Ancho Reyes collaborated with cocktail, hospitality, marketing and design firm Bon Vivants on the launch of the brand.
Bon Vivants co-founder Josh Harris, says: “I think the liqueurs sector internationally is a really exciting category, particularly for the cocktail trade.
“Liqueurs are giving cocktail bartenders the tools to layer together nuances of flavour with very assertive flavour profiles to create cocktails that ultimately become much greater than the sum of their parts.
“In each country where the brand (Ancho Reyes) has been launched we have received a great deal of excitement from bartenders and it appears it is being embraced to the degree that we have hoped, giving us the confidence to continue to launch the brand in other countries.”
Harris continues: “I don’t have any aversion to the label of ‘liqueur’ at all. I believe that Ancho Reyes, for example, is contemporary and it is relevant and that young, modern drinkers are excited about this flavour profile being captured in a bottle, that up until now has not existed in this way.
“The intention with Ancho Reyes was to give cocktail bartenders a flavour they could use across a vast array of cocktail making, and therefore the brand’s success in our mind does not rely upon the historic notion that liqueurs are intended to be consumed only as after-dinner drinks in small cordial glasses, for example.”
Going back to Mario Molinari, he concludes: “While liqueurs were traditionally consumed as an after-dinner digestive, often served straight or on the rocks, their consumption is continuously evolving and has become cross-cutting at all levels.
“Liqueurs are consumed in cocktails and as shooters. The moment of consumption is not predominantly after dinner anymore.”
Baker says: “Consumers are looking more and more for handcrafted products – 2015 was the year of craft spirits and craft cocktails.
“They like the idea that their favourite liqueur is made from small batches and are more and more conscious about buying locally produced products. We find new flavoured spirits in the stores every day, which makes the market very competitive.
“We see the next trend as moving towards flavours with organic or health properties.”
It’s a jungle, but to the intrepid marketer with the research equivalent of a machete, there are ways through the labyrinth.
