Hendrick’s Gin sales hit one million cases

Hendrick’s has joined the small group of international gin brands that sell more than one million cases annually after recording 13% growth last year.

Hendrick’s has hit the 1m case sales mark

The Spirits Business’s Brand Champions 2018 report has revealed that the William Grant & Sons-owned brand’s volumes grew from 953,000 cases in 2016 to 1.1m in 2017.

Last year, Hendrick’s ramped up its quirky marketing activations – which included a travelling cucumber slicer device and a musical instrument made with cucumbers – and hosted a series of events to celebrate World Cucumber Day.

The brand also released line extension Orbium, made with additional extracts of quinine, wormwood and blue lotus blossom.

“We sometimes joke that Hendrick’s has been a 20-year overnight success,” Pamela Selby, global brand director for Hendrick’s, told SB.

“The brand has been allowed to flourish in its own way over time, and we are understandably delighted with the performance. We went against the grain by launching a gin that completely broke all the rules of what a gin should be, and our distillation process is genuinely groundbreaking.”

With a dominant flavour of rose and cucumber, Hendrick’s Gin is produced on the same site as William Grant & Sons’ Girvan grain whisky distillery. It is distilled in batches of 500 litres in two different stills: a Bennett still and a Carter-head still.

The brand’s success in recent years has followed the trajectory of the wider gin boom. In the UK, gin sales reached £1.5bn (US$2bn) in the 12 months to March 2018 – the equivalent of almost 55m bottles.

There are currently seven international gin brands that sell more than 1m cases annually: Gordon’s, Bombay Sapphire, Tanqueray, Beefeater, Seagram’s, Larios and now Hendrick’s.

The Brand Champions 2018 report – an analysis of the world’s best-selling spirits brands – has been published in the June 2018 edition of The Spirits Business magazine, out now.