A Look at the Contemporary Whiskey Shelf

Leading industry experts convened at Bar Convent Berlin to explore transformative trends in the whiskey category and offer strategic insights on today’s evolving consumer landscape. Sessions covered the changing demographics of modern whiskey enthusiasts, fresh approaches to competing in the Irish whiskey market, and essential strategies for brand development.

Who is the New Whisky Consumer?

How to Reach New Irish Whiskey Consumers

Tips for Building a Successful Whiskey Brand

Steph Barlow, Export Manager, Hotaling & Co., discussed her tips for building a successful whiskey brand. Barlow emphasized the importance of knowing your audience and your brand and choosing the right partner.

Who is the New Whisky Consumer Transcript

Fabrizio Leoni (00:50)

I am the co-founder of an independent bottling company called The Heart Cut. As we’ve said, we spotlight distilleries from around the world through single casks and small-batch bottlings.

Whiskey is growing, so it worked out to be a really fantastic time to launch a whiskey company. But the players are changing. It’s not just the Big Five—if you think of Japan, the Americas, Scotland, Canada, and Ireland being the Big Five. World whiskey has become a thing; world whiskey is growing. You might recognize some of the brands behind me, you might not, but that’s the beautiful thing. These distilleries are not just being noticed by the trade or by people at BCB who have stands here; they’re being noticed by probably the most important person, and that is this new whiskey consumer.

Fabrizio Leoni (00:50)

Now, when I talk about this new whiskey consumer, I like to break it down. You have the whiskey enthusiast—you know, the person who loves single casks, the person that drinks a lot of whiskey and understands the technicalities when it comes to whiskey, the people that we know and love as people in the whiskey industry because they are going to buy our products. But then we have the “whiskey curious.” These are the people who are embarking on this journey: they like to buy coffee from their specialist coffee shop, they travel the world to go and eat certain particular styles of food, and they are the people that will spend that little bit more money on something that they love because they can justify it.

This audience—the person who will drink less but better, this affluent, knowledgeable person—these are the people who are starting to buy into what it is. What do they want?

• Community: They want a brand that builds community. We’re social beings, social creatures; we like to belong. The Nike Run Club is a fantastic example of creating a community not around Nike as a brand, but around the activity. If you think of the millions of whiskey clubs across the world, that is a perfect example, and brands can do exactly the same.

• Newness and Variety: People today don’t want to drink what their parents or grandparents drank; they want something new and exciting.

• Credible Guidance: Guidance from a credible and trusted voice. How many times have you been onto a website and the first thing you do is check the reviews or look at who the owner is? You want to see if they’re a whiskey company and if they have the right to be standing up there talking to you and selling you their wares.

• Captivating Story: A captivating brand story—this is the thing that makes someone smile. There are lots of brands out there and lots of brands here at BCB, but what is that one brand that’s going to stick with you for the rest of time? That’s what people want to buy into; they love these stories.

• Ease and Simplicity: Life is hard. You talk to everyone: “How you doing?” “I’m busy.” Brands that can make it work for people, brands that can make it easy—how can they make their consumer journey that much more profitable? They will come back to you time and time and time again if they can get what they want and if they can get it quickly.

Fabrizio Leoni (03:00)

But that’s not the only thing. If you think about how consumer purchasing is starting to change, this is where it gets really exciting, because digital discovery is that thing. Social media is this beautiful place that allows you to educate, inspire, and excite someone, and so that’s how people are starting to buy—through social media and digital discovery.

Self-expression is another beautiful place where it all starts to come to life. When someone takes a bottle around to someone’s house, they’re not just saying, “Here’s a bottle of whiskey” or “Here’s a bottle of wine.” They’re saying, “Here is a bottle that represents me.” They want to pick up something that is self-reflective of who they are as a person. I’ve even got to the point where I’m taking bottles of olive oil round to a friend’s house because it’s something new, cool, and gives you that social currency to be able to say, “Hey, you’ve never seen this before, but I have. Let me tell you this really interesting story.”

Then there’s the one-click buy on Amazon—everybody says they’re never going to buy from it, yet everyone still does. People want something, and they want it straight away. There have been so many times when I’ve been in the purchasing queue trying to get something, it becomes too difficult, and then I stop. That’s what people want nowadays. And finally, research: people will research to the $n^{\text{th}}$ degree. They will Google what’s the best bourbon, what’s the best rye, or what’s the best single malt. This is just how people are starting to buy things.

Fabrizio Leoni (04:24)

How are whiskey brands starting to appeal to this audience?

• Design: First and foremost, design something distinct. If you walk into a whiskey shop or a whiskey bar, there are a lot of options. So how are you going to differentiate yourself? What is that one thing that you can do? That is the bottle design; that is the label design. These are two of my latest releases—a little self-promo out there—but it’s having a little bit of fun. How can you inject what your brand is into it? How can you distill your DNA into a label or a bottle design to excite someone? This has been happening in craft beer, so how do you use design to your advantage? Do you put a QR code on your label to really give people that extra information? How can you stand out?
• Language: Language—for anyone who doesn’t know, that is my wonderful wife there in the middle and my business partner—it’s removing the jargon. People don’t want to know all of the ins and outs of every different type of whiskey; it can become bamboozling. Talk to people like they’re people. Really break it down in a way that you would want to be spoken to. The way I like to see it is leaving that marketing jargon elsewhere; marketing stays in internal presentations. Have some fun and talk to people the way you want to be spoken to.

Fabrizio Leoni (05:42)

Possibly the most important—well, I’d say most definitely the most important—is this pursuit of flavor. The world knows whiskey in a certain guise: it’s the Scotch, it’s the Irish, and this is what whiskey has been. But we’re starting to see something different. We’re really pushing the realms of what whiskey can be. There are so many different distilleries all over BCB that I recommend you go and try, because you try it and you go, “Well, that’s not whiskey.” And it’s like, well, it’s not whiskey as we’ve put it into our little box. This box is growing, and it is so much bigger than anything we could possibly do. So this pursuit of flavor through different cask types, different yeast strains, playing around, transferring barrels from one climate to another, and really just trying to understand: what would happen if I was to do something ever so slightly differently?

Fabrizio Leoni (06:30)

Then the glue that brings it all together: what is that story? People buy into stories; we are beyond the world of just having a brand. This picture represents one of my favorite distilleries, Kyro, who are based in Finland. It’s a story that I’ll remember forever and ever. Finland: 5 million people, 2.2 million saunas—quite a lot of saunas per person! And one of their national dishes is rye bread. So what happens when you have a group of friends sitting in a sauna drinking American rye whiskey going, “Well, why can’t we do our own rye whiskey considering we have so much rye here in Finland?” That is how Kyrö was born. Those guys went and created a distillery. This shows the power of story: how can you take what you have done, build around it, create a brand, and make sure that the liquid stacks up with the design to create these fantastic brand stories?

As I finish off today, if there’s one thing I would recommend, please just go and find a distillery that you’ve never heard of in a country that you didn’t think was producing whiskey and try something, because I assure you, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Yeah, that’s everything for me. Thank you!

How to Reach New Irish Whiskey Consumers Transcript

Robert Caldwell (00:03)

What I wanted to do is elaborate on what Fab was talking about and use a little bit of our own personal experience from the Teeling Whiskey Company. Teeling Whiskey was established in 2012, but the family had been distilling in Ireland since the 1980s. So there is a little bit of heritage, provenance, and history, but I want to look at it from the perspective of a newcomer to the category.

We talked about world whiskey and this geographically unique category that’s growing worldwide, with different countries creating different whiskies under different regulations and rules. We’re only just scratching the surface on the future of whiskey. When it comes to Irish whiskey, there’s a big category there; it’s one of the fastest-growing spirits categories in the world right now, but it’s a bit of a dominated category. So I wanted to focus on positioning more than anything—how we went about positioning.

First and foremost, like Fab said, there is a very interested, much less brand-loyal whiskey consumer. A lot of them are coming to Irish whiskey for two reasons:

• Provenance and History: Hundreds of years of provenance in Irish whiskey. When we think of whiskey, a lot of the time we’re thinking of this romantic category where we’re imbibing something that was laid down before we even existed—this idea that it comes from a generational experience. Irish whiskey obviously has that in spades.
• The New World of Whiskey: A modern, looser classification around what can be whiskey from Ireland.

Playing in both of these realms has been phenomenally successful for Irish whiskey, and that’s firmly where Teeling sees themselves.

Robert Caldwell (01:58)

Specifically, the prospect in the US is absolutely phenomenal. The premiumization of Irish whiskey in the United States is insane—look at some of these stats: over 600% growth. The best stat I can think of off the top of my head is that Irish whiskey is projected to overtake Scotch sales in the United States by 2030. That’s insane considering that, at one point in history, 40% of whiskey came from Ireland. In the economic downturn during the first golden era of Irish whiskey, that 40% went straight to Scotland, and now Irish whiskey is slowly clawing that back over the last 5 to 10 years. To see the potential of Irish whiskey in the biggest market in the world is insane.

In today’s world, people still look at all Irish whiskey as one green brand. It’s our job as craft whiskey producers to move away from that and showcase the length and breadth of Irish whiskey: Irish single malts, Irish pot stills, and Irish grain whiskies. This is not slagging Jameson at all—huge respect to one of the biggest brands in the world, not just whiskey brands, but brands in general. They’ve done phenomenally successful things. But I guess the issue was that a lot of people in Ireland stopped trying to innovate and started to copy the success that Jameson had. That’s where we found ourselves about 10 to 15 years ago. For us, it was about differentiation and finding that unique space in this fast-growing category.

Robert Caldwell (03:33)

Next up, we have our brand ethos: Authenticity, Conviction, Progress, and Community. These have been significant for us because they reinforce our values. We can’t just say, “We’re a brand. What do you do? We sell whiskey. Why? We like to get people drunk.” That doesn’t really work.

• Authenticity speaks to not only the whiskey and the character of the liquid, but also the character of our producers and brand creators.

• Conviction behind that is the proof: how do you prove that you are authentic in what you do and say?

• Progress: How do you progress the industry forward, innovate, and work with fellow people within your industry?

• Community: The social sustainability side of things—how do you work with local partners to progress not only the industry and category, but your environment? For us, we’re creating Dublin whiskey, but it’s also about redeveloping the area we call home in the Dublin Liberties area and working with our partners around us in collaboration. All of these things reinforce the values we set for ourselves.

Robert Caldwell (04:58)

When it comes to price positioning, historically looking at some of these brands down at the bottom, the Irish whiskey category was more similar than it was different. A lot of these brands were copying the success that Jameson had. The problem was that people coming to Irish whiskey through Tullamore D.E.W., Bushmills, Jameson, Powers, or Paddy were then graduating to Scotch or Bourbon because their tastes evolved. They were buying that $20 to $30 bottle and then moving up, and there was historically nothing within that premium white space.

Filling that premium white space was super integral for Teeling moving forward. There was such a leap to the likes of Redbreast, Green Spot, and Midleton in years gone by that people weren’t graduating through the price brackets—they were going elsewhere out of Irish whiskey. So filling that premium white space was super integral for us so people could start with Jameson and find their way to Teeling through these other brands.

Robert Caldwell (06:13)

Packaging is another place where you can start to see all these things tie into our brand ethos and brand identity. Like I said, if you’re going for that premium white space, you can’t have a plastic bottle with a cheap screw top—it’s in congruous with the presentation of your brand, the brand story, and all the things that make up who you are.

• Traditional Bottle: It’s a dark green bottle. While it looks black, it’s a link back to the glass production methods in Irish whiskey all the way back in the 1800s when we didn’t have clear glass. If you hold the bottle up to the light, it’s a dark green bottle, which is more traditional.

• Modern Labeling: Trying to strike out with fewer family crests or stereotypical Irishness and a little bit more modern whiskey aesthetics. We like to say we’re a modern whiskey that just happens to be from Ireland, as opposed to being defined by Irish whiskey.

• Premium Cues: The cork seal, embossing, and shrink wrap—all these things play into why you’re paying that little bit more per bottle. It’s hard to pay extra if it feels, tastes, and appears similar to everything else on the market, so you have to put in these extra steps.

• Striking Phoenix: We need that striking logo that remains memorable. People try a million different brands at BCB, walk home, and wonder, “What was that one that I really enjoyed? How was it memorable? Oh yeah, it’s got the Phoenix rising from the ashes of an Irish pot still on the bottle.”

Robert Caldwell (07:56)

Finally, to reinforce some of what I’ve said and hopefully sink home some of our achievements so far: we’ve been very fortunate to be at BCB for the last seven years and have a lot of success. We’re one of the leading, progressive Irish whiskies in the world, with over 600 awards for our whiskies. We’ve won World’s Best in three different categories, which is really important and something we’re very proud to say, because no other whiskey company can say they’ve won World’s Best in three different categories. We’re the only Irish whiskey to ever win World’s Best Single Malt, added to World’s Best Single Grain and World’s Best Pot Still. Hopefully, that reinforces that we’re doing something right through innovation and focusing on this premium white space.

We’re exporting to over 80 markets internationally now, which is very exciting. I literally just came back from India, where there’s a huge opportunity for modern whiskey today with a dedicated whiskey consumer and a large population. But not only India—we’ve had phenomenal success in Nigeria as well, which was hugely unexpected and really interesting to see.

Reaching 80 markets allowed us to gain interest and investment from Bacardi, one of the biggest family-owned rum companies in the world, to allow us to grow to that next level. It needs to be said that all these achievements across 80 markets with 600 awards were achieved by an international staff of just 20 people. That relationship with Bacardi is hugely important to us because we’ve been stretched thin as a brand for so many years, putting so much blood, sweat, and tears into this brand.

I hope you guys enjoyed the presentation! Join us at the stand for a frozen Irish coffee and an Irish whiskey. Thanks very much for joining us, hang around for the next presentation, and yeah, thanks guys!

Tips for Building a Successful Whiskey Brand Transcript

Steph Barlow (00:00)

My name is Steph. I’ve been working in the drinks industry for just over 10 years or so. I was originally living in London, working for Berry Bros. & Rudd for a few years, and then I worked for Moët Hennessy in the UK. I moved to Canada about four and a half to five years ago, worked for a company called Breakthru Beverage, and recently joined Hotaling & Co., who I’m going to tell you a little bit about today.

At Hotaling & Co., we are one of the leading importers of artisan spirits in the US. We have a very extensive portfolio—some of the bigger brands that we work with are Luxardo and Hine Cognac. We have a very extensive whiskey portfolio as well: we import Nikka and Kavalan (a fantastic Taiwanese whiskey), but we’ve also got some great Scotch and Irish whiskies as well.

In addition, we also distill our own spirits, which is partly why I joined the company—to help set up our export business around the world. We started distilling in 1993; back then, the company was called Anchor Brewing and Distilling. We were founded by a gentleman called Fritz Maytag. He took over Anchor Brewing, which was a struggling brewery in San Francisco, rejuvenated it, got everything up and running again, and wanted to explore things on the distilling side.

Steph Barlow (01:13)

It’s a super exciting time for whiskey. As highlighted earlier, the industry is set to grow to over $100 billion by 2030, and that’s not that long off—so there’s a lot more to come.

What I wanted to touch on—drawing a bit from our experience as an importer and how we’re using that to approach our export model—is how to try and not get too lost in this space. There are more and more brands entering the category, so how can you make sure that you’re competitive, survive, and continue to grow? Some of these things are pretty obvious, but I feel like they can often be overlooked as brands try to chase volume, and some of these simple things are quite hard to claw back if you don’t get them right in the first place.

The first part is super simple: really knowing your brand. What is your story? What makes you unique? Why would a customer want to seek out your brand? When they find it, what’s going to make them click through to find out more information or pick that bottle off the shelf? If you don’t have a celebrity-backed brand—which we’re seeing a lot of appetite for—how can you stand out, be different, and make sure you fit into your vision? What are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to be the number one whiskey in a specific category? If so, how are you going to achieve that? Who are your competitors, and what are you going to do to beat them in that space to ensure you’re the brand that succeeds? How does your brand add value to a distributor or consumer? These are things that as you start your journey into exporting your brand into new markets and searching for distributors, you should know and be really confident and strong in your vision.

Steph Barlow (03:11)

The second piece is around understanding the market. Where do you want to be? What markets are you targeting, and why are you targeting those regions? Really do your research. There are hundreds of markets to enter around the world, and in terms of whiskey, we’re seeing new markets come through every year. But what is your business setup? How much resource are you dedicating to export? From our perspective, I’m just one person managing our export globally, so the approach we’re taking is to open fewer markets more slowly, but really dedicate time to them, invest in the markets we open, and be quite tactical about which markets we launch over the next five years or so to grow from there.

What are some of the barriers to entry? Is it bottle size? As a US distiller, most of our products were in 750ml, so initially Europe was a no-go for us. We’ve started that process of transitioning to 700ml, but it’s crucial to really understand in which markets it’s a legality versus a preference. We’ve found that more markets in Asia are open to either 700ml or 750ml, so we’re evaluating whether to transition some of our brands fully over to 700ml now, given that the US permits both. As a small brand, setting up a whole new production line for a different size is expensive.

ABV is another key factor. In the US, we’re seeing high demand for higher-proof whiskies, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into every other market. A lot of whiskey lovers lean towards higher proof for purity of style, but in markets like Australia, the taxation on higher proof is so high that it can become cost-prohibitive. You need to figure out if you need a specific export SKU where you proof things down, and whether that still fits with the style and ethos of your brand.

Other typical barriers include labeling, which is always an issue—try to get on top of that early. In terms of market type, understand what drives opportunity within your target markets. In Europe, for example, are you looking at Spain (which is a more on-premise-driven market) or France (where opportunities are more in retail)? Understanding this helps build out your channel strategy.

Steph Barlow (05:57)

Understanding your competitive set is key, and you should really broaden that set because your competitors in your home market won’t necessarily be your competitors in other markets around the world. Understand what key competitors are doing and how they are price-positioned, so that you can spend time focusing on your price chain. Having to unravel pricing mistakes from the past to set things up better in the future is something you really don’t want to be doing, so getting your pricing right from the beginning is super key. Make sure you know where your guardrails are and set yourself up for success.

Steph Barlow (06:35)

A lot of these efforts will be supported by having the right partner. One of the first things to evaluate is the size of the distributor, which depends on your brand vision. As an importer in the States, we grew very quickly over the last five or six years. We used to have a very fragmented distribution model in the US because we had smaller brands and worked with various distributors across different states. Over the last two years or so, we switched that model and went national with a larger partner. Our business had grown, and some of our smaller distributors were struggling to support our scale at that time.

It’s something to consider: as a small brand in the beginning, you want to work with a distributor who can dedicate time to you, where you won’t get lost in their portfolio, and who can help you grow. It’s a true partnership: do they align with your values? Set super clear expectations and grow that partnership together. Communication works both ways. As the brand, what are you bringing to the table? It’s not just the distributor’s responsibility to build your brand in that market—how are you going to support them to ensure things are a success?

Steph Barlow (08:06)

To sum up a couple of key takeaways: it is a super exciting time in the modern whiskey world with tons of opportunity, but it is becoming very crowded. A few things to keep your brand successful:

• Know your brand and tell its story.

• Understand the nuances of the markets you enter to eliminate barriers up front.

• Spend time understanding your pricing strategy to ensure you’re set up for success.

• Find the right partner who fits your vision at that time and can help grow your business.

• Dedicate time to building brand awareness—whether in the digital space or through distillery tourism.

For example, with the brands we import into the US, we invested heavily in the key gatekeepers: the bartender community. That’s where we focused to grow our brands there, and those are the kinds of strategies to consider as you set things up.