White Spirits

John Porter examines the thousand-year history of white spirits and offers licensees advice on how today's customers expect to have them served.

While there are plenty of brands at the economy end of the market that might be better used as paint remover, in pub terms "white spirits" means vodka and gin.

It is probably also sensible to include white rum in the category since, in terms of consumer choice, it seems to have more in common with the first two than it does with dark rum.

Vodka​

Taking them in order of popularity, vodka is far and away the best-selling spirit in the on-trade. Smirnoff Red Label is the leading spirit brand in pubs, and accounts for about 60 per cent of total sales.

Vodka has benefited from the increase in the popularity of cocktails, where it is the most common spirit base, as well as the fashion for mixing it with energy drinks like Red Bull.

More importantly for its long-term sales, vodka has been at the forefront of a move towards spirits drinking by younger consumers, particularly at the style bar end of the pub market, over the past few years.

For entry-level spirits drinkers, much of the attraction of vodka is probably due to the fact that it has a relatively neutral taste which mixes well with other drinks.

Purists will argue that not all vodkas taste the same, and you should offer different brands depending on whether it is going to be drunk straight or mixed in a cocktail.

There are a number of premium brands which will help you to cater to this connoisseurs market, assuming you have customers who are interested.

However, the results of The Publican's Spirits Report show that the vast majority of pubs manage to get by with offering one or two vodka brands. Half of the pubs surveyed only stock one vodka and a further 39 per cent only two.

Gin​

Customers seem to care more about drinking a familiar brand of gin than they do vodka, since there are more major brands and less own-label gins among the leading sellers in pubs.

Where customers specify a gin by name Gordon's is the brand asked for in 86 per cent of cases. Fifty-eight per cent of pubs stock just one gin, according to the Spirits Report.

A major reason for this is undoubtedly the fact that gin appeals to an older consumer profile. The "typical" gin drinker is aged 40-plus and is therefore more likely to expect to be offered a well known brand.

Although there are occasional attempts by brand owners to market gin to younger consumers, there is no doubt that it has seen its sales hit by the huge growth in the popularity of vodka.

For the past couple of years Guinness UDV, owner of the biggest-selling gin brand, Gordon's, has focused its marketing efforts on the core market for the brands. Much of this has been a recognition of the fact that a more discerning consumer expects the pub to get it right every time. However, Gordon's research suggested that the chances of being served a decent gin and tonic can often be a bit hit-and-miss.

The solution was the Gordon's Perfect Serve training programme, now in its fifth year. Gordon's groundbreaking work on the Perfect Serve is now accepted as the industry standard for spirit brands everywhere. The basic principles of tall glass, lots of ice, good quality mixer and fresh wedge of fruit may seem obvious now, but five years ago there were serious problems in getting these basic elements of good service across.

Building on its success, Gordon's plans this year to bring its Perfect Serve expertise to bear on a wider range of gin-based drinks.

White rum​

For most pubs, white rum means Bacardi. Like Smirnoff Red Label, it is a top 20 brand in the UK on-trade, and like vodka its success reflects its popularity as a spirit which mixes well with a number of other flavours. The ever expanding range of Bacardi Breezer FABs is as good an indication of this as any.

Although Bacardi's position remains secure, in recent years it has seen something of a challenge from Havana Club, which emphasises in its marketing that, unlike Bacardi, it is still brewed in Cuba. However, The Publican Newspaper Spirits Report confirms that Bacardi is the only white rum brand asked for by name, and by far the most commonly stocked.

Top brands​

Top 5 pub vodka brands

Top 5 pub gin brands

Source: The Publican Newspaper Brands Report 2001​

• For further information contact the Gin and Vodka Association at www.ginvodka.org

A brief history of white spirits​

Gin​

Gin was definitely being produced in the early 17th century in Holland, although there have been unsubstantiated claims by the Italians that they first distilled the juniper-based spirit.

British troops fighting in the Low Countries during the Thirty Years' War nipped gin for "Dutch Courage", and brought demand back to England. As it became distilled on a larger scale, the quality suffered, the price fell, and gin - mother's ruin - became associated with the poor living in the overcrowded slums of industrial England.

The problem was eventually tackled by a hike in excise duty, which led to more high quality versions being routinely drunk in high society. The best known variety became known as London dry gin.

By the jazz age of the 1920s it was the most widely used cocktail base, while British expatriates in India and the tropics made their anti-malaria medicine more palatable by mixing it with gin, creating the gin and tonic.

Vodka​

Vodka originated in Eastern Europe, the name stemming from the Russian word "voda" meaning water or, as the Poles would say "woda". It was produced in Russia from at least the end of the ninth century, while the first identifiable Polish vodkas appeared in the 11th century, where they were originally used as medicines.

As with gin, it was a war which helped to spread the spirit's popularity further afield, with Russian soldiers involved in the campaign against Napoleon carrying it with them throughout Europe.

After the Russian Revolution, all the private distilleries in Moscow were seized. As a result, a number of Russian vodka-makers emigrated, taking their skills and recipes with them. One revived his brand in Paris, using the French version of his family name - Smirnoff.

Another arrived in America, where he set up the first vodka distillery in the United States in the 1930s. Although not particularly successful at first, this enterprise was sold on again to an entrepreneur who eventually made a hit in the 1950s with a vodka-based cocktail, the Moscow Mule. However, it was James Bond's fondness for a "vodka martini, shaken not stirred", which really secured vodka's position as the king of cocktail bases.

White rum​

In the middle of the last century, rum was a harsh, cheap dark spirit which well deserved its reputation as being only fit for pirates to drink. It took a Cuban wine merchant, Don Facundo Bacardi, to civilise the drink.

After a long process of experimentation, Don Facundo came up with a method of charcoal filtrati