Wine trade bets on fruit-flavoured wines

By Gemma McKenna

Published: 27 August, 2014

The wine trade is betting on fruit-flavoured wines - such as raspberry and grapefruit - as an upcoming trend for the UK market.

Other European countries, especially France, have been quick to latch onto the fruit-flavoured wine concept as a way of attracting new and younger consumers with a sweeter taste profile, to the category.

Greg Wilkins, managing director of Brand Phoenix in the UK, said: "Fruit flavoured wines are on the up with some really good products out there." Brand Phoenix sells Castel's Very Raspberry wine, which retails at £5.99 in Tesco, but there are a host of others on the market or just launching.

Fruit flavours The wine trade says fruit-flavoured wines are gaining momentum in the UK marketElsewhere in Europe, and especially in France, consumers have taken a shine to grapefruit and raspberry flavoured wines, such as Castel's Very Raspberry. UK-based distributors are looking to develop the market here.

Anya Robson of bulk wine broker Murphy Wine Company, told Harpers.co.uk that there had been a strong increase in South African wine exports into France to fuel the increasing demand for fruit flavoured wines - mainly grapefruit. "The trend to watch for will be the increase in South African rosé imports into all European countries as the French rosé leaves a gap in the market due to volume and price."

Back in May Accolade Wines launched three fruit flavoured wines under its Californian brand Echo Falls, including a rosé with summer berries (9.5% abv); red wine with raspberry and cassis (11% abv); and a white wine with white peach & mango (9.5% abv).

Speaking at the time Amy White, marketing controller for Echo Falls, said: "We know, through research conducted with our flavour house partner, that the newbie consumers are eager to experiment with new flavours and generally have a sweeter tooth, which can make dry wines unappealing to them."

Robin Copestick, co-founder of Copestick Murray, said earlier this year that Prosecco cocktails, flavoured with mint, orange or lime, were ideally placed to take off in both the on and off-trade. Copestick Murray is now majority owned by German sparkling wine company Henkell.

Henkell, which owns 13 wineries across Europe, has been able to drive the growing Prosecco cocktail business in Italy, in particular, through its flagship sparkling wine Mionetto.

Recent figures show a boom in the number of flavoured alcoholic drinks containing wine in the UK - they grew by 51% in the 12 months to June 2013.

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