Summary

- Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages
- A fizzy cauldron
- The forerunners
- The frontrunners
- Marketing, the key element
- Follow the leaders


Flavoured Alcoholic Beverages
Once the choice at the bar was easy. Customers asked almost always for the same things: a beer for most; a whisky, possibly after a pint, for many; few other drinks for those just back from an exotic trip - or dreaming to make one. Women were of secondary importance in the definition of the alcoholic supply on the shelves: as well as for young drinkers, they had to adapt themselves to men's tastes. Choice was easy, because it was not very wide.
Nowadays women have reached the long awaited equality with men (well, at least somewhere) and producers recognize this equality treating them like everybody with a wallet deserves: like customers. The same thing happens with young drinkers, who are still used to sweet carbonates and frequently have difficulties in letting themselves appreciate adult-oriented drinks like beer or spirits.
Moreover, the traditional affection that linked men to certain products (Ouzo in Greece, wine in France, amari in Italy, etc.) has been dropped by the latest generations. Customers ask for more. A beer is not enough, not anymore, and not for anyone. So, the market has seen a rapid development of a large number of new products, appealing to different audiences in different ways. There are several terms to define such products, and we will see how diverse they can be one another, but we now comprise them all under one term: Flavoured alcoholic beverages (FABs).

A fizzy cauldron
What we understand with "flavoured alcoholic beverage" is a product sold in a ready-to-drink packaging, usually containing an alcoholic base mixed together with a flavouring ingredient - fruit juice, soda, carbonates, etc.. The alcoholic base can be a spirit like gin or vodka, as well as softer drinks like wine or vermouth.
Within this omni comprehensive label, we can trace some more or less clear divisions.


Alcopops: basically alcoholic soft drinks, an obvious prosecution to those carbonated drinks which are mostly preferred by teenagers. They tend to be fruit-, herb-, soda- or water- based, still or carbonated, and have an ABV of 4.5-5.5%. The word is the link between "alcoholic" and "pop", the latter referring to the fizzy aspect and packaging they usually have. Hooper's Hooch and Two Dogs, probably the most renowned brands, sell products they call "hard lemonades", "hard oranges" and so on, making clear at a first glance the nature of the products themselves: "a natural lemon juice of home-style lemonade", with a little addition of alcohol to make them more agreeable by newly-legal drinkers, those who claim their adultness while they are still fond to the sweetness of their mums' lemonades.


Pre-mixed drinks: these are single-serve versions of traditional cocktails like vodka and lemon or rum and coke. Their average ABV is higher than for alcopops (10%) and they simply give the chance of a ready-to-drink cocktail whenever it is not possible or not convenient to prepare one by yourself or ask for it to the barman. These products are very popular in Eastern Europe, commonly sold in cans.


Premium Packaged Spirits: the idea is simple - and striking: put a little base of vodka or rum into a bottle, fill with flavoured juice, find an appealing word to put together with the brand's name and the PPS is done. Bacardi Breezer, Smirnoff Ice, they can rely on the popularity and soundness of their trademark, while captivating those who do not really like straight spirits or cocktails. They represent an alternative for those who prefer sweeter tastes and drink a fashionable product at the same time. PPS are largely liked by young drinkers, because they feel like drinking something "adult" even if it has a lower alcoholic content than their mothers' sherries.


Malternatives: as the word says, they are an "alternative" to "malt", because they were developed in order to give an alternative to those who did not like the taste of beer and other malt-based products. The weird thing is that most of the malternatives are based on malt: the manufacturers -- brewers and spirits makers -- call them "Flavoured Malt Beverages". Simply put, they are beer (a fermented malt beverage) flavoured with fruit, cola, tea, distilled spirits and other ingredients. Even if they are basically beer, or versions of it (in any sense: ingredients, distribution, taxation, etc.), they are packaged and marketed to remind consumers of their hard liquor older siblings. So they have names as Skyy Blue, Stolichnaya Citrona, Sauza Diablo, Smirnoff Ice. Yes, you read right. The same of the PPS above. The fact is that those marketed in the USA do not contain any of the named spirit, but only their flavours, while in Europe the recipe actually contains it.


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