‘Local’ spirits such as cachaça, pisco and soju are huge in their home territories, but the category is having to navigate choppy waters as more than half of the best-selling brands report declining volumes.

SB presents the best-selling ‘local’ spirits

A report compiled by Vinexpo and the IWSR last year forecasted that the consumption of ‘national spirits’ – products that are largely sold in their domestic market  – is set to grow by 2.1% to 1.48 billion cases between 2016 and 2021, constituting almost half of the global spirits total.

According to SB‘s recent Brand Champions report, the only cachaça brand to witness an increase in 2018 was Pitú with a small gain of 0.2%. The biggest brand in the sector, Cachaça 51, dropped by 9.3%. In other categories, Antioqueño aguardiente and Yeni raki also suffered losses last year.

It was a mixed bag for Asian spirits shōchū and soju. Iichiko declined by 4.8%, while Muginoka reported a steep drop of 37.2%. Daigoro returned to growth after successive declines and Kanoka saw a steady 3% rise. The world’s biggest spirit brand – South Korean soju Jinro – grew sales by more than 2m cases.

Unfortunately, all baijiu companies approached by SB declined to disclose their volume data.

Following our recently published Brand Champions 2019 report – an analysis of the spirits brands selling more than one-million cases annually – we run through the world’s best-selling ‘local’ spirits brands on the market today.

Click through the following pages to discover the top 10 best-selling ‘local’ spirits brands, listed in order of their nine-litre case sales.

10. Mistral

2018: 1.4m
2017: 1.3m
% change: 5.5%
Place last year: New entry to top 10

This year’s Local Spirits Brand Champion, Chilean pisco Mistral, shifted a global total of 1.36m cases last year, an increase of 5.5% compared to 2017. The brand has witnessed consistent growth for the past few years.

Speaking to The Spirits Business, Diego Silva Prieto, export manager at brand owner Compañía Pisquera de Chile, said: “Over the past four years we have started a really strong export strategy to develop pisco in other countries.”

9. Yeni

2018: 3.0m
2017: 3.4m
% change: -10.7%
Place last year: 8

Diageo-owned raki brand Yeni reported a double-digit decline of 10.7% in 2018. If the decline continues, it could see the brand drop below the 3m-case mark for the first time in five years.

In Diageo’s financial results for the second half of 2018, Yeni saw its reported net sales decline by 29%, however it performed well in Turkey, where value sales increased by 6%.

During an investor meeting for the results, Diageo CEO Ivan Menezes described Turkey as a “tough environment”, with “tougher consumption affordability issues on raki” .

8. Aguardiente Antioqueño

2018: 3.1m
2017: 3.4m
% change: -9.3%
Place last year: 7

Aguardiente Antioqueño saw its sales slip to 3.1m cases last year, dropping by 9.3%.

While Antioqueño is the best-selling aguardiente in Colombia, it is yet to repeat its glory days of 2014, when the brand sold 4.2m cases.

This particular aguardiente – a sugar cane spirit made in a similar fashion to rum – is said to have flavours of black liquorice, peppercorn, and vanilla.

7. Kanoka

2018: 3.4m
2017: 3.3m
% change: 3.0%
Place last year: 9

Asahi Breweries-owned shōchū Kanoka reversed its decline last year to post an increase of 3% to 3.4m cases. The name of the brand, which comes in barley, potato and rice variants, translates as “good fragrance”.

6. Ypióca

2018: 4.7m
2017: 5.1m
% change: -7.9%
Place last year: 6

Like its Yeni stablemate, Diageo’s Ypióca registered a decline in 2018, dropping below the 5m-case mark to 4.7m. In 2017, the cachaça brand managed to reverse its five-year decline to register a gain of 6.3%.

In the company’s final six months of 2018, Ypióca’s reported net sales slumped by 15%.

During the investor Q&A for the results, Diageo CEO Ivan Menezes said the Brazil market was “tough” due to “inflationary and excise impacts on value versus volume”.

5. Iichiko

2018: 7.2m
2017: 7.5m
% change: -4.8%
Place last year: 5

Registering its second year of declines is Sanwa Shurui-owned shōchū brand Iichiko, which dropped by 4.8%. The expression, marketed as “Japan’s best-selling genuine shōchū” is distilled from barley and water drawn from a pure spring 300 metres underground. It is bottled at 25% abv and takes its name from the Oita dialect of Japanese meaning “fine” or “good”.

In March this year, Iichiko tapped into the on-trade with the launch of a higher-abv expression in the US, which has been “optimised” for cocktails. Iichiko Saiten was created to unlock “the creativity of the US craft bartending community to harness its vast potential”.

4. Velho Barreiro

2018: 9.8m
2017: 10.0m
% change: -2.0%
Place last year: 4

Tatuzinho-owned cachaça brand Velho Barreiro fell below the 10m-case mark in 2018 after surpassing it for the first time in 2017.

Similar to how rum is made, Velho Barreiro is produced by double distilling sugarcane juice and is aged in a large oak vat to enhance its complex vegetal flavours.

3. Pitú

2018: 10.7m
2017: 10.7m
% change: 0.2%
Place last year: 3

Brazilian cachaça Pitú managed to overturn its decline in 2017 to post a small gain of 0.2% last year.

The expression is made from fresh-cut sugarcane and undergoes short ageing in wooden barrels. Each bottle of Pitú contains a minimum of 5kg of fresh sugarcane, resulting in a “naturally full-flavoured, well-balanced” spirit.

2. Cachaça 51

2018: 13.3m
2017: 14.7m
% change: -9.3%
Place last year: 2

Companhia Muller de Bebidas-owned Cachaça 51 continued to witness declining sales with a drop of 9.3% in 2018.

The unaged white cachaça brand once boasted sales of 18m cases in 2014. Will the brand bounce back to growth in 2019? Time will tell.

1. Jinro

2018: 78.0m
2017: 76.8m
% change: 1.6%
Place last year: 1

Continuing its upward trajectory is soju brand Jinro, which holds onto the title of world’s best-selling local spirit, along with being the world’s best-selling spirit overall. The brand, which grabbed last year’s Local Spirits Brand Champion title, could be set to surpass the 80m-case mark in 2019.

Jungho Hwang, president of Hite-­Jinro America told The Spirits Business in 2018 that the low-alcohol trend has helped to boost sales.

Hwang said:“The overseas sales growth of fruit soju is remarkable. Consumers are looking for relatively low-­alcohol and easy-­to-­drink fruit flavours. In the Japanese and Southeast Asian markets, people drink a lot of cocktails, but more and more people drink shots, as in Korea.”