Top 50 most innovative spirits launches of 2015: 50-41
Experimentation with base ingredients, unusual cask varieties and rare botanicals kick off the first instalment of our top 50 most innovative spirits launches of last year.
Click through the following pages to see the first instalment of our top 50 innovative spirits launches of 2015Each year, it becomes increasingly difficult for spirits brands come up with creative means to push category innovation and stand out from swathes of new labels that enter the market.
However, a number of brands manage to test industry boundaries with unique bottlings, whether it be a rum created specifically to pair Cuban cigars, or an Indian whisky flavoured with orange.
Other variants that made the cut in this instalment include an ultra-premium US$250 vodka and what is thought to be the first Irish whiskey aged in cider casks.
Click through the following pages to see the first part of our top 50 innovative spirits launches of 2015, counting down from 50 to 41.
50. Seaside Gin
The trend of using botanicals to express the provenance and terroir of gin brands has really taken off over the past 12 months, and new bottlings such as Edinburgh Gin’s Seaside Gin add something unique to the mix by using local ingredients sourced from the ocean.
Created as part of a collaboration between brand owner Spencerfield Spirit Company and Heriot-Watt University, Seaside Gin uses seaweed, scurvy grass and ground ivy sourced from the shores of Edinburgh and the surrounding areas.
Designed by head distiller David Wilkinson and four postgraduate MSc students, the gin has a slightly sweet, mineral taste said to be ideal for mixing into a Gin and Tonic or Martini.
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49. House of Hazelwood
William Grant & Sons’ new blended Scotch whisky brand House of Hazelwood is innovative for a number of reasons. It not only signifies a much more premium direction for the firm’s blended Scotch portfolio, it is also part of a growing trend which has seen age statements return to the blended category.
At the time the range was unveiled at TFWA World Exhibition & Conference in Cannes last year, Damien Heary, global planning and innovation director at William Grant, hailed Hazelwood as a “an exciting new chapter in blended Scotch” that has the potential to “disrupt” the category.
Featuring an 18-, 21- and 25-year-old, the range contains liquid from Girvan and Kininvie that has been aged in a variety of different barrels. Hazelwood’s Art Deco style pays tribute to Janet Sheed Roberts (1901-2012), a Grant family member, and the “heyday” of Scotch whisky.
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48. Sweet Potato Spiced Rum
Experimentation with base spirit ingredients is an exciting and more regularly occurring practice in the industry. NGS is often substituted for locally grown ingredients not usually associated with the type of spirit they are used to create.
November 2015 saw the launch of the Sweet Potato Spirit Company, which unveiled its inaugural range of spirits including a Moonshine, Orangecello and Raspberry Liqueur. Described as a “UK first”, each spirit created by the company uses the triple distilled flesh of sweet potatoes.
However it is the company’s Sweet Potato Spiced Rum that takes the 48th spot in our pick of the most innovative spirit launched of 2015. The product is also made with traditional sugar cane molasses and is said to have a flavour of ginger, treacle, lemon blossom, warm spices and caramel.
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47. Star of Bombay
Only the third brand extension from Bombay Sapphire, Star of Bombay is also the gin’s “most super-premium” bottling launched to-date.
It is produced using a “slow single batch” distillation method and “vapor infusions, adding Italian Bergamot orange peel and Ambrette Seed from Ecuador to Bombay’s original list of 10 botanicals.
While gin brands launch brand extensions at a rate of knots, Star of Bombay represents a “new chapter” for Bombay Sapphire and solidifies the increasingly premium positioning of the brand.
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46. Oregon Starka Project
Oak-aged vodka is no longer a new phenomenon in the spirits industry, but the Oregon Starka Project shows how craft distilleries can innovatively join forces to promote their products.
In April 2015, Oregon-based Big Bottom Distilling, Bull Run Distilling and Indio Spirits and Distillery all released their own bottles of oak-aged vodka, known as ‘starka’. While each vodka is aged in different types of oak, the distilleries joined forces to market their products together under the Oregon Starka Project.
Dating back to 15th century Eastern Europe, Starka is a traditional type of aged vodka created to celebrate the birth of a child. According to custom, the father of the child would pour large amounts of homemade spirits into a empty oak wine barrel and bury it into the ground, digging the cask back up only on the day of his child’s wedding.
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45. Crossbill 200 Special Edition Gin
Scottish gin brand Crossbill Gin swiped 12th position in our pick of the most innovative spirit launches of 2014 for its interesting use of just two botanicals – Scottish juniper and wild rosehip, making it the first 100% Scottish gin.
The brand’s first extension, Crossbill 200 Special Edition Gin, released in December 2015, also intrigued gin-lovers with its use of a local specimen of juniper that dates back more than 200 years.
Still with just two botanicals, the special edition uses berries from juniper bushes situated near Crossbill’s distillery in Cairngorms National Park. The distillery has been working with he UK’s Forestry Commission and Plantlife to re-establish a plentiful juniper supply in Scotland.
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44. Tullamore Cider Cask
In June last year, William Grant & Sons-owned Tullamore Dew released what is thought to be the first Irish whiskey finished in cider casks.
To create the NAS expression, William Grant aged the triple blend Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey in Bourbon barrels that previously held pressed Irish apples for “several months”, allowing them to ferment.
Due to the seasonal nature of the Irish apple harvest, Tullamore Dew Cider Cask Finish has limited production and is made only between September and November each year.
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43. Cîroc Ten
Diageo’s Cîroc vodka already sits at the premium end of the vodka spectrum, but new Cîroc Ten moved the brand into ultra-premium territory when it launched last April.
The US$250 expression is made using a blend of fine French grapes, including the first harvest grapes of 2013 vintage, which are said by vintners to be the crispest of the harvest.
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42. Havana Club Union
Pernod Ricard’s Havana Club rum brand expanded its Iconica Collection last year with the launch of a new super-premium expression designed to be paired with Cuban cigar Cohiba Siglo VI.
The result of a collaboration between Havana Club’s maestro ronero Asbel Morales and cigar sommelier Fernando Fernandez, Havana Club Union is “softly woody” on the palate with vanilla, chocolate and dried fruit flavours.
Morales selected Havana casks he believed would create a blend ideal to enjoy with a Cohiba Siglo VI cigar. Havana Club Union is thought to be the first Cuban rum created especially to be paired with fine Cuban cigars.
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41. Amrut Naarangi
Another “world’s first” came from Indian spirits producer Amrut Distilleries, which created the first single malt whisky with orange last April.
To create Amrut Naarangi, which takes its name from the Hindi word for ‘orange’, the distiller married Olorosso Sherry from Spain, matured wine and orange peels from Madikeri in the Western Ghats of India in barrels for a total of three years.
The barrels were then emptied and filled with three-year-old single malt whisky and left to age for a further three years. While near-all whisky categories have seen extensive flavour innovation in recent years, Amrut Naaringi is unique in its use of using flavour-seasoned barrels to create a fruity flavour profile. Most brands add flavouring after maturation, thus diluting the abv of the whisky.
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