Sparkling wine cocktails
UK bar group Be At One recently reported that over three in four customers are happy to pay more for a better quality cocktail.
Over 5,000 of the group’s customers took part in an annual survey which discovered that men have increasingly developed a taste for cocktails; 29% of them stated that they drink one every time they go out.
So it’s interesting to note that on-trade sales of sparkling wine grew 44% in the UK in 2015.
Today’s cocktail drinkers look for a quality premium experience when ordering a cocktail and Be At One’s Operations Director Andrew Stones said that cocktail sales across the group’s 31 venues had boomed by 416% between 2012 and 2016.
He added that the most popular cocktail was the Porn Star Martini – which includes two shots of Champagne – that now represents 15% of all cocktail sales at Be At One.
IWSR figures quoted in the UK Wine & Spirits Association’s recently-published Market Overview for 2016 states that, together, sparkling wines and Champagnes (including those from the UK) are worth £800 million to the UK on-trade (£440 million for Champagne and £360 for sparkling wine) giving sparklers about 3.3% of total on-trade values (1.8% and 1.5% respectively).
Sales of sparkling wine overall have grown by 10% since 2014 and by 42% since 2011.
Champagne sales alone have shown growth of over 4% to 2,542 nine-litre cases.
In its annual report the French Champagne Society, Comité Champagne, states that Champagne is responsible for some 10% of global sparkling wines by volume, but 32% by value, producing a turnover figure of €4.7 billion (excluding taxes). In volume terms, that’s 25.5 million nine-litre cases or 306.1 million bottles of which 48% is exported. The EU is responsible for 25.3% of the Champagne market or 77.6 million bottles worth €1.2 billion while other countries take 23.1% of the total, or 70.8 million bottles worth €1.4 billion.
While all this trading is going on, over one million bottles sit quietly maturing in cellars around the Champagne region.
Sparking wine in Ireland
Here, figures from the Irish Wine Association suggest that although Champagne’s share of the overall wine market has slipped marginally from 2.2% in 2015 to 2.16% last year, sales have gone up overall due to better economic times and the dropping of people’s resistance to spend on Champagne, a hangover from the recession.
IWSR figures give sparkling wines a 2.7% share of the 7.9 million case overall wine market, or 216,600 cases in 2016, indicating growth of 7.9%.
Meanwhile, the figures for Ireland in the Comité Champagne report put volume growth of Champagne at 17.5% last year to 43,590 cases or 523,088 bottles worth €8.97 million.
Whatever the figure, it’s clear that sparkling wines are becoming increasingly popular so why not sell them as a constituent of your cocktail offering?
“Spritz”
Spritz is a Prosecco cocktail
that’s very popular in the
Veneto region and is now
booming worldwide.
Recipe:
Made with Prosecco, a bitter and a “spritz” (sip) of soda water.
Casa Defrá Prosecco 5/10
bitter 3/10
soda water 2/10
orange 1 slice
ice
stir rather than shake
