Nuts about ginger

It might seem like a new fad, but its long heritage in drinks and the versatility of ginger mean it's a flavour that's here to stay, says Nigel Huddleston.

Smirnoff Moscow Mule was one of the first wave of RTDs to hit the market back in the early noughties. The drink with a touch of ginger in the flavour was popular, but not popular enough for a company with the high targets of Diageo, and it was soon withdrawn, although it did make a brief cameo reappearance as a limited edition in 2007.

In the intervening years, another Diageo product, Gordon's Distiller's Cut gin, came and went. The principal flavours were lemongrass and ginger — a nod to the fashion for Thai cuisine — but it didn't cut any ice with consumers and joined ­Moscow Mule in the drinks brand history books.

In retrospect it seems that perhaps all Diageo got wrong was launching both products ahead of their time, because there's been a recent and sudden boom in ginger-flavoured drinks.

Halewood International has put a modern spin on its Crabbie's ginger wine with the high-profile launch of an alcoholic ginger beer, for example. That's been followed into the market by Frank's, an alcoholic ginger beer from Kopparberg supplier Cider of Sweden.

Among others, brewers Sharp's, Hall & Woodhouse and Robinson's have all been getting rave notices for the likes of Chalky's Bark, Blandford Fly and Ginger Tom — all ales flavoured with ginger. And when US wine brand Gallo was looking for a long serve to help market its White Grenache rosé wine, it came up with Gallo Rosito, a combination involving red fruits and ginger ale.

Soft drink firms have also been seeing an uplift in ginger beers and ginger ales, partly on the back of their growing use in spirit-mixers and cocktails such as golden rum & ginger ale or non-RTD Moscow Mules.

The trend​

The trend has been so tangible that boutique soft drink brand Fentimans even added a second version of its ginger beer, the less fiery Cool Ginger Beer, this year. In short, the whole world seems to have gone ginger nuts.

Stuart Ekins, sales and marketing director at Inspirit Brands, which handles the marketing for the King's Ginger liqueur brand, says wider trends have influenced the mini-boom in ginger drinks.

"The popularity of Asian food culture has been very important," he says. "You also see ginger on a lot of juice bars in shops and in that context it appeals to people because they see it as a healthier option."

Al Cross, brand manager for Crabbie's at Halewood, agrees. "The palate of consumers is changing and they're becoming more adventurous. There are people who may have tried ginger biscuits when they were a child, but have grown up and find that their tastes have matured and ginger is something they're rediscovering."

Cross says Crabbie's alcoholic ginger beer is appealing to consumers of a range of other drinks, most notably ale and cider.

"It appeals to ale drinkers who might want something refreshing on a summer's day or something warming in the winter. It's very versatile and ticks a lot of boxes."

He adds: "We already had Crabbie's ginger wine, which has a lot of heritage, and wanted to develop it as a brand. Ginger was a flavour we'd been looking at for some time, but it took a long time to develop because ginger beer isn't an easy drink to make and get right."

Cider boom​

The cider boom had influenced the launch, said Cross. "We'd seen what was happening with the cider market — but there is always a 'what's next?' in the drinks market, regardless of how big a category is or how long it's been around."

It was perhaps no surprise then that the second major launch in alcoholic ginger beer came from a cider company.

Cider of Sweden launched Frank's on test in Wetherspoon pubs last year and a tweaked liquid and packaging has now gone into Enterprise Inns and into wholesale distribution with Molson Coors.

"It's a more sessionable version, less fiery if you like, because one of the things that came up in the test was that, although the gingerness is important, it's got to be a refreshing drink," says Cider of Sweden managing director Davin Nugent.

He adds that the launch wasn't a direct response to Halewood's success with Crabbie's.

"We'd been working on what we were going to bring out under the Frank's name and ginger beer was one of the options, but Crabbie's did demonstrate there was a market and it became an easier decision to make."

Nugent says it's difficult to define a competitive set of brands for Frank's. "It's going to be beer, cider, wine — a bit of everything," he says.

Blandford Fly​

Rick Payne, brands marketing manager at Blandford Fly brewer Hall & Woodhouse, says sales of the brand in the company's managed estate increased by 17% in the year to May, with sales in tenanted pubs up 26%, based on the brewer's own ex-brewery data.

Blandford Fly has a different take — with a fuller flavour profile, where the spice of the ginger is tempered by the addition of some maple syrup — and a target audience in cask ale-lovers looking for a packaged alternative.

The beer is only sold in bottles and Payne says: "Our recent sales growth has really been more to do with us pushing our bottled beer range in our pubs. I don't think there's any ginger beer fad in the way that there has been a cider fad."

A trebling in export sales to markets including Russia, Australia, France and Denmark suggests that there's no major trend towards ginger beer as a particular UK market phenomenon, says Payne.

"We launched it in 2002 and it's been a steadily upward trend for the past six years," Payne adds. "Ginger has been used to flavour beer for centuries, even before hops, and Blandford Fly came about because we were experimenting with flavours that had been used in brewing history.

"It's always been a polarising beer — you might say a bit of a Marmite beer, you either love it or you hate it."

With ginger in vogue across the industry, it might be time for some old favourites to make a renewed push.

Stone's ginger wine has been promoted around food events as a cocktail and cooking ingredient in recent times, and Clive Patten, marketing manager at supplier Constellation Europe, says Stone's with lemonade — a long serve over ice — is an attractive alternative to winter-based serves.

"It is clear the current trend for ginger-flavoured drinks most definitely extends to wine," he says.

Cross at Halewood says there are plans afoot for activity behind Crabbie's — the parent ginger wine to Halewood's fashionable ginger beer. He won't be drawn on the details, but insists it will be "really exciting".

It seems like we'll be hearing much more about ginger-flavoured drinks in the months ahead.

King's Ginger gets Inspirit treatment​

It's not only in beer that ginger has been making its mark. King's Ginger liqueur was launched by London fine wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd as long ago as 1903, but for a long time the company had little ambition for sales outside its St James's shop.

But it has now tied up a sales and distribution deal with Inspirit Brands, the upmarket spirits supplier — now owned by Global Brands — to grow sales.

"Historically, it's been sold as a family recipe to the hunting, shooting and fishing crowd, and drunk as a winter warmer," says Inspirit sales and marketing director Stuart Ekins.

"Berry Bros was looking at its spirits range and decided that King's Ginger needed a bit of a makeover. We're still going for that same market, but there's certainly an opportunity to do more with something that has such a fashionable flavour.

"We've done a lot of work in the cocktail arena with things such as Ginger Mojitos and Cosmopolitan twists, and it also works well with whisky as a Whisky Mac, which fits in nicely with its original market.

"But we're also looking at simpler serves which can take it into the top end of the mainstream market. Tonic and bitter lemon are two that it works particularly well with."