What's in your RTD?

Vodka, ethanol and a battle over real ingredients in New Zealand's hottest drinks market

People who don’t work in advertising sometimes find it hard to understand why brands don’t just put up billboards slagging off the opposition. 

“Marmite: it tastes better than Vegemite”

“The iPhone: because using an Android in a major city is social suicide”

“Coke is it. And Pepsi sucks”

Weirdly it never seems to happen. I’m sure there are other examples but the one time I remember seeing it in New Zealand was when Whittaker’s ran a full page newspaper ad talking about how much better its chocolate was than Cadbury’s. I remember that one clearly because my wife Victoria said to me “wow, that’s effective. How come companies don’t do that more often?”

She knows a lot about a lot of things but has no media experience and I was excited to finally have a chance to share some of my superior knowledge. I had recently returned from the UK where I had been working as lead PR man for a boutique chocolate company that had recently been purchased by Cadbury, so I was ideally equipped to answer the question.

“Um, dunno” I said.

But she was right, it doesn’t happen often, or at all - particularly in New Zealand where it’s nice to be nice. The most you can hope for as a drama-loving, tea-sipping, popcorn-readying consumer is that a brand will allude to another brand, hopefully in such a way that everybody knows who everybody is talking about.

This all came to mind when I was driving through Morningside the other day and spotted a new billboard atop the electorate office of our erstwhile prime minister. 

They are clearly having a go at someone here, but who? Can we assume they’re asking us to ask questions of the RTD big guys, in the hope we won’t like the answers and will drink some more Scapegrace instead?

To try and skip some of the guesswork I emailed the founder of Scapegrace Mark Neal and after some pleasantries asked him “what is the message you’re trying to get across?” [the below exchange is largely verbatim apart from some minor edits to avoid repetition]

Mark: Hey Jesse, lovely to hear from you. We use real actual distilled spirits in our RTDs. Which sounds normal, but in most cases isn’t.

Jesse: What are other brands using if not actual distilled spirits, and how do you know?

Mark: As we are an active distillery, we are fortunate to be in a position where we can use our premium distilled spirit as the base spirit for our RTDs.

Without this luxury, many brands have to rely on mass produced imported ethanol to use as the base spirit for their Vodka RTDs, or add gin flavouring to flavour their Gin RTDs.

Jesse: Isn't vodka just watered down ethanol anyway? What is the difference, or to put it another way why should we care? 

Mark: Yeah by definition Vodka is essentially watered down ethanol, where the difference is we take it further by redistilling in small batches with our copper pot still, making it a cleaner base spirit.

A cleaner spirit, means better quality, less impurities, less burn, which means a taster and better balanced end product.     

Jesse: Isn't your claim then that you have better quality ingredients, rather than actual ingredients? You have a better quality vodka but the alternative is still vodka, inferior or not. Do you have any issue with RTDs that contain ethanol listing "vodka" as an ingredient? 

Mark: Yeah correct we have better quality ingredients when it comes to Vodka.

The lines from the campaign are linked to our Gin based RTDs as well, where we use actual distilled Gin vs. ethanol with Gin flavouring, or secret ingredient, being actual ingredients etc.

The gin that goes into our RTDs, is the same quality distilled gin which goes into our $80 bottle of spirits, or gin which would go into a martini at your favourite cocktail bar, or gin which won best London Dry in the world... ha-ha ..

The difference being authenticity, quality, and most importantly, flavour and taste for that end consumer.

Nope, I have no issue with RTDs that contain ethanol listing "vodka" as an ingredient.

Jesse: How do you know what other brands are putting into their RTDs if ethanol is just called vodka on the ingredients list?

Also (forgive my ignorance here) I thought gin was just vodka plus gin flavouring (ie juniper plus botanicals) anyway? 

Mark: As we have a world class distillery it is natural for us to use our batch distilled Vodka for our Vodka RTDs.

Looking at scan data for the top 20 white based spirit RTDs (Vodka and Gin) in New Zealand, there is two other brands which have a distillery facility, these two are international distilleries and number 1 and 2 by volume globally.

Without this luxury you need to rely on a secondary option of flavouring your base spirit with gin flavouring.

No worries on the ignorance, but gin is far from Vodka adding gin flavouring.

To produce high quality gin, you need a distillery facility, you use actual botanicals selected from the best regions, and also have a perfected recipe unique to your product, alongside a master distiller who has perfected your recipe.

We would have never won the World’s best London Dry Gin, by purely adding gin flavouring to an ethanol based spirit.

Jesse: Would it be fair to say the short version of this is - if a brand doesn't own a distillery, we can assume they're buying ethanol and using that? How do we know they're not buying in eg Vodka or Gin from one of the big distilleries? 

Do you think it's acceptable for a brand using vodka plus gin flavouring to list gin as an ingredient?

Mark: Yeah a lot of RTD brands are buying local ethanol, especially when margins are extremely tight within the competitive RTD’s category.

One of the main local sources is via Fonterra who distil one of their byproducts, which is a convenient and cheaper option for local supply of ethanol.

Hence the signature com’s below. It’d be cheaper if we used flavoured ethanol.

If a brand is flavouring ethanol with gin flavouring and not using actual distilled, it should be listed ..

Jesse: One of the big local brands lists "triple distilled botanical gin" as an ingredient - can I assume that means they're not one of the brands you're trying to differentiate from?

Mark: Potentially, although the below doesn’t necessary say it is real batch distilled gin, this could still be distilled ethanol with ‘botanical’ gin flavouring, am unsure.

The process of producing a byproduct spirit goes through a number of distillations.

***

We’ve probably gone as far as we can here without getting some comment from other brands (that’s underway). But what do you think of the story so far? Do you care? Would you be surprised/concerned to hear that it was ethanol powering your RTD, or is this just a case of a smaller brand trying to give their bigger competitor a nosebleed? Tall poppy is real in New Zealand, and (I think) we should resist the temptation to gleefully seek out negative stories about brands that have been particularly successful. So is this a story, or it it just a marketing manoeuvre? Send me a message or share your non-defamatory remarks in the comments below.