Ready-to-dRink sangRia emeRges as dynamic wine categoRy

S ome credit mixologists with kick starting the pre-made sangria growth trend by igniting an interest on-premise that then moved to retail. Others cite the swell of at-home entertain-ing or the proliferation of Spanish tapas bars. Yet perhaps the most convincing explana-

tion for sangria’s recent explosion—with its growth rate of 14%, it is among the fastest-growing wine categories in the U.S.—is the largely unmet demand for red wines that are sweet and packed with flavor. And sangria is just the beverage to fit the bill.

By Kristen Bieler

Joe Janish, marketing communi-cations manager at Opici Wine Com-pany, has seen sangria take off first-hand. Opici’s wholesale operation sells Ed Hardy Sangria, and Janish reports: “We couldn’t keep it in stock. It be-came a massive brand overnight and it was flying out of our warehouse.” In order to keep up with feverish de-mand, Opici’s import side of the busi-ness created Opici Sangria in a 3L box in October.

Ed Hardy and Opici are part of a recent wave of category entrants, yet growth is occurring for brands old and new. Arbor Mist launched its Zinfandel Sangria in 1999, well before sangria was posting double-digit increas-es, and today sangria is the brand’s fourth best-selling flavor, with annu-al volume of nearly 360K cases. Amy Martin, marketing director for Arbor Mist, believes the home-entertaining trend has fueled sangria’s growth and brought more men into the category as well. Franzia introduced its 5L bag-in-box sangria five years ago, and a 1.5L two years later, and both are quickly moving off shelves.

Gene Schaeffer, VP Nicolas Wines, is metaphorically knee-deep in sangria these days. Nicolas Wines makes and markets Ed Hardy wines and although sangria is one of the most recent line ex-tensions, it quickly became the brand’s best-seller, hitting 12,000 cases a month soon after it was released. “We will likely do 150,000 cases this year,” he shares. The company also makes similar-tasting sangrias under pri-vate labels for Whole Foods and Cost Plus as well as the Jorge Posada Cinco Anillos San-gria (whose profits are do-nated to the Jorge Posada Foundation)—all of which are on fire right now and target very different con-sumer groups.

But, is there one group more responsible for san-gria consumption than others? “Yes,” says Schaef-

fer. “It tends to be younger consumers new to wine. It’s a market that gravi-tates toward easy-to-drink beverages with a fruit profile. It’s the same type of consumer that was drinking wine cool-ers in the 1980s.”

Talk Dry, Drink SweeT

Sangria also appeals because of its sweet nature. Brands vary in sugar content, but most veer far right on the sweet spectrum and that’s pre-cisely why they are so popular right now, says Time Hanni, MW, an expert on flavor and sensory sciences. His re-search has proven that there is a cer-tain group of consumers who will al-ways prefer sweet wines because of the way their palates experience flavors. “Trying to move these consumers to dry wines on the theory that dry wines are inherently better or more appro-priate with food will simply backfire,” he says. “You have to engage them and build up their confidence in wine preferences if you want to lure them away from cocktails and light beer and towards wine.”

Another sangria common denomi-nator is low alcohol content, he adds: “A big part of our findings is that high-er alcohol levels are much more likely to generate an unpleasant burn for the people naturally more attracted to sweet wines.”

Sweet whites have been growing for years, and Hanni sees a “conflu-ence of factors” lining up to give sweet reds a serious advantage: “The image that red wine is more sophisti-cated, combined with health research that focuses more on benefits of red wines in general, and finally, there are higher-quality sweet red wines be-coming available.”

Sangria is now reaping the benefits of this trend, reports Bill Berkoff, VP, BevMax in Stanford, CT. “The American wine drinker has always been ‘talk dry, drink sweet,’ and the category of sweet red wines has been exploding for the past two years—it’s grown more than almost any other category,” he says. Berkoff has observed that until re-cently, most sweet reds were light in color, which wasn’t what his consum-ers were looking for. Sangria boasts that dark red color, making it a wine many people want.

The red-and-sweet phenomenon isn’t news to Wendy Nyberg, senior director of marketing, Sutter Home Winery/Trinchero Family Estates. The company launched Sutter Home Red—a sweet red meant to be consumed chilled—four years ago. “We watched all these regional brands have amaz-ing success with sweet reds—New York’s Red Cat or North Carolina’s Duplin Winery, for example—yet there was no national brand of any significance,” she points out. Initially, Sutter Home Red didn’t list “sweet” on the label, but once it did, it started to fly. “Sweet

is not an ugly world—it’s a word that sells. Suppliers are foolish not to

give consumers what they want,” Nyberg continues.

Sangria’s advantage according to Nyberg? “Consumers assume it’s sweet—you don’t even need to list it on the label. Trinchero came out with a sangria un-der its Bandit tetra-pak brand about a year ago. We see big growth opportunities for Bandit Sangria partic-

ularly in supermarkets and places where outdoor activity is more prominent and tetra-pak packaging is advantageous.”

Sangria’S Many ShaDeS

As the category grows, many predict we will start to see more sangria permuta-tions. Real Sangria, the number one imported sangria from Spain, is leading the way with its white sangria, intro-duced last spring. “So many restaurants were introducing white sangrias, so we thought we should offer one, too,” says Ricky Febres, national marketing manager, Shaw-Ross Importers. De-spite its higher price, Real Sangria has posted solid growth for the last decade, up 10% just last year. “When the wine market boomed in the 1970s and ‘80s, the market for sangria practically dis-appeared. Spain is so hot right now—tapas bars, Spanish wines and food—and the fact that so many restaurants are making sangrias helped bring it back,” Febres explains.

The BarTenDer effecT

The category has had an undeniable boost from bartenders and the mixology culture. According to Mike Quigley, manager, Empire Wine & Liquor in Albany, he sells just as much pre-made sangria as he does sangria in-gredients: “There has been a big in-crease in pre-made as well as people making their own. Customers come in looking for large-format Spanish wines and asking us about how to make it at home. The interest in at-home mixology is en-tirely due to the prevalence of today’s cocktail culture.”

One category newcomer which doesn’t fit the profile in terms of price point and sweet-ness level is Savida Sangria, founded in 2009 by former banker Jay Tramonte. He got

the idea for Savida from bartenders having spent a lot of time in bars with his Agua Luca Cachaça brand (which he since sold to Heaven Hill). “There are sangrias on cocktail menus at every type of restaurant from hip urban bars to T.G.I. Friday’s and Olive Gardens,” he says. “The on-premise did the work

in creating a market for premium san-gria, but I didn’t believe there was a real option for replicating that expe-rience at home.”

Savida is targeting a different consumer—the seasoned wine drinker who prefers a less sweet style. Made with mostly California Syrah, Savida’s red is infused with passionfruit, elder-

berry, lime and strawberry juices, and the white is made with white peach juice; both have no added sugar. At The Wine Cellars in Atlanta, Savida is the best-selling sangria, according to employee Pamella Robuck: “A lot of our consumers feel that most san-grias are too sweet. Savida might be a more serious sangria, but it is still a real crowd-pleaser—it is a perfect wine alternative. Most of our cus-tomers use it for entertaining.”

noT JuST for SuMMer anyMore

Real potential for the category lies in its ability to transcend seasons. “Everyone used to think of sangria as a summer wine, but it’s breaking out of that stigma now,” says Berkoff. Indeed, Schaeffer reports that in the month of January, Ed Hardy Sangria sells just as well in a chain of supermarkets in northern Michigan as it does in Miami. And if

retailers work to market these wines year-round, they will simply sell more wine, says Hanni: “It’s a limited view-point that sangria is for warm weather only. Sweet wine drinkers want to drink wine in every season and occa-sion, and if you don’t offer it to them, they will choose an alternative instead.” ■

everyone used to think of sangria as a summer wine, but it’s breaking

out of that stigma now... sweet wine drinkers want

to drink wine in every season and occasion.

Rtd sangria