Drinks start-up Espensen Spirit has unveiled its first drinks – a range of flavoured gins and vodkas made with fresh fruit.
The Espensen Spirit brand is available from this week, with the initial line-up comprising two vodkas – pink grapefruit & raspberry-flavoured PG Sips and a rhubarb & custard variant named Ruby Cuby – alongside a gin duo of blueberry Gin Genie and raspberry Pump Up The Jam.
The 30% abv quartet, made with base alcohol from Langley Distillery near Birmingham, is available in four sizes: 3cl, 5cl, 20cl and 50cl. Rsps are from £3.25 for the 3cl sampling bottle to £29 for the largest format.
Made with fresh fruit, via a method that had taken “years to develop”, the spirits contain no artificial colours or flavours, giving them a shorter shelf-life than traditional brands. The products were “best drunk within a few months of being made”, said co-founder Sam Espensen, who has been involved in the alcohol industry for two decades.
“A lot of flavoured spirits taste artificial so, although the way we make our drinks is laborious, they taste of what they’re meant to,” she said. The goal had been to “keep it as fresh as possible” using only natural flavours while retaining a “fairly high abv”.
Espensen Spirit, which plans to expand its brand with whiskies for Halloween and is also opening a bar in its home town of Bristol, said it was initially focused on establishing itself in the South West, where it is available from independent retailers, bars and restaurants.
Alex Ririe, managing partner of strategic development at Coley Porter Bell, said the use of fresh fruit and having a shorter shelf life was “interesting”.
But she questioned whether the NPD brought anything more “to a pretty crowded market”, and insisted Espensen Spirit would need to invest in its brand “to elevate it from being just another producer of lovely individual products”.
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