KYLIE MINOGUE EXPANDS 0% RANGE AS ‘ZEBRA STRIPING’ GAINS MOMENTUM

Kylie Minogue has added a white sparkling wine to her category-leading, alcohol-free sparkling rosé as the moderation trend gains momentum, boosted by ‘Zebra striping’.

The drinking trend, which sees people alternate between full strength and 0% products during the evening, is an emerging way of managing alcohol consumption, with more than a quarter of people now adopting this habit when visiting pubs and bars, according to Benchmark Drinks, which distributes Kylie Minogue Wines.

The business, which is headed up by Paul Schaafsma, also noted that 75% of UK adults say they are actively moderating their alcohol consumption, while recording that 2.6 million fewer people in the UK are now drinking alcohol weekly in 2024 compared to 2021.

For this reason, among others, Schaafsma told the drinks business earlier this year that there is a “huge opportunity” to grow the no-alcohol wine sector, as long as it’s backed by the right people and the drinks taste good.

Highlighting the potential, he drew a comparision with alcohol-free beer. “0% beer is 5% of the beer category, but 0% wine is only 0.8% of the wine category, so, if we can grow that to 5%, we’re talking about a £400 million business in the UK,” he said.

His latest launch is 0% Kylie Minogue’s Sparkling Blanc, which sits alongside the pop star’s 0% Sparkling Rosé, which “has driven over half of the entire growth of the zero alcohol wine sparkling category on its own,” states Benchmark Drinks, with this pink product accounting for over 1 million bottles worth of sales.

More generally, the distributor pointed out that “Zero-alcohol sparkling is the fastest growing wine category with a year-on-year growth of 17%.”

Like the 0% pink fizz, the white version is made without using any de-alcoholisation techniques, such as reverse osmosis.

Schaafsma explains, “We use good bacteria so the grapes go through the fermentation process but don’t produce alcohol… then we infuse the wine with green tea to bring depth and tannin”.

This additional element “fills out the mid-palate and makes it feel refreshing and clean,” he says, meaning that the fizz doesn’t taste “hollow”, despite being virtually bone dry, with just a few grams of sugar per litre.

As previously reported by db, one in three pub visits in the UK are now alcohol-free, with an increasing number of the remaining two-thirds seeing drinkers blending 0% and standard-strength products on the same occasion, termed ‘Zebra Striping’.

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