Gin Brand Champion 2019: Gordon’s

The biggest market for Gordon’s gin is Great Britain

When it comes to gin, the question on everybody’s lips is: “When is the bubble going to burst?” But take a look at the stark growth spurts enjoyed by the vast majority of million­-case­-selling gin brands last year, and the answer to this particular question is plainly: “Not any time soon.”

For years, gin’s spiralling success has been looked upon as a fad; a short-­term trend that will inevitably fizzle out in a similar fashion to vodka’s notorious flavour boom and bust. But with hundreds of gin brands now on the market, and some of the world’s biggest sellers still reporting stellar sales figures, perhaps the appropriate question is no longer “when”, but “will” everything crash.

Leading the pack is this year’s Gin Brand Champion – Gordon’s. The Diageo-­owned brand reported a remarkable 26.7% volume growth in 2018, as years of rebranding, marketing initiatives and well­-thought-­out product developments paid off. Gordon’s shifted 6.5m nine-­litre cases last year – 2.2m ahead of its closest rival, Bombay Sapphire.

“That 26.7% is off a really big base; that makes it even more fantastic for us,” says Kathy Parker, senior vice president of portfolio Scotch, Haig Club, premium core gins, Captain Morgan and Latin rum, Diageo.

Parker connects the brand’s success to founder Alexander Gordon’s “exceptionally high standards” and commitment to using only the best ingredients and distilling expertise, which “we still honour today”. “We’ve got a reputation for innovation,” she adds. “We’re 250 years old but we’ve never stopped innovating. We were the first to create sloe gin and to bring Gordon’s gin and tonic in a can. We always try to be at the forefront of trends.”

As it stands, Great Britain is the biggest market for Gordon’s, which, unsurprisingly, is the nation’s leading gin brand. But Parker eyes “huge potential” for growth in Latin America and Africa. “At the minute, it feels like the world’s our oyster and that’s a very fortunate position to be in,” she adds.

Looking to the rest of the category, Diageo’s Tanqueray was the second fastest-­growing million-­case gin brand, soaring 16.1% in 2018 to reach 4m cases. Continuing its year-­on-­year growth was Bacardi’s Bombay Sapphire gin, which saw sales jump by 8.3% to 4.3m cases last year.

Meanwhile, William Grant & Sons-­owned Hendrick’s, which made its Brand Champions debut last year after surpassing 1m cases for the first time in 2017, continued its double-­digit ascent with a 15.7% increase.

Pernod Ricard’s Seagram’s was the only million-­case gin brand to experience a marginal decline of 0.4%. But overall, if the million­-case end of the category is at all representative of the wider sector, it’s safe to say gin is in rude health.

*The Brand Champions data is listed to one decimal place for ease of reading, but the percentage changes are based on the full data supplied. All brand data is supplied in millions of nine-­litre cases.

Gin (figures: million 9l case sales)