Liqueurs take centre stage

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.

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