Picking Fruit
Checking in on the Festive World of Flavored Rums

There’s a great deal to know and appreciate about rum in general and flavored varieties in particular. All too often, the finer points of this white and dark spirit indigenous to the Americas get lost in the legend and the lore of the Caribbean itself, dotted from Bermuda to Puerto Rico to Cuba and beyond with iconic rum distilleries such as those of Cruzan, Bacardi and Goslings, just to name a few. Yet its story is one that also deserves to be told in terms of the growing economic impact of this spirit.

The real treasure of the Caribbean is not to be found on the bottom of the ocean at any of the innumerable shipwreck sites where Spanish and English galleons went down in stormy seas. Driven by the recent popularity of light rums and aged rums and by the ongoing flavored rum explosion, rum accounted for sales of more than 23 million 9-liter cases last year alone, producing $2 billion in revenues just at the distiller/supplier level, per a 2007 report on rum by the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States (DISCUS).

As a category within a category, flavored rums — which represented only a small percentage of rum sales just a decade or two ago — now make up 48 percent of all rum revenue. Flavored rums — particularly the brands wherein the taste of the rum comes through the flavor and is not masked by it — also serve as port of entry for patrons to broaden their bar horizons and experience all of the flavor and sophistication that is making rum one of the fastest-growing categories of all spirits.

Profit Punch

It has been only in fairly recent times in the long history of rum-distilling in the Americas that mixologists have had such myriad rum flavors at their disposal to make cocktails. Rum was a great cocktail mixer before the flavor revolution that came about largely in the past two decades, but its value has increased many fold today with well considered flavor lines such as those found in the portfolio of Cruzan.

This St. Croix rum distillery takes its rum-making seriously and has a bevy of double gold, gold, silver and bronze awards from the Beverage Tasting Institute and the San Francisco World Spirits Competition for its Cruzan Single Barrel Estate Rum, its Estate Light Rum, its Estate Dark Rum and its Cruzan Estate Diamond Rum, as well as for seven of the nine rums in its flavor line, to prove it.

Yet the recognition that may be dearest to the heart of Cruzan Brand Director Peter Wijk is the high esteem in which Cruzan flavors are held by bartenders in hard-sell places such as New York City. As a rule, the Big Apple is not the kind of cocktail scene easily swayed by the glint of a gold or sliver medallion, as Wijk knows only too well.

“It comes back to you at the end of the day,” Wijk says. “If you do not have a good product, you aren’t getting any love. (Bartenders) need a quality product they can work with, and it is easier for them to work with Cruzan flavors and get a balanced cocktail.”

Based on sales of its flavored rums over an 18-month period, an interval that saw revenues grow by 25 percent, Manhattan’s mightiest bar men and bar women have plenty to love in Cruzan Coconut, Pineapple, Mango and Citrus, four of the brand’s most popular flavors.

The brand’s Black Cherry Rum, which premiered in the on-premise in May of 2007, is one flavor after the very heart of the American consumer, with a profile already well known and accepted in the beverage channel.
“We do consumer research to look at flavor acceptance, and black cherry tested very well,” Wijk says. “There was no black cherry flavor in the rum segment, so we are pioneering that. (Black Cherry) has had good distribution and depletion numbers in the on-premise and good sustainability overall. It has been growing since the first day we launched it.”

Uncharted Rum Territory

If Black Cherry was something of a sure bet for Cruzan, then its latest Guava flavor extension is a venture into more uncharted flavored rum territory. Rolled out in the retail channel this past spring and summer, Guava’s breakout potential lies in its high recognition factor of 62 percent among consumers in taste tests and a hunch that this slightly different yet highly mixable fruit flavor may now be poised where the highly successful pomegranate flavor was just a few years ago.

Although Cruzan’s success with flavored rums can be attributed to extensive consumer testing as well as a bit of luck in getting to the market first with a flavor extension, Wijk says there’s one important test a prospective new flavor must pass.

“When we develop a flavored rum, it needs to be complex enough on its own that it only needs one more mixer,” Wijk says. “With our Guava flavor, it could be Sprite or Coke or the single addition of pineapple juice to create a very refreshing Pineapple Spritzer.”

Batting a Million

By the numbers, Bacardi and Malibu are two other global brands doing their part to keep rum at or near the top of burgeoning spirits sales worldwide and to put flavored rums on a fast track to exceed volume sales of base rum spirits in the near future.

“We got into this business so that consumers could get beyond drinks flavored with cola or fruit juices,” says Gordon Chisholm, who oversees the flavored rums portfolio for Bacardi. “It is a pretty versatile spirit. The underlying fact is that flavored rums made American consumers think differently about our trademark.”
Today, the flavored portion of that brand category includes Bacardi Limon, Bacardi O (Orange) Bacardi Razz, Coco, Big Apple, Grand Melon and Peach Red.

Along with Limon, Chisholm says Razz and Bacardi O, the brand’s second and third best sellers, have opened consumers up to a wide assortment of rum Martinis, with regional preferences often dictating which of the flavors that the house should be most out front in promoting. “O does well in the Midwest, and Razz is more popular in the Northeast,” he says. “And Citrus is the most demographically popular everywhere.”

With vodka fatigue setting in among consumers in many regions of the country, Chisolm says the opportunities are out there for bars and bartenders to fill the void in the cocktail glass with rum in general and Bacardi in particular.

“There are two types of consumers,” he says. “There is the drinker who does not want to taste any alcohol, and the one who loves the taste of rum and wants the experience in their drink. That is where, instead of vodka, to use Bacardi.”

Win-Win

At Six, a popular nightclub in Austin, Texas, General Manager Phil Vuong uses Malibu flavored rum promotions to get his crowd primed for a night of fun in the same way that another club might use a live band or an appearance by a celebrity.

“Malibu has always had a strong name behind it,” Vuong says. “The brand is the first word out of the mouths of my customers when they order rum.”

For Vuong and his Conga-loving crowd, a recent Malibu promotional party stretched out for five weeks, with patrons trying a different flavor each week. “They come in on Saturday nights for a couple of hours,” he says. Initially, club-goers got to try Malibu Coconut, Vuong says, adding, “Now we are sampling Mango, Passion Fruit, Pineapple, and the newest flavor, Malibu Banana.

It is a win-win,” Vuong says. “Consumers can try flavored rums that they would never try or buy otherwise.” NCB