OPINION: Underground gin is going mainstream – get on board

Happy New Year. I hope that your Christmas was profitable and enjoyable. I’m going to welcome in the New Year by talking about gin.

This is prompted by two things. Firstly, Christmas Day. My elder sister got me a beautiful bottle of gin from a local distillery in Wales. I got my younger sister a bottle of gin from a specialist off licence in Soho. And my younger sister then drank most of both of them while watching The Last Dragonslayer on Sky One.

Gin sales in 2016 topped £1bn for the first time ever. Annual sales grew last year by about 16%

Secondly, the news that London-based distiller Sipsmith has been bought by Beam Suntory – the world’s third largest premium spirits company. The underground is going mainstream.

Gin has changed. Philip Delves Broughton, writing in the FT before Christmas, spoke eloquently of G&Ts of his past that tasted of “nail polish and despair”.

Doubtless there are still those quaffing those self-same gins, and in many cases enjoying them. But beyond those stuck on tradition or a lack of options, there are hundreds and thousands more exploring a new wave.

Gin sales in 2016 topped £1bn for the first time ever. Annual sales grew last year by about 16%, in part driven by a nigh-on doubling of the number of distilleries opened in the UK in the past two years.

This change was at first driven by high-end bars and hotels and a desire for a premium experience, but it has filtered down. Seeing a premium spirit range in a small estate pub (the kind of net-curtained outhouse your mum warned you about) in a Midlands town, between Christmas and New Year was proof that gin is not what it was. 

I remember having a conversation with a Nisa retailer a couple of years ago – a retailer in a poorer area of the country. He was making great play, he told me, of his £100 bottles of vodka and creating “talking points” around his spirit display.

You don’t have to sell £100 bottles of spirits, but you do need to get on the growing gin trend, and offer something more than a basic range that prompts waves of despair.

Is your gin range the same size and range it has been for the past three years? Then you missed out on sales. Don’t waste the opportunity in 2017.