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GOURMET NEWS NOVEMBER 2017 www.gourmetnews.com SPECIAL FEATURE 2 1 It's Beginning to Taste a Lot Like Christmas Bundaberg Brewed Drinks' newest flavor is set to spice up the holi- day season. Already a much-anticipated, annual limited release in Aus- tralia and New Zealand, Spiced Ginger Beer will make its limited release U.S. debut this fall, in time to toast the holiday season. Craft-brewed over three days using real in- gredients to allow the fla- vors to really develop, Spiced Ginger Beer includes real ginger and the festive flavors of cinnamon and cloves for a deep, complex taste, as if the holidays were bottled up. As with all Bundaberg brews, the secret to unlocking the flavor is to invert the iconic, glass bottle to in- fuse the ingredients prior to opening the rip-top cap. The limited-release fla- vor will come in four- packs and will be on shelf for the 2017 holiday sea- son as a test trial in more than 270 Cost Plus World Market locations nationwide beginning Sept. 10. It will roll out to additional retail- ers later in the fall and be available through the holidays. The festive brew often sells out in Australia where consumers wait for it each year and scoop it up as soon as it hits the shelves; almost 50 percent of the four-week allocation was sold in the first week of last season. Assuming sales follow this path in the U.S., the plan is for wider roll out in future holiday seasons. "Spiced Ginger Beer is a holiday tradition for Bundaberg. It's a special reminder that the holidays are here and a delicious way to celebrate with friends and family," said Michael Stacey, Head of Sales for Bund- aberg. "Given the popularity of our Ginger Beer in the U.S., we anticipate that this hol- iday flavor will quickly gain momentum in the market." While making the perfect holiday drink just on its own, combined with the spicy flavors of a rum or a smoky bourbon, it also makes for a delicious, festive cocktail. Spiced Ginger Beer is poised for success as consumers are seeking carbonated drinks made with premium ingredients that add sophistication to the consumption experience. Additionally, craft beverages are driving growth in the CSD category, es- pecially among Millennials, and ginger beer is a key driver of new flavor profiles intro- duced to consumers. Bundaberg's Ginger Beer itself is a favorite over the holidays, with its own deep flavor that is perfect for entertaining. GN Top Note Tonic Earns a sofi as Best New Product BY LORRIE BAUMANN Top Note tonics are attracting attention among the fans of craft beverages, most re- cently with a sofi Award for Top Note In- dian Tonic Water, named the best new product in the cold beverages category by the Specialty Food Association this year. The company's other products include a Ginger Beer as well as a range of other Eu- ropean-style tonics in Bitter Orange, Bitter Lemon and Gentian Lime flavors. Top Note tonics are produced by La Pavia Beverage, LLC, founded in 2014 by Mary Pellettieri and her husband and part- ner, Noah Swanson and headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. "We decided to go into this business because we were very in- trigued by craft beer," Pellettieri says. "As I was concocting and crafting some syrups for that, using traditional recipes, I found that I liked the syrups just with carbonated water." Pellettieri's interest in beer was long- standing. She began her career at the Siebel Institute of Technology, a research institute and school of brewing technology founded in Chicago in 1868, where she was a chemist and microbiologist and taught sen- sory management. Her career has taken her from there to Silliker Labs, Goose Island Beer Company and then MillerCoors before she left the brewery giant to start her own company. After more than 20 years of working with craft beers, she was in an ideal position to recognize the potential of the beverage she'd created. "To me, it's more than just a mixer. It could be an herbal soft drink on its own," she said. "It's a radler [also known as a shandy] when mixed with beer." Pellettieri's experience had taught her to appreciate the tonics she'd tasted in Europe, where the category was burgeoning with many more products and flavors than were being offered to the American market, where tonics tended to have harsher flavors that could mask the rasp of alcohol when they were mixed into cocktails based on mass-marketed spirits. But after distillers of craft spirits began producing smoother liquors, there was no longer as much need to hide the harsh taste of the alcohol. Pel- lettieri figured that created a gap in the mar- ket for mixers with bright, clean flavors, including the herbal elixirs that she loved. "We just saw that the category of sparkling beverage needing some innova- tion, some dusting up," she said. "I just thought: Why not someone who under- stands bitter, who understands beer? Why not me?" "The tonic category in the States has been sleepy," she added. "If you go to Eu- rope you'll see that it's much more of a bur- geoning category and much more diverse in its offerings." The Top Note product line started with mixable syrups that could be added to cocktails, stirred into sparkling water to make a soda or drunk on their own. "It's still a tonic, and there's still some bitterness to it, so I always warn people. Tonic lovers really love it," Pellettieri said. "It's still true to the tradition that a tonic is a bitter, sour and sweet beverage." The Top Note tonics pair well with the same kind of foods that complement other bitter beverages like an IPA beer or a dark espresso, and Pellettieri has recently ex- panded the line by packaging the tonics in four-packs of ready-to-serve bottles and adding a Ginger Beer that can be consumed either as a mixer or on its own. "We de- signed it with the idea that flavor is most important," Pellettieri said. "That's selling out faster than we can keep up with right now." GN

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