"Pie" whiskies and other flavors may undermine market

For vodka distilleries who tried to win over consumers with flavors like marshmallow and cupcake, backfired, because buyers are tired of scents. That didn't stop producers of whiskey they tried the same trick. After the success of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey, honey-scented, the creation of Scotch and increasingly obscure flavors — like the Piehole, of Diageo Plc, with taste of pie — follows in the footsteps of vodka, in a path where unusual varieties like the scent of freshly mown grass generated a negative consumer response and contributed to the deceleration of the category. "The extension of this kind of unbridled line is what undermined us vodka category," said Martin Deboo, an analyst at Jefferies in London. Unlike vodka, in which the flavors offered the main thrust for growth in more than two decades, the whisky does not lend itself to such extensions as wide. Although most flavoured whiskies there a few years ago, the President of Diageo North America, Larry Schwartz, said last month that the "taste fatigue" that has damaged sales of vodka is doing the same with the Whiskey, endangering one of the threads that more quickly grew in the sector of $ 453 billion of distillates. The latest crop of flavoured whiskies is in search of a "transitional populist appeal could be as evanescent as destructive to the value of the brand," said Deboo. Absolut, which is owned by Pernod Ricard SA since 2008, began launching flavoured vodkas in 1986 with Absolut Peppar-used as the basis for the Bloody Mary-and Citron added two years later. Over the last decade, the flavoured vodkas boosted in 13 percent volume in the us, on average, compared with 4 percent for the traditional vodka. Last year alone, more than 200 new vodkas were released, and the flavoured, equivalent to about one-fifth of the u.s. vodka market. Glazed donut this account retreated about 2 percentage points as consumers have turned to new options without aroma, as Tito's Handmade Vodka. New flavoured varieties – violet, Cupcake and Doughnut with icing – also appeared by surprise. The variant Fluffed Smirnoff, Diageo's Marshmallow, emanated "an ethereal aroma and the subtle sweetness of its manufacture", according to a press release of 2011. Things got weirder the next year, when the Pernod launched the vodka Oddka, with flavors such as electricity, Apple Pie and freshly mown grass. "The taste is exactly what is described in the bottle," said a commentator on the variant of grass on Amazon.com. "If this is good or bad, is subjective". The Oddka obtained a "relative success" and is no longer available throughout the u.s., said Pierre Pringuet, the outgoing CEO of Pernod in September. "Insanity" flavourings are driving about two-thirds of the growth of American whiskeys, according to Diageo, which must report their first half profits tomorrow. In large part, this is due to the Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey, which now amounts to more than 10 percent of the volume of the flagship brand of Brown-Forman Corp. and Jim Beam's Red Stag, the Beam Suntory Inc. The flavoured whiskies accounted for only 3.3 percent of the volume of Scotch in the United States in 2013, according to the tracking firm IWSR data, although they have grown about 87 percent a year, on average, since 2008. The aromas "expanded immeasurably" the attraction of the Whiskey, wrote the IWSR analyst Daniel Mettyear on latest industry perspective published by the company. "Many consider this to be just the beginning." And therein lies the problem. For example, consider drinking Apple mixture: Piehole, pecan and cherry-scented beverages to Canadian whiskey to create "lovely flavors" that "its pie Eater for sure will love it," said Diageo in a November press release. Food Wine magazine found that the product is "a new level of insanity".