[00:00:04] Speaker A: Why do we drink what we do? Why do some drinks become classics while others languish at the back of the drinks cabinet?
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Is it just because we prefer those drinks? Or are there underlying economic, social or technological trends that shape our choices?
[00:00:19] Speaker A: And that's what we're going to explore on A Question of Drinks.
[00:00:22] Speaker B: Join us as we explore the hidden side of the drinks cabinet. The decisions, reversals, and underlying forces that shape the beverage market. I'm Luli Halstead.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: And I'm Felicity Carter. And together we host A Question of Drinks.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: Well, hello, Felicity. So, before we start today's episode, I'd like to play a little game.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: Can I please remind you and our listeners that we are recording this first thing in the morning?
[00:00:52] Speaker B: I know best time to play a game. So I'm going to read you a shopping list. And you tell me, Felicity, whether it sounds like something you want to buy. So he goes, ready?
[00:01:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:01:03] Speaker B: Bitter oranges, sweet oranges, rhubarb, gentian root, and sinchoa bark. Okay. And then throw in a mix of herbs and botanicals. So what do you think it is,
[00:01:17] Speaker A: A medieval recipe for plague?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: No, not even close.
So these are the ingredients that go into Aperol. And yay. Yeah. Yeah. So it got me wondering how many people who regularly order an Aperol spritz could actually tell you what's in it.
[00:01:38] Speaker A: I imagine pretty much nobody, unless they work for Campari, but I guess that's not unusual. You know, I, I, I, I guess if you ask most people what botanicals go into their favorite gin, they'd probably give you a pretty blank look.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So I. Well, talking of favorite gins, Felicity, your favorite little gin and tonic, what botanicals are in that, do you know?
[00:02:00] Speaker A: The finest Jupiter berries known to humankind, I'm sure.
[00:02:04] Speaker B: Of course they are. But I bet, you know, Will, it's unlikely that it's going to list the botanicals on the container, for example, because although we spend a lot of time in the drinks industry, don't we, talking about ingredients and recipes and production methods. Lidl probably knows, as does Mo do most producers, that consumers really aren't that interested in that level of detail.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Yeah, of course, I should point out, most people, you know, that's for everything. Like, most people wouldn't know what the mix of fibers are in their clothes, I'm guessing.
[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I suppose that's the point I'm making, though, isn't it, that I don't believe people are buying Aperol because they want Aperol per se.
I think what they're doing is specifically buying an Aperol Spritz.
[00:02:49] Speaker A: Luli, what a great segue that is. Brought us straight into today's topic, the spritz.
[00:02:54] Speaker B: See where I planned it?
[00:02:56] Speaker A: As if you planned it. So Luli and I both got interested in this question of the spritz and we both agree. Agreed to go off and find out what's going on and report back. So I'm going to start. I would like to define what a spritz actually is. Basically, it's a cocktail whose base is sparkling wine, which is typically Prosecco.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it's. And it's huge, isn't it, what we're seeing with Spritz. So in my part of my homework, in the last 24 hours, I've walked past three separate pubs near me in London. You know, nothing fancy, proper, proper boozers, as we like to say in England. And every single one of them had a chalkboard outside advertising Spritz.
[00:03:38] Speaker A: Okay, so this is why we're doing this episode, because we're seeing this everywhere. So the question is, when did the spritz become so ubiquitous?
[00:03:47] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So back to my pub sign. So one of them said, Spritz pound eight.
So no brand mentioned at all. The second said Aperol or Hugo Spritz actually in that case for £9. So maybe if it's got brand, it cost a pound more, who knows?
And the third one, they've gone full work. So they had Aperol, Hugo, Limoncello, Spritz, all at ten pounds. So maybe if there's three, it's another pound more. Don't know. But they're all kind of chalked up like special boards, you know, outside a restaurant. Yeah.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: So Spritz has become like the coffee of the alcohol sector. It's a drink that's got such wide appeal, you don't actually need a brand name anymore.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it, because somewhere along the line, sort of aperols stop selling a drink and really started selling a category. And now, as I'm just saying, half the pubs near me are selling that category and increasingly without, as I was just saying, bothering to kind of call out the brand name and the brand of the, you know, the brand name of the one that built it.
And I'm wondering if this is one of the kind of best case studies we have of a single brand creating in drinks that is creating a sort of new habit, a new occasion on a global scale.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: And that's what we're going to look into today. Why is Everybody drinking Spritz. Luli, kick us off with some data. How big is this phenomenon?
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Okay, so the first piece of evidence actually comes from Ocado.
[00:05:13] Speaker A: Okay, so which is, I think the higher end grocery online retailer in the uk.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, correct, correct. And they've just recently reported that searches for Hugo Spritz increased by. And now this is very precise, Felicity. 694% in a single week. Summer.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Oh, that would be the heat wave week, I guess.
[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now let's just kind of put that in context because of course 694 sounds like a huge increase, but if you're starting from a relatively small base, that doesn't mean you know, that you know the number of searches. But anyway, so it wasn't just searches. So there's other evidence. So sales of elderflower liqueur were up by more than 100%, they say fresh mint flying off the shelves as well. And unsurprisingly, Prosecco sales up too.
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yes, and the. The important thing about all of this is the Hugo is essentially Prosecco, elderflower liqueur and soda water, while the upmarket establishments that Luli frequents will frequently add a sprig of fresh mint.
[00:06:19] Speaker B: I'd never thought about myself as being in an upmarket establishment if it contains fresh mint, but there you go. Anyway, more evidence incoming. So Pic Cocktail Trends Report, which is an amazing report, by the way, which they put out to kind of open source every year, they found that Google searches for Hugo Spritz were up another very accurate number coming in 172% across the UK, France and US and again,
[00:06:48] Speaker A: that's what happens when you've got in house data scientists.
[00:06:51] Speaker B: I know, it sounds good though, because you kind of think somebody kind of made it up if they're saying 172% increase. Anyway, so again, off relatively small bases and one of my favorite stores in terms of drinks innovation. So third piece of evidence incoming here in the UK is M and S, as you know, one of my favorites, which I absolutely love, partly because they do fantastic prawn cocktail crisps, but also they have very quietly expanded their own spritz range.
[00:07:22] Speaker A: Yes. And of course M and S is the retailer once known as Marks and Spencers, much beloved by Luly and very well known internationally for their undies.
[00:07:31] Speaker B: Yes, yes, I had not thought about that. Yes,
[00:07:37] Speaker A: yes.
[00:07:38] Speaker B: So I should declare, obviously, Felicity, as a diligent podcast host, on my way back from seeing those pub sign chalkboards, I did stop in at M S and bought three of their recently launched Spritz cans purely in the name of research.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: Ah, you'll be drinking little gin and tonics before you know it.
[00:07:57] Speaker B: No, I won't, Felicity. No, I won't. You'll be glad to know that I test tested the new spritzes with my in house homegrown Gen Z testing panel. Otherwise known as my daughter's nieces and nephew.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: You know how envious I am of your. Your homegrowns. All right, so your marketing establishment. All right, so to get us back on track, back to this. Back to this data, which is enormous. It's interesting because none of this is really about Aperol. They're about everything except apparel.
[00:08:27] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So consum searching for Aperol or this sort of big increase in search that these various bodies are. And retailers are reporting they were searching for Hugo Spritz. So they aren't asking retailers to kind of invent another orange aperitif. Basically, what they're asking for from a consumer point of view, that is is spritz, but isn't.
[00:08:49] Speaker A: Okay, so we should ask, isn't this just what happens when a drink becomes popular? So we don't think there's only one martini or only one Negroni in the world. Why should spritz be any different?
[00:08:58] Speaker B: Yeah, fair challenge as always, Felicity.
But most cocktails have kind of grown organically over decades. So bartenders experiment, recipes evolve, consumers gradually catch up.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: I don't know.
[00:09:11] Speaker B: I think spritz feels different because one brand specifically did almost all of the educational kind of heavy lifting.
So I don't know if we asked most people outside of Italy 15 years ago what a spritz was, they probably would have looked at us fairly blankly. And now almost everyone knows. So. So over to you, resident history correspondent. Give us the backstory on spritz.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: Okay, so the spritz itself is much older than Aperol. So most historians think it goes back to the 19th century when northern Italy was part of the Austro Hungarian Empire. So Austrian soldiers, apparently. I don't know how true this is, but apparently they found local wines stronger than they were used to. And so they began adding a splash, or in German, a spritz of water to lighten them. So around Venice, that mixture evolved, and sparkling water replaced still water. Bitter aperitifs were added, and eventually, much later, we get Prosecco in the recipe.
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Okay, so you have to wonder what the wine was like in the 19th century in Northern Italy, that it needed watering down with salt water.
[00:10:19] Speaker A: Maybe the big question here is, you know, why did the Austro Hungarian Empire last so long if the soldiers Couldn't cope with 11% alcohol?
[00:10:29] Speaker B: Fair point. So tell us about Aperol itself then.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Okay, so the Aperol actually has a longer history than most people realize. Aperol launched it in 1919, so it's more of more than a century old.
But for most of that time, it was pretty much a regional Italian aperitif and one of many, I think there are many sort of bitter orange, you know, liqueurs. So everything changed when Campari bought the brand in 2003.
[00:10:55] Speaker B: Okay, so this is very typical, isn't it? So it's not an overnight success story. It's basically 100 years ish in the making.
[00:11:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And Campari was really the driving force behind the spritz. So what they did in the early years is they went bar by bar, they trained bartenders on the now famous 3, 2, 1 recipe, meaning 3 parts Prosecco, 2 parts Aperol and 1 part soda water. They put it in all the right bars, the right cities, you know, being drunk by the kind of sophisticated people that everybody wanted to imitate.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so just a really good example of classic brand building. So awareness, salience, getting seen in the right rooms, places, events.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: What's interesting is that the first and most important market was actually Germany. So around 2007 and 8, they started putting Aperol into trendy bars, festivals, outdoor summer venues, places where you could go, people watching and see other people drinking it. Now, I had just moved to Germany at the time and it was everywhere. I remember taking it back home to Australia and pouring it for people, you know, and. And the place that really, it did really well was an island called Silt, which is this ritzy island in the north that's a millionaire's playground. And so by 2009, this drink was a juggernaut and the pitch was basically the aperitivo moment. So they were really selling the Italian ideal of the early evening drink.
[00:12:17] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And the advertising really reflected that, didn't it? Perfectly, if you remember. So it was all sort of like war orange, evening light, you know, terraces full of glamorous people, the glass always in the middle of the picture. So this sort of visible from anywhere. And they weren't really teaching people about Aperol per se. They were kind of selling this idea of occasion. Ah, got it in there. Always want to talk about occasion, don't I?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: The category entry point.
[00:12:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, the category entry point to the occasion of aperitivo. So, yeah, they were selling sort of this idea of permission to kick back with friends for an hour or more early evening. Yeah.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: And it was. It was absolutely huge. So there's this story, it's apocryphal, but the story is that demand in Germany was so huge that they had to put on extra shifts at the plant in Italy just to keep up with the demand.
[00:13:12] Speaker B: I think that.
I hope that's true, because night shifts,
[00:13:16] Speaker A: the whole beat, apparently.
[00:13:17] Speaker B: Yeah. Extra night shifts on the Aperol line.
But there was something else happening at exactly the same time that was going on, I guess, which builds a bit of a plot twist to the story here.
[00:13:30] Speaker A: There really is. Okay, so on the 17th of July 2009, Italy created the enlarged Prosecco Doc. Right. So they. And we've done a whole episode about how this happened. Quite a story. But the. The end result was they expanded the production zone across nine provinces. Right. So that became formalized in. In November. So within a couple of years, there was a huge amount of planting and all sorts of things. And so what happened within a couple of years, there was this flood of cheap Prosecco available.
[00:14:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And then you've got, at the same time. So we've got all this, you know, sort of increased production areas, you're saying, of Prosecco, and you've got Aperol pushing hard into new markets like Germany, as you were just saying there. So you've got a flood of affordable Prosecco at exactly the same moment that Campari are out there, you know, putting the orange glass in front and center in bars and around Europe.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yes. And I think the word for this is serendipitous. You know, there were two completely separate things happening at the same time, but it changed the fortunes of both of them.
Yeah.
[00:14:38] Speaker B: So before Aperol spritz became the kind of global phenomenon, how many, I'm wondering, how many people outside of northern Italy do you think had ever heard of spritz at that time?
[00:14:51] Speaker A: I think it was very few. I mean, certainly within Germany and Austria, adding a splash of water is quite normal with Riesling. But like the sort of. The cocktaily drink that's new. And I think if you talk to people 25 years ago, they would have looked at you blankly.
[00:15:06] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And so the drink existed, I. I guess. But what we're saying here, or what I'm saying here, is that the habit didn't. This idea of.
Well, not the scale globally anyway, that sort of aperitivo habit and linking a drink specifically to it, and it's exactly the pattern that repeats once you look at, for example, where Hugo actually is coming from.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: Now this was Luly's homework for the episode. She had to go and find out about where the Hugo came from. So, Diligent Luli, what did you discover?
[00:15:38] Speaker B: Can I have that as a new name? Diligent Luly. I really love it like that. Thank you.
So this is also a story about Aperol spritz, kind of, in a way. So Hugo was invented, apparently in 2005 by a bartender called Roland Guber, who was working at the Sanzeno bar in Natuns, up in the South Tyrol near the Austrian border.
So apparently he says he was already bored of pouring endless Aperol spritz and wanted to give him regulars something different instead.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Okay, so the. There must be something funny about his story, because if he was. If he invented it in 2005, it's actually before the spritz went off, but. Yeah, I know, but we'll take it that he. But we'll take it that he invented it. Right, Whatever he said. And his original version was actually using lemon balm syrup, not elder flour.
[00:16:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So do you know then why that switched? Why did it go from lemon balm to elderflower as that sort of ingredient?
[00:16:42] Speaker A: I think it. I think it was just because it was practical. So lemon balm syrup is actually hard to get in huge quantities. So. So once this drink took off, he switched to elderflower syrup because it was just easier to get hold of locally. So. So this drink caught on regionally for years before it ever went global.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So, so we could say a drink invented by a board, a bartender in 2005, although date TBC. Because as you say that.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. We need to fact check.
[00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I think we need a bit more of a fact check going on there, you know, now is on chalkboards, 20 years later, whatever it is, in London pubs. And the Hugo story is also a result of one of those nice coincidences, isn't it? That is kind of part and parcel of this whole spritz history. So why don't you kick off and talk us through Bacardi and their part in this story?
[00:17:34] Speaker A: Yeah, so let's go back a step. So Saint Germain, the elderflower liqueur was launched independently in 2007 by a distiller called Robert Cooper. So it was completely unrelated to Gruber in his bar. So in 2013, Bacardi bought it and it must have. It's. It's an interesting thing to have bought because it must have seemed a very niche product at the time.
What are we going to. What are we going to acquire. Imagine that in the boardroom. I've heard about this elderflower cure. Yeah, let's go. Anyway, so the, the Hugo hadn't yet taken off.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: Yeah. So again, on timeline. So that does kind of quite support the idea potentially that Bacardi bought it to build a product to ride on, on Hugo's back. Because that, that is possibly before we saw the increase of Hugo or maybe they drove the increase of Hugo.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: I think what we're discovering is that the origins of the Hugo are a little bit murky. But so what we know for certain is that Bacardi had this liqueur and so when the Hugo took off, they had the scale to produce it and distribute it.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And probably lead some of it, I would imagine, in the way that Campari had done with the Aperol Spritz, which I guess brings me to one of the. I guess what I think is one of the most interesting parts sort of sitting in the middle of this story, which is Campari spent years, as we were saying, and hundreds of millions of euros teaching the world to love aperitivo occasion. And the Aperol Spritz, which by the way, they have done an amazing job at, as we were just saying, only to find that we no longer need kind of Aperol itself as a brand to fill that space.
[00:19:10] Speaker A: Yeah, so it's ironic, isn't it? So they spent money building infrastructure that now everybody else uses for free.
[00:19:17] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And Hugo spreads without a multinational behind it, although potentially is, you know, Bacardi's influence with Saint Germain in there to be discussed. But it doesn't carry the Hugo doesn't carry the St. Germain brand in the way that Aperol Spritz does as part of its naming. So I think it's quite different here. So you don't have that sort of proprietary branded liquid, but the recipe kind of mutates for Hugo Spritz Spritz as it travels and effectively nobody owns it from a branding point of view.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: And of course, none of this would have been possible without this massive expansion Prosecco. In fact, you know, today Aperol could disappear completely. And as long as you still have the Prosecco, you could recreate another Spritz. It would be much harder to do it the other way around.
[00:20:03] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And that's how you get to the kind of extensions that we have today. So, you know, like Limoncello Spritz Select Spritz Rose Tequila Spritz, basically ready to drink cans of a lot of Spritz type things and a platform that other people and other brands can build on.
[00:20:21] Speaker A: I didn't know there was a Tequila Spritz. Have you tried one?
[00:20:24] Speaker B: Yeah, one of the ones that I tried for the, for the Spritz lineup with my in house Gen Z's was a Tequila Spritz.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: Was it good? What was it like?
[00:20:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: I couldn't.
How enthusiastic?
[00:20:38] Speaker B: Look, I.
I couldn't really taste it as tequila, if that makes sense. It just tasted like a really pleasant, spritzy drink. I wouldn't say that the Tequila came through particularly.
[00:20:53] Speaker A: Right. Okay. So going back to Aperol, it became a victim of its own success. So it basically built the category and now everybody else, including Tequila, is muscling in.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And a successful brand wins market share. A successful category, on the other hand, we could say kind of more changes behavior.
And then as you said, everybody can take advantage of that sort of new consumer behavior.
[00:21:18] Speaker A: And then what happened was the Aperol Spritz was so successful that a backlash started.
Now, this really kicked off in 2019 with a piece in the New York Times called the Aperol Spritz is not a good drink. The author Rebecca Pepler says, quote, served in branded jumbo wine glasses, the sugary aperitif is paired with low quality Prosecco soda water and an outsize orange slice, resulting in something that drinks like a Capri sun after soccer practice on a hot day. Not in a good way. Despite the figures both sales and social media likes. I'm not alone in this opinion. First there is the Aperol. Though it contains ingredients like bitter oranges and rhubarb, the bottle skews saccharine at best with a syrup like finish. And after that. End of quote. And after that came out, you know, bartenders just rushed to dist themselves from the Aperol spirits.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Okay, so she, she wasn't pulling any punches in that answer, was she? Oh, my goodness me. I remember. I do remember actually, that piece doing the rounds and everyone in the trade kind of forwarding it to each other with a sort of slightly smug told you so. Maybe because they were successful, because Aperol were being so successful at the time, there was a little bit of jealousy going on.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: That's right.
Well, actually, so. So Google Trends show that the actual moment that it turned. So searches for Hugo Spritz overtook searches for Aperol Spritz in several European markets, particularly Germany and Austria, by 2022. And then we get select, which is the Venetian Aperitivo, that actually predates Aperol by decades. And that's seen real sales, particularly in the uk off the back of positioning itself as the authentic alternative.
[00:22:59] Speaker B: Which is a lovely irony, isn't it? Because the older, more obscure version of the drink kind of getting a second wind by setting itself up against the very.
That made the category famous. If that's not an island, we should
[00:23:13] Speaker A: say that although there was a lot of backlash, you know, noise going on, Aperol's global sales just kept growing from that period of 2019 to 2021. So the. The critical fatigue was really more of a media story than a market reality. But, you know, what often happens is the media is a kind of leading indicator that, you know, something is changing.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And now.
Now what I observe and when talking to consumers and overhearing, as you know, I like to go into pubs and listen to what people are ordering.
[00:23:42] Speaker A: And, of course, that's why you're in the pub. Yes, yes.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: I do field work. Ethnography, Felicity, ethnography. But often now you'll hear sort of discussions about what sort of spritz shall I have tonight?
And that's a different question, isn't it? From shall I have an Aperol spritz, per se. Specifically.
Specifically, let's get that one right.
So one starts with the brand and the other one starts with the kind of format, doesn't it? So once people think in that way, you can sort of. Anybody can compete within the spritz category. So there's a bigger tailwind sitting underneath all of this. And I don't think we can talk about spritz without kind of naming it properly. Yeah.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: Lulu, do you want to sort of unpack why the spritz took off so fast? Because it's interesting, you'd think that a success, successful German marketing campaign would be the case of death.
So I. I was once told by a sparkling wine executive from Germany, he once said to me, nobody wants the German lifestyle. So what made this drink so different? Yeah, yeah, he said it was why it was hard to sell Sect. You know, the German sparkling market.
[00:24:54] Speaker B: Because it was like, people around the world are not going, oh, I really want some. That German lifestyle. Yeah, that's Italian. Italian kind of has a bit more global appeal from a lifestyle point of view, one could say. Anyway. Yes. So back. Back on track. So look at the shape of the last 15 years or so in drinks. And I think there's a really interesting. I don't know whether it's causality or correlation, but bear with for a moment. So we had moderation becoming kind of mainstream through this time frame that we've been Talking about not a kind of fringe thing. So we have seen over this time lower ABV drinking stop being a compromise and starting to become a preference. So actually, I think ironically, Spritz has benefited from lower ABV beer and also zero alcohol beer because there's this broader move away from sort of richness and intensity more towards refreshment. So people wanting something brighter, sort of sparkly and easier to drink rather than something more heavy and considered. So you've got that going at the same time. So it's a really interesting one. Is the causality or is it correlation?
[00:26:11] Speaker A: I mean, there's probably a very interesting podcast we could do another time about the way food was changing around that time and was becoming lighter and, you know, less into red meat. But it certainly was the right moment for something that was sparkling or sparkling adjacent.
[00:26:28] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And sparkling, refreshing, low intensity. As I was saying, easier to drink, you know, sort of a longer drink over an evening. Which brings me back to the question I wanted to put to you. So did you know I was just talking about causality versus correlation there? Did Campari spot moderation and lower ABV drinking coming and reposition the brand deliberately to meet that, or did the trend arrive and they went, oh, that's great, you know, let, let, let this do the work for them?
[00:26:59] Speaker A: I don't know. What's your opinion?
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Oh, I think it's a really tough one as I, I don't think Campari drove the trend. I think we' about serendipity already. You mentioned it in this episode and I think that is an example of it. I think they spotted what was going on and very cleverly identified occasion as that kind of gateway into that lower ABV moment. So a bit of both a typical Luly answer. Yes and yes.
[00:27:29] Speaker A: Well, you know, I don't wish to, you know, undercut what Campo did. They won a lot of awards in Germany for their, their apparel marketing campaign. I mean, it was, it was recognized as a sort of groundbre campaign. But there was, there's also a lot of luck in this story. So, you know, if we go back to, you know, the 2007, 2009 marketing push, this was a time when really nobody was seriously talking about moderation or low ABV drinking. So dry January didn't even exist until 2013. And so the whole low and no conversation didn't really take off until sort of mid to late 2010s, I think.
[00:28:03] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Which is kind of my point, I suppose. So they weren't chasing necessarily the modern, the moderation trend because as you were saying, it didn't come kind of exist in the way it does now at that point. So what they built was for potentially, we could imagine was for different reasons, so sociability, visibility. We've talked about the early evening occasion and it happened to be structurally lower ABV and refreshment led the way. So an aperol spritz made properly comes out at is around 8%, isn't it? ABV in terms of alcohol. And that's lower, you know, than most still wines, of course. So no, de engineered it basically as a aperol is a health strategy, a moderation drink in 2009. It's simply what you get when you build a drink from what you were talking about earlier. Three parts, one of which is soda water.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Yeah. So. So the format was accidentally future proofed.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. Accidentally future proof is exactly right. So they built the serve for an occasion without needing to know about the moderation. The lower ABV were about to become one of the. The defining stories of that sort of category and drink. That time in drinks category.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And I'm guessing here, but I think there were other things going on. So. So don't forget that we had the global financial crisis in 2008.
[00:29:24] Speaker B: Oh, of course, yeah, yeah.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Campari had been seeing like explosive growth. We're talking like 30%, 40%, 60%. But even during that sort of, you know, that incredible downturn, the sales just kept going and going and going. So the Aperol, I think, was probably perfect for the moment because you could go out and you could buy this pretty cheap drink, but you'd still have a sense of occasion because it had this big glass and it had the bright color so you could sit there and you didn't have to buy a meal.
[00:29:51] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that's really important, isn't it, because it feels more special emotionally, potentially, than just, you know, having a beer or, or a glass of wine. And I'd add one more layer, though, because I don't think it's purely luck. So once the moderation did start to build from the sort of 2010s on, Campari's marketing really embraced it and I think actually quite deliber deliberately at that point. So the messaging, they have kind of shifts from purely this is a lovely evening towards something closer to this is a lighter way to enjoy an evening.
So they may not have created the wave, but they were. They definitely were quick to start sort of surfing on it once it was clearly there.
[00:30:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, we've Already talked about the. The role of luck and serendipity in this, but. But Campari were able to seize all of that with very good markings. Marketing.
[00:30:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're talking marketing. Have you noticed that recently? I think it's literally within the last two or three weeks, I've seen Aperol have just launched new packaging and it's properly new, I would say. So. I'd say it's. It's a kind of big step evolution, not just a tweak. And I found myself looking at it, wondering whether that's a sign of.
Is it a sign of confidence or a sign of a brand that's hit the sort of top of its cycle and it's starting to panic.
[00:31:13] Speaker A: Interesting. You know, in my experience, generally what happens is, you know, if there's a downturn, somebody goes, we need to refresh, and then they go to an agency and the agency's keen to show that the money is being well spent with them and they completely rethink it from the ground up.
But why? What makes you say that it's panic rather than, I don't know, confidence?
[00:31:32] Speaker B: Well, it's similar to what you were just saying there, I guess, because in my experience, brands that are genuinely thriving very rarely go near their own packaging and there. DBAs got it in there. Distinctive brand assets. Wouldn't be an episode without it. But, yeah, I mean, they might do some small evolutionary packaging upgrades, but rarely kind of take a bigger step.
So the instinct to fiddle with the packaging tends to show up right when the actual answer to a growth problem often is something harder or more difficult. I don't know. It's kind of easier redesigning the bottle on a, you know, as an action on your to do list on a Monday morning than admitting the category itself has moved, which potentially it has. We've been talking a lot about Hugo here.
I don't. Having said that, though, I don't have the hard sales numbers to back it up, so it's. I'm going on a bit of a hunch here rather than hard evidence.
[00:32:28] Speaker A: Yeah, no, but I think this is often behind, especially when you're talking about dramatic redesigns.
I'd be curious to know whether there's any, you know, every evidence that's publicly available about whether their volumes are softening or whether, you know. Or whether they've had an internal change, change of staff and somebody wants to make their mark on the apparel.
Yeah.
[00:32:49] Speaker B: But having said that, if you look at what they've been putting out in public recently, again over the last Few weeks. From a strategic point of view, you can see that they're really doubling down on convenience. So they're really now focusing also on premixed RTD Aperol Spritz cans. And also single bottle premixed. And also really interesting getting Aperol spritz its taps in bars and pubs.
[00:33:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: So you can basically, the bartenders, the bar staff, can literally just pour it from the tap straight into glass. Me pre. Mixed.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Oh, gosh. Well, you know, I suppose that's clever. But I. I guess aperol must be under a lot of pressure, because now it's facing competition from ever every. You know, from everywhere. Oh. Including the Yarra Valley in Australia.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Oh, Felicity. So this is going to be one. Have you led us out, by any chance, into one of your quirks?
[00:33:50] Speaker A: Yeah. No, no, no.
It's a great story. So. So I actually. I actually did this for Drinks Insider, and everyone should listen to it because it's a great interview. Okay, so we have to go back to the pandemic when there's this guy, and his name is Rod McAliffe, and he's standing in his kitchen in the Aravalli, and he's peeling lemons, and his idea is he's going to make a limoncello.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Okay. And he had a eureka moment. I'm guessing.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: He did. So Rod's the owner of Zon Zono Zonzo Estate in the Yarra Valley, but he didn't start out in the wine industry, which probably explains why he sees things differently. So, first of all, he was an electrician, then he was a restaurateur, and he likes tinkering with things.
[00:34:30] Speaker B: Okay, so he sounds like a really cool bloke. Anyway, really fascinating. So hence the limoncello. So tell us, what did you cook or make yourself during lockdown? Felicity, you were just talking about.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: He did.
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Did this. I know. Well, he was doing this in lockdown, and it just made me think about lockdown. And what were you doing?
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Oh, don't bring those days back. Look, I did absolutely nothing. I'm not a cook. I did no sourdough. I did none of. None of that. I lived on stir fry. What about you, Luly?
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Well, now you're telling the story of him, of. Of Rod. I'm kind of wishing I thought of limoncello. But, no, you won't be surprised for listening to know that we did have family themed tonight. So. Food, drink. I even did decorations and themed outfits.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: Did you issue press releases as well, like you do at Christmas?
You know, I'm not surprised. I Mean, for listeners who've entered the podcast, Late Luly has a fully themed Christmas tree every year. Okay, so. So going back to your family themed nights during the pandemic, which was your best one?
[00:35:40] Speaker B: Oh, there were so many, Felicity. Amongst.
Amongst the highlights, I would say, is probably Pirates of the Caribbean.
[00:35:48] Speaker A: Pirates of the Caribbean, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:35:52] Speaker B: Which did, of course, include the obligatory rum punch. We also. So given this was height of summer in the uk, we also had Apresky with the obligatory Jagermeister. Oh, God, I'm really owning myself up here. So let's move back to Limoncello before
[00:36:09] Speaker A: I embarrass myself and my family anymore affectionate way. Lily.
[00:36:13] Speaker B: I'm laughing at myself. I really am.
[00:36:17] Speaker A: Have you started planning your Christmas tree yet?
[00:36:20] Speaker B: I. Yes, I have, but the press release doesn't come out till October, as you well know, Felicity. So when it comes out, I tell you what, as a journalist, you can have, like, early access to the press release. So.
[00:36:37] Speaker A: Okay, all right.
[00:36:38] Speaker B: So can take.
[00:36:40] Speaker A: Going back to Prosecco. So anyone who's heard our Prosecco episode will know that Prosecco is legally grown and bottled in Victoria, which is the Australian state where the Yarra Valley is located. So Rod had this idea that he would combine the Limoncello with Prosecco and make a new spritz, and he called it Zoncello, and he thought he had a fantastic idea on his hands.
[00:37:01] Speaker B: And your tone is suggesting, Felicity, there is a twist to this story.
Yes, there is.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: And it's called the Australian Tax Office. Oh. So Australia taxes wine and spirits differently. And so to get the retail price that he wanted, he needed Zoncello to be taxed as wine, not as a spirit. So he went, he negotiated with the ato, the Australian Taxation Office, and they agreed on the parameters. And then. So he did it the way he was supposed to. And then about a week before he was due to launch, the ATO changed its mind.
[00:37:32] Speaker B: A week before he was. So he had everything. Bottles ready to go, and suddenly the Tax office comes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:37:39] Speaker A: Anyway, so it was a week before lunch, so he goes back to his kitchen bench and he starts reformulating. And it doesn't matter what he does, he can't make it taste right. And he's about to abandon the whole thing.
[00:37:51] Speaker B: But I take it he didn't, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about it.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: No, no. Again, it was serendipity. He was wandering around a supermarket and he spotted a zero alcohol Prosecco on the shelf. So he thought, I'll try that. In the mix anyway, so. So by adding some de Alcoholized sparkling wine, he shifted the composition just enough to satisfy the tax rules, while also making a drink that tasted the way he wanted.
[00:38:16] Speaker B: So he goes back to the tax office in triumph, I'm assuming that's right.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: And they ruled against his new formulation because they said it's neither wine nor spirits. Oh, no.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: So it's like, I'm so nearly there, and now it's not wine. Okay, so I'm imagining there's some Aussie solution to this that wouldn't happen anywhere else in the world.
[00:38:38] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I remember. I remember telling a German colleague about this, and he just went, the German tax office wouldn't do this. They just tell you you can't do it. So what the ATO did was they created a whole tax category just for him. So his news on Cello is now taxed at, get this, as a vegetable wine, despite there being no vegetables in it.
[00:38:59] Speaker B: I bet he's not putting that on the packaging.
[00:39:02] Speaker A: Vegetable wine.
[00:39:03] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness me. So I guess they didn't want the ch. Chance to make money slip by them, though. So that's why they.
[00:39:12] Speaker A: I tell you what, they. They did the right thing by Australian taxpayers because Rod sold more than a million bottles in his first 12 months. So he probably funded some nursing home just with. With Zontello. So the retailer, Dan Murphy, took it from a local listing to statewide to full national distribution. They did it really fast. So get this. So the demand got so out of hand that Rod flew to Mildura, which is part of the. Sort of the. The. The big agricultural area where they grow all the citrus. And he bought an entire grower's annual lemon crop. And he signed the deal on the back of the grower's car because he needed that crop. But it still wasn't enough. And so he had to resort to asking his restaurant customers to bring in their own backyard lemons in exchange for bottles. And so he got something like a ton and a half from just his customers.
[00:40:00] Speaker B: A ton and a half from amateur lemon grower.
From their gardens.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: That's right. So, you know, Australia just kind of ran out of lemons.
And then what happened? Inevitably, the copies arrived. So Rod was furious to begin with. So competitors who hadn't done anything to build the idea or educated the market suddenly turned up and took a share of it.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Which is precisely what Campari could say that Hugo's done.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Yeah, except the problem that Rod had was that because it was quite complex, making the, you know, the. The mix so that it. Did it fit the tax scheme?
[00:40:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:40:38] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, the competitors didn't know about any of this. So basically what they did was they just added lemon sy to Prosecco and so the whole drink was in serious danger of going down market. And I think. I think when he went into China, he got a lot of sort of blowback because people who liked his, then tasted others, and then started to write sort of mean things on social media about the. The lemon cello spritz. But a friend told him to stop worrying about the copies and just make sure that, you know, the competitors were always chasing him rather than the other way around.
[00:41:07] Speaker B: Yeah. And particularly if he had this kind of higher quality, more or less authentic product, I guess, which might be the sort of single best piece of advice that we've buried somewhere in this whole episode, I don't know, that Rod is complaining about exactly the same problem Campari had. So he created a market and the moment it existed, everybody else kind of rushed in to profit from it, as you were saying.
[00:41:30] Speaker A: Yeah, that's right. I remember. I remember somebody who studied marketing told me, it's not your competitors, it's your imitators you should watch.
But the, the irony of this is, it's. Is that the limoncello spritz is now so ubiquitous that people assume it's a traditional Italian drink. And I think even the Italians believe it is not. It was invented by an Australian.
[00:41:51] Speaker B: Yeah, I'd never thought about that actually, because I just assumed it was because again, back to my M and S with my Gen Z in house tasting panel. Last week for this episode, we had a limoncella spritz can of from M and S. And I would have just assumed it was an Italian drink, I guess. So we're watch.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: I know it wasn't because Rod actually did a lot of checking of, you know, brands and patents and whatever when he launched it. So, you know, he did it.
So anyway, okay, let's go back. So it would be easy to make all of this sound like it's just happy accidents all the way. You know, Campari, Gruber, Rod, everybody else, it's just lots of good luck. But we should add that, you know, Campari spent years and hundreds of millions of euros building, building this, that, you know, Bacardi, you know, reached deep into their pockets to. To. With the elderflower and to, you know, to move it into the market. And Rod is a very, very smart businessman, you know, who kept working on it and doing all the right things. So these things were. Were Serendipitous but they were also the result of really good business practices.
[00:42:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think that what they were actually building was the ritual, so not the recipe and the occasion, as we've been talking about. So think about all. Almost any Aperol ad. Advert, as we were saying, the outdoor setting, the people, the laughing, the early evening and really nobody rushing anywhere. I guess that's what they were trying to build.
[00:43:18] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you asked me to describe an Aperol advert, and I can't actually think of any, but I would imagine the atmosphere was the most important thing before the bottle.
[00:43:28] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think the drink sort of becomes the supporting actor to the occasion. And the occasion, Asian is. Is really the star here.
And I think this is the opposite of how the drinks industry often, or potentially even usually behaves. So we put the bottle in the middle of the photograph or the advert and tell people about the vineyard or the botanicals or the barrel or fermentation, whatever it is. But Campari's message was so spot on here because it was simply. Wouldn't you like to be here?
[00:44:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And the other piece of this is that the drink was consistent. So, you know, you can order it or you can order an Aperol spritz anywhere in the world and you're going to get the same drink wherever you are.
[00:44:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Which is kind of, you know, I think what we're. We're sort of uncovering here or sort of talking about here is that it's back to our friends at the Ehrenberg Bass Institute, which is really not thinking so much about the sort of emotional storytelling or the product attributes of the brand. So our friend Byron argues, as we know, that brands grow because they become easy to notice, easy to remember, and not because consumers develop this kind of deep embiding, you know, kind of loyalty to the product. And the drink itself becomes the noticing device.
[00:44:50] Speaker A: So. The noticing device. Yes, the noticing device.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: You know how that expression. I like that one. Yes. So the noticing. So the distinctive brand asset, because it's bright orange, so you can spot an Aperol spritz from the other side of the bar or the restaurant or the pub, as I did in the pub last night, could see about 10 tables away, somebody drinking Aperol Spritz, because you can see it. So the bright orange last glass with the ISO, et cetera, et cetera, becomes the distinctive brand asset in the glass. So you don't have to see the distinctive brand assets actually on the product packaging, which, in the case of a pub, sits behind the bar. So with four on them, you know, one on them, whatever it is. People drinking Aperol Spritz basically is a mini billboard that nobody had to pay for that Campari didn't have to pay for.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: Do you think that, do you think it's because it's orange that it worked really well? Do you think if it was like green, it would have been as successful?
[00:45:52] Speaker B: I think, yes. I think the Carla is doing a huge amount of the work and now I'm trying to think of whether a bright green or I guess one of your favorite, a bright blue drink would do the same thing.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: Yes, that's right.
[00:46:05] Speaker B: Yes. I knew that's where your brain was going. So I don't know. Humans, we are relentless imitators. So we copy clothing and language and holiday destinations and everything in between.
So why wouldn't we copy in drinks? I guess so Campari, you know, sort of really by putting it or putting. Having the spritz being put in a larger glass, the bright orange color. Color becomes even more distinctive, doesn't it? And lets people watch what others are doing. So you've got that sort of copying, imitating going on as a backup supporter to the success.
[00:46:43] Speaker A: Do you think just speculating how much of the RTD boom in spirits and cocktails more broadly is actually sort of part of the spritz story?
[00:46:57] Speaker B: I think quite a lot, actually. I think it's a really good question because.
Because mix sparkling, fizzy, effervescent drinks translate really well into cans, don't they? And far more naturally than most other sort of still cocktails do. So making Aperol Spritz properly is. It's quite a bit of a faff, isn't it? Because you've got to open the Prosecco, you've got to get the soda, you've got to get all that pouring. Yeah, well, it is, it is, it is. And also you do have to open a whole bottle of Prosecco.
So, you know, I just think it's. Which is why I think this move that I was just talking about earlier that Campari are doing to pre mixed Aperol Spritz in cans, in small bottles and then on tap actually is really genius because that is then taking that barrier to entry, which is why Aperol Spritz has primarily been successful in the on premise, where somebody else makes it for you, you don't have yourself.
And I guess that sort of fizzy, bright attractiveness, you know, if we're thinking about red wine, for example, still doesn't have that sort of same level of Comparison or distinctive brand assets or memorability that Aperol has.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Yeah. So I guess.
I guess what you're saying is spritz was. Was an easy entry into the rtd. Almost. Almost. It was almost inevitable because of being carbonated and. And so on.
[00:48:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I made it. Reminds me of talking about spritz. So I made one. The other, well, a spritz, kind of adjacent, shall I call it, thing the other week when we were down at the farm.
So I used whatever we had in the cupboard, which happened to be pink gin, lemonade, tonic water, splash of Prosecco because we had some open and some elderflower, and because I'm posh, as you talked about earlier, fresh mint, a pork, apparently, but it was just what I'd grown in my garden. And a dash of bitters. Oh, I put some bitters in because I love putting bitters in everything. So, friends were coming over for an early evening drink, and the shop is not that near our farm.
[00:49:07] Speaker A: And of course, you had mint in your very posh garden. So that's a very complicated cocktail. Luli, that's not really a spritz.
[00:49:14] Speaker B: Okay, okay. But, Isabel, didn't you say earlier a spritz is something that's got Prosecco in it or just fizzy? How did you define it? It's another part.
[00:49:25] Speaker A: So the proper definition. No, no, the proper definition. Definition, and I. I got this from Google, is a light sparkling aperitif built from three parts. A wine or aperitif base, sparkling water and something bitter or aromatic. Right. So if it doesn't have sparkling water or it doesn't have the wine element, then you haven't got a spritz, you've got a cocktail.
[00:49:42] Speaker B: Oh, okay. So then I definitely didn't have a spritz. I had a cocktail.
[00:49:46] Speaker A: You said you had Prosecco in it.
[00:49:48] Speaker B: So we had Prosecco but not sparkling water.
[00:49:52] Speaker A: Oh, then, no, no, sorry.
[00:49:53] Speaker B: No, it doesn't count.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: Complete fail. Yeah, no, sorry.
[00:49:56] Speaker B: Utter fail. It was quite nice drink, though.
[00:50:00] Speaker A: Okay, so. But. But here's the thing. And this. This goes back to our. Our soldiers of the Austro Hungarian Empire. They are spritzed with something that they just diluted with sparkling water. So, unfortunately, I have to say, although your farmhouse effort sounds very complicated and interesting, it's not a spritz.
[00:50:17] Speaker B: Okay, no, fair enough. So perhaps the tidiest way to think about it is that the definition has always been a bit loose, hasn't it, Felicity? So, you know, do people really know that it's this 3, 2, 1 ratio it has to have soda and to have Prosecco, or not Prosecco specifically, but sparkling wine, I don't know.
And now apparently my gin, whatever it was in the cupboard, can kind of shelter in our minds under what's evolved to be the broader spritz category without anybody actually want to be spritzes.
[00:50:49] Speaker A: I don't wish to be the Prosecco police here, but that's not true. If it doesn't have the sparkling, you know, if it doesn't have the wine, it doesn't have the sparkling drinking water. It's not a spritz anyway.
[00:50:59] Speaker B: So. Moving.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: Moving right along. I don't wish to crush you, but I should always be.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Crush me.
[00:51:05] Speaker A: Spritz culture has not. Has not been the same absolutely everywhere. We should say.
[00:51:11] Speaker B: No, no, no. Exactly. So in the uk, spritz has mostly landed on summer occasions, not surprisingly, given how it's been positioned.
Much more kind of pub garden and pre dinner or with dinner, which explains my chalkboards. Outside the. Outside the boozers thing.
[00:51:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Now in Germany and Austria, the Hugo actually outsells the Aperol. So, you know, the local variant for, for all sorts of reasons. I think the. I think elderflower is probably a more familiar flavor in that part of the world. So iwsr, which is usually the people you quote, I saw that they have. Germany is one of the largest spritz market outside Italy, full stop.
[00:51:50] Speaker B: And I wonder whether, do you think some of that has came from Campari's work or do you think that was because of the tradition you mentioned earlier of Riesling with a spritz of sparkling water?
[00:52:02] Speaker A: Probably all of the above. I think it's also that Germans, their number one destination on holiday is Italy. So, you know, there's a very, very strong link with Italy there.
And Germans, you know, whatever they see in Italy, they bring back. So the number one or one of the top white wines in Germany is actually Lugano, which isn't really drunk in many other places, but it's because they all go on holiday to Lake Garda. So I imagine that the power of the spritz is partly related to that. That as well.
[00:52:30] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, ex. That's really interesting. But the.
It can also change, can't it? So, and you, you, you were talking about Australia earlier and the Limoncello spritz. So what's been happening in Australia from a spritz point of view?
[00:52:43] Speaker A: Well, so, so I have to say I. I've been away from the market for a long time, but I believe the Australian spritz is Emerging almost its own descriptor.
So this is, this is the market, of course, that gave us this on Cello story. And I think, I think they've been a lot. In fact, I'm going to go to Australia, so I will report back. I shall go around the bottle shops and see what I can find.
[00:53:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:53:04] Speaker A: What about the us Lulu?
[00:53:06] Speaker B: So US being a bit slower when you look at the kind of market data, I mean, clearly lots of spritz are drunk in the US because it's very large market from a consumer point of view. But largely in the US it's been.
The cocktail culture has been kind of stronger and more dominant.
So establishing spritz has been a little bit harder to kind of take over that really ingrained, embedded traditional cocktails.
[00:53:34] Speaker A: That actually surprises me because one of the things that's happening in the entree over there is that the cost of wine and cocktails has become so high. Yes. That people aren't, aren't ordering them anymore. And you think that the spritz would really solve that problem because no offense to any of the people involved in spritzes, but it's cheap. It's cheap process. Prosecco. Cheap. Cheap, you know, whatever.
So when you go further south. Right. We should talk about Brazil and Latin America. They're still emerging, but they're becoming more spirit led rather than the wine based. So that fits the drinking culture more. More sort of naturally the Prosecco. But you're off to Argentina, so you can report back.
[00:54:09] Speaker B: Yes, I will report back on what I see in Argentina. Yeah, I'll be there in a week. Just over a week, actually. Gosh. Gosh. Coming around really quickly. So I guess there's, you know, sort of talking about different markets and different countries here. There's a sort of natural life cycles. So you kind of first you educate, then you popularize, and then everyone copies and sometimes copies you better in your own backyard, potentially.
[00:54:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Now, as Luly, who clears the inbox, is forever reminding me, we actually have a lot of wine producers who listen to the podcast. So I guess speaking on their behalf, this is an interesting story. But what, what is the lesson for them?
[00:54:49] Speaker B: Okay, so there's, I think it's actually a really big lesson for all of us that work in wine. So wine, we still spend too much time. I would suggest asking, how do we persuade people to appreciate what we've made rather than what I think is the much more important question, what moment in someone's life could we actually improve or could we focus on? So those are really different Questions. So if you think, Felicity, about how wineries often launch or talk about products, you know, a new Sauvignon blanc, a reserve, a premium, an icon, whatever it is, is.
It's like we're layering in those kind of adjectives to transform somehow demand. And we're not actually thinking about this from the consumer point of view. We're thinking about it from the product point of view.
[00:55:41] Speaker A: I think we have. They have the makings of an epic rant here, Luly. What else?
Yes, just go ahead and upset the industry.
[00:55:51] Speaker B: Oh, well, okay. Well, I don't think that. I'm not sure they've. They've forgiven us after our wine is
[00:55:56] Speaker A: pouring episode or the storytelling one.
[00:55:59] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that was on you. That was, that was probably on you anyway, so. Yeah, so true. So I think the thing is that, you know, we have to remember from a consumer, consumers are the people that put their money in their pocket or hold their phone and do Apple pay nowadays and basically spend their hard earned money on our product. Product.
So, you know, we don't typically start off as consumers going, oh, it's, you know, it's somebody's birthday or it's a, you know, a barbecue or a Sunday lunch. Oh, which grape varietal am I going to have now? You start with the. It's.
[00:56:33] Speaker A: I often I, I look at where I'm going and going, oh, I need a pig pool.
[00:56:38] Speaker B: Do you. It's a very good choice. Very good choice.
No, no. So it's typically. We're starting with the occasion now. You know, it's the, the Sunday lunch, the date night, what, whatever it is. And the drink simply is part of that. To build the intention of what we want the occasion to be. And the product, as I've said so many times, bored so many people, is the supporting actor that enables that. That moment to be built.
[00:57:09] Speaker A: Which I guess goes back to your opening point, which is that nobody buys Gentian Rudolph. What was the bark that you said? Was it Cinchona?
[00:57:16] Speaker B: I hope I've got the pronunciation correct. I did try and look it up because you know how bad I am at pron Things, I think.
[00:57:25] Speaker A: Yes. Anyway, so. So nobody goes out to buy that. Except, except actual buyers that make people that make apparel probably do Campari probably
[00:57:36] Speaker B: have a Cinchona buyer anyway.
[00:57:38] Speaker A: That's right. There's an expert in the world who can look at one piece of bark and reject it.
[00:57:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:57:43] Speaker A: Do you think there is?
[00:57:44] Speaker B: There must be. I bet there is. Do you think we can find out who they are? That Would be fun. Fascinating.
Oh my goodness me. All right.
[00:57:52] Speaker A: Yes, you're right. People, people, people think about as far as I can see, can, can think about the occasion first.
[00:57:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, look, we do need quality. I'm not trying to kind of diss the idea that we need quality and product at all because if the liquid was horrible, nobody would go and buy it. Although you could argue that when I was, that reminds me, you know, when Red Bull first launched, they did consumer testing and everyone said that Red, Red Bull was really horrible and they hated the taste of it. No, genuinely. And it's gone on to be so one of the, as we know, most successful brand. So you could say that even if a product tastes disgusting at first, two people, who knows? But, but back on track. So quality is important. People do need to like it. They're not going to shift habits if they think something is tastes really awful other than apparently Red Bull. But what it's really about moving into this new ritual that fits naturally into a lifestyle that you want to, to have.
[00:58:49] Speaker A: Well, well, actually that actually fits Red Bull. I, I, I can imagine why it succeeded because first of all, Red Bull is functional. Like it, it's got caffeine in it. And so I think we accept sort of medicinal, unpleasant tastes if we think it's going to do something good for us. I, I'm just guessing. But look, but look, let's go back to, let's go back to the Spritz. Okay, so do you think Aperol or Campari built an amazing brand or did they change the way we drink and maybe the brand wasn't important?
[00:59:17] Speaker B: I'm going to do a really annoying answer as, as always and say a bit of both. But, but I think, you know, how lame come down.
Okay. I think it built one of the most successful drinks brands in the world and it did change how millions of people think about the sort of aperitivo occasion or the aperitivo moment.
And it made it feel very accessible and aspirational and, and easy to copy. So I think there is a genuine achievement there.
Even before you get to kind of Gruber and his lemon balm or whatever and your man in Victoria peeling lemons at midnight.
[00:59:59] Speaker A: Yeah. And so the irony of all of this is that Aperol created the Spitz or it popularized the Spritz. And then what they did was by doing that, they opened the door to a whole bunch of computers competitors.
[01:00:11] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which is why I think it's such a good business story actually, because it's about creating category Felicity So that, you know, and it may be one of the best things a brand can do because it's also got the. This idea of moment and ownership of that moment. And it. But as we've said, that can then kind of go on to everyone else afterwards. So the job changes and it stops being about teaching people, you know, what the moment is and starts being about reminding them why you, as a brand, Aperol, in this case, deserves to lead or own that occasion.
[01:00:51] Speaker A: What occasion should we own as a podcast, Luly? Are we, Are we a breakfast podcast or a after dinner podcast?
[01:00:58] Speaker B: We should think about this. I. I had not thought about that. One of my favorite podcasts which I listen to, they have kind of letters in from listeners, emails, clearly not letters these days. And one of the sort of rolling things they've got at the moment is people saying what time of the day they listen to that particular podcast.
[01:01:17] Speaker A: Right. We want those emails. People sending. Sending the. Yes.
[01:01:20] Speaker B: When you listen to us. Well, we need to. Careful. Yeah, careful what we're asking for.
[01:01:25] Speaker A: We did some of our category entry point. Or is it our occasion? Anyway, so let's get into it. We need to know. So maybe if I sum up the episode, it's not that apparel sold a drink, it's that it sold a ritual.
[01:01:38] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Which is the question. Every drinks company should probably be masking itself. So products come and go, flavors come and go, packaging changes, sometimes a little bit too much. But if you create a moment or align yourself with an occasion or become inseparable from one, you've done something very few brands in drinks ever manage to do.
[01:02:01] Speaker A: Yes. And so. So write and tell us. So, first of all, if there's a brand that you think has changed drinking behavior, we'd be very interested in that. But also, what time of the day you listen to our podcast? You want to hear it?
[01:02:13] Speaker B: Yes. And where do they write to us? Felicity.
[01:02:16] Speaker A: Oh, sorry, sorry. Write to
[email protected] and I'll read the email.
[01:02:26] Speaker B: You've been listening to A Question of Drinks, the podcast that explores why we drink, what we do.
[01:02:31] Speaker A: And we're here to answer your questions if you want to know more about anything, drinks, from the marketing history to the economic underpinnings to why this drink is popular, and not that one. Send us an email.
[01:02:43] Speaker B: Send us any questions you'd like us to discuss. And quite frankly, the more random and niche, the better, and we'll have a go at answering them. We can be reached on a questionofdrinksmail.com that's a question of drinks. All1wordmail.com and we would hugely appreciate you
[01:03:01] Speaker A: reviewing and rating this podcast before you go. Five stars are much appreciated.
