gallo, Vice President of Marketing for E. & J. Gallo Winery, in AdAge.

As a result, U.S. winemakers are changing the types of wines they’re making, and the way they’re marketed. By throwing out the rules, Millennials are freeing the industry to be more innovative, and creating more opportunities for mid-size wineries, distilleries, and craft breweries.

U.S. consumers are far more adventurous and open to new business models than retailers believe, Rowan Gormley, CEO of Naked Wines, told the Wall Street Journal. His mid-sized company offers crowd funding for wine makers generated through monthly subscriptions from online customers.

In response to Millennials’ distaste for snobbery, Gormley ditched expert reviews from wine critics on his site, and now enables customers to share their own ratings and recommendations. Millennials  account for about a third of Naked Wines’ sales.

As Millennials search for adventure beyond wine, their influence is also extending to sales of liquor and beer. In a search for more flavor, Millennials are moving away from lighter spirits like vodka and rum and are rediscovering bourbon and whiskey, claims Jean-Jacques Dubau, President and CEO of Campari America, maker of Wild Turkey Bourbon. The U.S. bourbon and Tennessee whiskey industry grew 35% in 2013, reports the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States.

The growth has enabled Gruppo Campari to invest over $100 million in building a new distillery, a packaging facility, and warehouses at its Wild Turkey site, as well as a new $4 million visitor’s center that helps draw tourists to the Kentucky Bourbon Trail and benefits smaller distilleries.

Millennials are also driving experimentation at Wild Turkey, which recently launched a spiced bourbon and a fluke blend of bourbon and rye called “Forgiven” they produced by mistake. No matter – with the try-anything Millennial crowd, Wild Turkey was able to sell the new drink and  capitalize on the fast-growing rye whiskey category, says Dubau.

To target prized Millennials, Wild Turkey also launched its largest marketing campaign to date. Called “Nevertamed,” it profiles five “uncompromising” individuals who live their passions, including an Alaskan surfer, a Colorado mountaineer, a female horseracing jockey, a premier glass blower, and a Hollywood stunt man.

Faced with encroaching sales from the wine and spirits industries, as well as surging sales of craft beers – premium beer’s fastest growing segment in 2013 – the mainstream beer industry is also turning to innovation to create new growth.

Take Heineken’s new Dos-A-Rita drink, a margarita-like mixture launched this spring that aims to lure Millennials with brand new tastes. Not to be outdone, Bud Light’s highly successful Lime Rita franchise is adding two new flavors, Mang-O-Rita and Raz-Ber-Rita, for summer.

Heineken had a 53% drop in net profit in 2013, as the percentage of adults under 30 who chose beer over wine or spirits dropped from 71 percent in the early 1990s to 41 percent today, according to a Gallup poll.

In response to Millennials’ equal demands for adventure and value pricing, restaurants are also getting in touch with their creative sides and offering innovative adult beverages to increase sales, says Donna Hood Crecca, Senior Director at Technomic, Inc.

Nearly half of the Millennials surveyed for Technomic’s Trends in Adult Beverage (TAB) report say they look for a variety of beer, wine and cocktail offerings at eateries. Hence the introduction of Red Robin’s new wine shakes, Starbucks’ sales of  beer and wine, and attempts from fast food chains like Burger King and Sonic to serve burgers and beer.

While spirited Millennials are rejecting old traditions, their thirst for new offerings is creating new opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship that are sure to change the adult beverage industry for years to come.

Beck's Creates a Poster That Lets You Play or Remix 10 Songs

Beck's recently made an unorthodox contribution to New Zealand's Music Month by unveiling a touch-activated street poster that lets passers-by play or even remix tracks from local musicians.

The posters are made with conductive ink and special sensors that react to human touch like an iPad screen would, with audio coming from a rear-mounted speaker.

The Simpsons is an iconic TV show, it’s been on TV for 25 years, that’s staggering.  And now, the iconic Duff Beer which Homer loves so much is coming to Australia via BWS and Dan Murphy’s stores – and to celebrate, Moe’s Tavern is too

Not quite the dark, seedy style of Moe’s Tavern normally, however from the 23rd to 30th of May the Woolloomooloo Bay Hotel will transform into Moe’s Tavern to mark the arrival of Duff Beer in Australia.

You may have seen Duff before, but most likely that was fake, this release is the first official Duff Beer from the people who created the Duff brand.

The brand will launch as a premium larger that “holds a clean, crisp and refreshing taste” so they tell us, and of course, it comes in the iconic Duff packaging.

The Woolloomoloo Bay Hotel will do more than just Duff for the week at the end of the month, you’ll also find Krusty Burgers, Duffalo Wings and Lard Lad donuts.

The beer itself will come in cans and you’ll find a six-pack for $17 and a case for $45 at BWS and Dan Murphy’s across Australia

What So Not has teamed up with Wild Turkey’s American Honey for ‘PlayPacks,’ a new app that allows you to mix sounds from a track made by Emoh Instead & Flume.

After downloading the free app, users then purchase a bottle of American Honey and/or a pack of American Honey & Cola to unlock all the sounds by scanning markers on specially marked packs of American Honey. 

Arnold Furnace has come up with a new line to launch Jack Daniel's' latest tipple into the Aussie market, after the US version didn't hit the mark Down Under.

The Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey drink launched in the States with the line 'A little bit of honey, a whole lot of Jack'.

But, following category and brand research, Arnold Furnace came up with the line 'Draws a crowd' to introduce the liqueur to Australian drinkers.

The tagline is at the heart of a new print and digital campaign, which shows what looks like bees swarming to the bottle. On closer inspection, the bees are actually people. Tiny people flocking to that nectar.

Tom Spicer, executive creative director at Arnold Furnace, said: “Massive product shot, tick. Consumer education on how and where to enjoy the product, tick. Creative idea, tick. Pithy endline, tick.

“It’s not often an ad has to be so hard working but still manages to deliver its message with humour, style and simplicity.”

The 3D design was done by Cream Studios. Spicer added: “What is conceptually simple isn’t always simple to produce. There’s more detail in there than you can shake a stick at. And a prize for the first person to spot Jack.”

Nora-Kate O’Connell, brand manager at Jack Daniel’s added: “We believe the campaign answers what was a tricky brief with a lot of demands, requiring both educational and emotional messages for our consumers.

“The surprise and delight that the bees concept delivers is spot on for the Jack Honey personality whilst the background tones, refreshment cues and the richness of the ‘Draws a crowd’ message is great for the more sociable member of the Jack Daniel’s trademark.”

While gin has been around since the Middle Ages, recent data shows it has enjoyed a renaissance in Australia over the last five years. Roy Morgan Research takes a closer look at who’s drinking the juniper spirit.

In 2009, 636,000 Aussie adults drank gin in any given four-week period — but by 2013 this figure had grown by almost 50% to 947,000. While slightly more women (483,000) than men (464,000) drank gin in 2013, the spirit’s popularity has risen almost equally among both genders. Men accounted for 49% of gin drinkers last year, just as they did in 2009.

Furthermore, gin’s popularity is growing among all age groups, although the growth is faster in some age groups than others. Whereas 91,000 18-24 year olds drank gin in an average four weeks during 2009, this figure had surged to 175,000 by 2013 — a 92% increase. The number of gin drinkers aged between 25 and 34 also shot up during the same period, from 126,000 to 205,000.

Source: Roy Morgan Single Source (Australia), January 2009 – December 2013, average annual n=13,253. Base: Alcohol drinkers 18+

Absolut Vodka is promoting its limited edition Absolut Oz, created in collaboration with director Baz Luhrmann, with “eco-friendly street art installations” in Sydney and Melbourne.

French spirits giant Pernod Ricard says the cycle has turned, the usefulness of the big agency groups and holding companies is under scrutiny and media and creative disciplines need to get back together.

As momentum gathers for a correction in the unbundling of media and creative agencies, which started more than 15 years ago, Martin Riley, Pernod Ricard’s Paris-based global marketing boss and president of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), told AdNews the company was at the start of a global strategic review for how it can forge closer ties between its media and creative partners and break down the silos between the two disciplines.

Absolut, Jameson, Chivas Regal and Jacobs Creek are among the company’s brand portfolio.

Riley said the unbundling of media and creative in the 1990s might have run its course and that volume and price efficiencies were only part of a new game that required media planning to be much closer to creative development.

“You need real media planning capability within the creative agency,” Riley said. “It’s really a strategic issue. You can’t divorce it from the content and the creativity. I think the whole media planning aspect is a strategic one and it needs to be pulled right back into the initial upfront discussion.”

When asked whether the split between media and creative agencies was proving counterproductive in a fast moving world of channel proliferation, Riley said: “I think what’s happened is people have got too concerned about the buying element, CPM’s, efficiencies and all the other measures and we’ve lost a little bit of the planning element. You need to have that planning discipline joined to creative development, which is there to solve business objectives, whether its short term, medium or long term.

“As far as our business is concerned, globally and within our business units because we’re very decentralised, we’re actively looking at this right now.

“Personally I’m quite uncomfortable at the moment that it’s to separated. It’s too much in silos.”

Riley also raised questions about the attraction of pure scale plays among the large ad networks and communications holding companies.

“There’s pressure on the big global communications groups. We’re at a very interesting stage with the whole agency-client relationship and what agencies are allowed to do,” he said in a move certain to heap pressure on the structures of he global firms.

Riley’s position as president of the WFA wields significant sway among its member brands, which account for around $700 billion in global ad spending. “The big global groups - there are questions about what is the specific added value they bring by being so big when as we heard from John Hegarty [at the AANA-WFA Global Marketer Conference in Sydney last month] that people can do start-ups, people can actually begin businesses with relatively small amounts of money. It’s technology that’s allowing this to happen.”

Riley said Pernod Ricard was also exploring bringing some media planning expertise inside the company. “We’re considering whether we should have some in-house expertise on media which may be in Paris.”

Riley acknowledged the unbundling trend was fueled by corporate marketers looking to extract price advantage and efficiencies from scale but industry dynamics had changed because of technology. “We were in a phase of being very quantitative in our assessments,” he said. “I think now it’s much more of a qualitative assessment because you’re not necessarily going after everybody. It depends of course on your brand and what you’re trying to do but people are much more specific about the kind of targeting they want. They’re much more specific about the kind of insight and understanding of how people consume different parts of media and how they connect it.”

Riley said he was also conscious about the risks associated with the rush to find metrics and ROI measures around digital media which sometimes missed real opportunities in channels without granular data.

“There’s a real risk that because we feel we can measure it we feel more comfortable,” he said. “And it’s a little bit of lazy marketing because we know you’ve got to have the balance. There's a logic telling you that if people are paying $6 or $8 for a magazine they’re doing it because they find some value in it. They like it. The way they are consuming media is probably different than if they’re just scanning something online and I think that’s something we’ve got to understand.”

Carlsberg have just one-upped ‘Happy Hour’ creating what they deemed ‘Happy Hour 2.0′ and called it ‘#HappyBeerTime’… Carlsberg Group delivers 4G/USB sticks to pubs that plug directly into existing TV’s that launch the an app that hosts ‘#HappyBeerTime’

Stolen – a new and unique rum sweeping through bars and bottle shops around Australia, New Zealand and the US – wants you to steal from them. Stolen is a movement with the vision of ‘stealing your life back’ and this means not playing by the rules and taking what you want without waiting for permission.

And this is exactly what they want you to do on Thursday the 27th of March. They want you to steal their sofas – 150 of them to be exact. Stolen are giving away sofas across 3 countries Australia, New Zealand and the US – with 50 avaliabe in Sydney. Why sofas? Jamie Duff, founder of Stolen Rum, has fond memories from his uni days in New Zealand of which his sofa played a key part – including drinks with friends, mates crashing for the night, watching sport, and sometimes even taking the sofa to a sports game for viewing comfort. Now Duff wants to give back.

On Thursday March 27, 50 sofas will be free to a good home at Work-shop, 80 George Street in Redfern, from 3pm. What’s the catch? Sofas will be given away on a first-come first-served basis and you must be able to get it home yourself. It is then that you will start making your own fond memories.

Four Pillars Gin has won a double gold medal at this year's prestigious San Francisco World Spirit Competition.

The Australian gin was among nine gins awarded double gold status, in a class of 92 gins from around the world. The new distillery is based in Victoria's Yarra Valley and was established late last year, selling its first two batches via crowd-funding site Pozible.

Distiller Cameron Mackenzie believes the award is good for Australia's fledgling artisan spirit industry.

"We'd like to see demand for Australian craft spirits in general go up. It's not just a win for us," he said.

"Before we started we saw that 97 per cent or thereabouts of gin consumed in Australia was imported ... There's absolutely no barrier from a creative or ingredient point of view for Australia to produce world class gins."

The award-winning gin's botanical blend includes native lemon myrtle and Tasmanian pepperberry. Whole fresh oranges are also used, moving away from traditional peel.

"Modern Australia to us is a harmonious blend of cultures. We had a canvas of juniper which was very European and we then drew spices from south-east Asia right through to the Middle East, and then added native Australian botanicals, and a Mediterranean twist from the oranges," Mackenzie said.

Mackenzie said perfecting the gin was a lengthy process.

"We researched botanical after botanical, distilled about 70 or 80 botanicals to see what we liked, and arrived at the final 10. We tried things like hibiscus which was quite odd, and other weird myrtles, such as a beautiful cinnamon myrtle that just didn't really work with our spices," Mackenzie said.

It would seem that the San Francisco judges are fond of Australian native ingredients, with Western Australia-based distillery West Winds winning a double gold medal for their The Cutlass gin at the 2013 competition. The Cutlass features bush tomatoes, while its sister gin, The Sabre, uses wattle seed.

The San Francisco World Spirit Competition is in its 14th year. Distillers submit their spirits to be judged blind by an expert panel. Full results will be published on April 9 at sfspiritscomp.com.

Tasmanian distillery Sullivan's Cove has been named the world's best single malt whisky at the World Whiskies Award held on Thursday night in London.

Sullivan's Cove's French Oak Cask variety was judged the global winner, as well as Australia's best, from a high-quality pool of single malt entries. They included Scotland's Bunnahabain, Aberfeldy, Glenkinchie and Glenlivet distilleries, as well as Japanese powerhouse Yamazaki.

The World Whiskies Award is considered the most prestigious in the world for whisky producers and the manager and part-owner of Sullivan's Cove, Patrick Maguire, said it would put Australia and Tasmania firmly on the world whisky map.

"It's the big one, there are a few big ones in the world such as the Jim Murray Whisky Bible and Liquid Gold awards, but the World Whiskies Award is it, that's the one everybody wants," Maguire said.

"We've won Australia's best, Australasia's best and southern hemisphere's best in the past but to win the overall best whisky globally is incredible stuff.

"It'll really put Sullivan's Cove and Australian whisky on the world map, there'll be a lot of promotion of this in places like Britain and France, so it will really put us on top of the whisky tree."

Judges described the French Oak Cask entry as "light, peppery and intriguing", "a match made in heaven with a smooth buttery feel" and "keeping it simple in a very good way".

Maguire said tasting the Sullivan's Cove entry would have been something different for the judges. "I think what the judges are enjoying with us is that we don't over-process our whiskies and this is something that the bigger distilleries have to do," he said.

"The process of getting it into the bottle is something we do in a slow, old-fashioned way that retains all the natural flavours, colours and the viscosity of the whisky, and that's something the judges don't get the chance to taste all the time.

"With our whiskies, they are that old-fashioned style so that when the judges taste them they do tend to stand out, and that's why we've been consistently winning these awards.

"We're going to stick to our guns and continue on with the old-fashioned hand-bottling way that we do."

Tasmania has a cluster of highly-regarded whisky distilleries which, surprisingly, are better known in other parts of the world than in Australia.

"It's taken Australia a little bit longer to latch onto what we're doing here with Tasmanian whiskies, not just for Sullivan's Cove," Maguire said.

"We've been selling into Europe and Canada for the last six or seven years, and Australia's really only kicked in in the last two years."

Local appreciation is rapidly catching up. however. "Years ago it was seen as an old man's drink but our demograpic is changing rapidly, it's now the 25- to 45-year-old age group and a lot of those are women, as well."

For whisky aficionados plotting to obtain a bottle of the winning whisky, there is bad news.

The winning whisky was drawn from barrel number 525, and only 516 bottles were created and sent some time ago to retailers, making any examples still on shelves or in personal liquor cupboards rare and valuable.

Sullivan's Cove itself has only three bottles from batch 525 left, and will be holding onto them until it figures out what to do with them, Maguire said.

"If there's anybody out there able to run down to the bottle shop and find (Sullivan's Cove) French Oak Cask from barrel 525, get it - quickly," he advised.

How spirits in the US are evolving their media strategy

A short, but very interesting video about how spirits in the US have shifted their media strategy and dollars while using digital to grow in a new “cocktail culture”.

Kirin Cider - The Distillery #inspiredcider

Gabriel Macht, Actor - Silver Sessions #1