Posted on Mar 13, 2022
For vodka, America's most-popular spirit, the trouble started before Russia invaded Ukraine
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Even before the 2022 East European situation, vodka faced competition from other types of liquor (e.g. mezcal, whisky, etc.) for America's hard alcohol market.
For vodka, America's most-popular spirit, the trouble started before Russia invaded Ukraine
Posted from cnbc.com
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Alcohol
Culture
Posted 2 y ago
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LTC Eugene Chu
"The spirit of choice for James Bond to characters on “Mad Men” and “Sex and the City,” vodka has long held the dominant position in the U.S. liquor market.
The top-selling spirit in the U.S. since the 1970s, vodka generated more than $7.3 billion in revenue in 2021, $2 billion more than the second-highest selling spirit, tequila and mezcal, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. More than 78.1 million 9-liter cases of vodka were sold in the U.S. in 2021, roughly the same number of 9-liter cases of American whiskey, tequila and mezcal, and rum combined.
Initially gaining a footing in the U.S. in the 1940s when World War II-era mandates made whiskey distilleries shift to producing alcohol for products like ammunition and rubber and then later taking off in the 1950s before climbing to the top spot in the 1970s, spirits and cocktail historian David Wondrich said there was a roughly 40-year period where “everything went vodka’s way.”
“What you got was a spirits market where people were either vodka drinkers or they drank all the other things,” Wondrich said.
That has elevated brands like Diageo’s Smirnoff and Ketel One, Constellation Brands’ Svedka, Pernod Ricard’s Absolut, Bacardi’s Grey Goose, and E&J Gallo’s New Amsterdam.
Tito’s, produced by Austin-based Fifth Generation, is the top-selling brand across all spirits in the U.S., selling more than 11 million cases in 2021 with 6.3% growth year-over-year, according to data from Impact Databank.
But over the last several years, vodka’s popularity began to wane due to a variety of factors, whether that was the further introduction of spirits like tequila and mezcal to the market, the growth of the handcrafted cocktail movement that put more focus on spirits like whiskey and bourbon, or a desire from consumers to move towards other spirits that simply provided more flavor.
“There was a point where vodka was on a trajectory to outsell everything else combined, and that’s definitely reversed and a lot of the other stuff is growing at the expense of vodka,” Wondrich said. “It’s this dynamic where they figured out how to market the least offensive product that the most people would tolerate, and then people got bored.”...
"The spirit of choice for James Bond to characters on “Mad Men” and “Sex and the City,” vodka has long held the dominant position in the U.S. liquor market.
The top-selling spirit in the U.S. since the 1970s, vodka generated more than $7.3 billion in revenue in 2021, $2 billion more than the second-highest selling spirit, tequila and mezcal, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. More than 78.1 million 9-liter cases of vodka were sold in the U.S. in 2021, roughly the same number of 9-liter cases of American whiskey, tequila and mezcal, and rum combined.
Initially gaining a footing in the U.S. in the 1940s when World War II-era mandates made whiskey distilleries shift to producing alcohol for products like ammunition and rubber and then later taking off in the 1950s before climbing to the top spot in the 1970s, spirits and cocktail historian David Wondrich said there was a roughly 40-year period where “everything went vodka’s way.”
“What you got was a spirits market where people were either vodka drinkers or they drank all the other things,” Wondrich said.
That has elevated brands like Diageo’s Smirnoff and Ketel One, Constellation Brands’ Svedka, Pernod Ricard’s Absolut, Bacardi’s Grey Goose, and E&J Gallo’s New Amsterdam.
Tito’s, produced by Austin-based Fifth Generation, is the top-selling brand across all spirits in the U.S., selling more than 11 million cases in 2021 with 6.3% growth year-over-year, according to data from Impact Databank.
But over the last several years, vodka’s popularity began to wane due to a variety of factors, whether that was the further introduction of spirits like tequila and mezcal to the market, the growth of the handcrafted cocktail movement that put more focus on spirits like whiskey and bourbon, or a desire from consumers to move towards other spirits that simply provided more flavor.
“There was a point where vodka was on a trajectory to outsell everything else combined, and that’s definitely reversed and a lot of the other stuff is growing at the expense of vodka,” Wondrich said. “It’s this dynamic where they figured out how to market the least offensive product that the most people would tolerate, and then people got bored.”...
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