Sipsmith went astray chasing the flavoured gin craze, its master distiller has said.
Speaking as the brand launched Origin 1639 – a gin paying tribute to a 17th century recipe that birthed the modern London dry style – Jared Brown said he had been pressured into making less traditional gins during the period when “flavours ruled the shelves”.
“I was pressed into making [Sipsmith] Zesty Orange, Lemon Drizzle and Strawberry Smash,” he said. “But after work, I was still always reaching for the London dry.”
Focusing too heavily on flavoured gin meant Sipsmith had been “pulled away from our true north”, Brown said.
“I see this [launch] as an opportunity to correct that,” he added.
It came with sales of Sipsmith having plummeted 36.3% on volumes down 42.8% [NIQ 52 w/e 21 April 2024], ahead of declines in the wider gin category, which has slid 8.3% on volumes down 12.1% [NIQ 52 w/e 10 August 2024].
Asked what Sipsmith and its competitors needed to do to breathe life back into gin, Brown said: “Personally, I don’t consider it to be a negative that suddenly pink unicorn gin has fallen off the shelves. So many of these other products were mislabelling themselves as gin, and that’s where we see the bulk of the shrinkage in the category today.”
Gin sales “would look far worse” if London dry were excluded, Brown insisted. Classic gins were “not getting hit anywhere near as badly” as flavoured variants, he added.
To return to growth, gin needed to re-premiumise by tapping into its rich history, as Sipsmith was seeking to do with its latest launch, Brown said.
Origin 1639 – which has landed in Waitrose, Harvey Nichols, John Lewis and Majestic (rsp: £38/70cl) – would bring “a lot of authority back to the gin category, but also to Sipsmith”, Brown predicted.
The NPD was “a step up in quality and in craftsmanship” and a “definitively classic, modern gin” that was recognisable as the “parent” of London dry, he added.
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