Wild Flavors and Specialty Ingredients has launched new beer-mix drinks with wild herbs for men and lemon for women, as it seeks to “breathe new life into the segment”.
The new concepts were inspired by popular long drinks and cocktails and are set to meet what Wild has described as “especially high demand… for beer-mix drinks in innovative flavours”. According to figures from Canadean, beer-mix drinks and flavoured beers have shown strong year-on-year growth of between 4% and 16% since 2007, amid a general decline in the traditional beer segment.
The new Wild Herbs beer-mix is designed to appeal to a male target group and features a wheat beer base, enhanced with a variety of herbal notes from herbal liquors.
Its launch will be complemented by the addition of Wild Lemon+X for consumers that prefer a milder flavour, and featuring 3% lemon juice. The natural citrus note in this drink is blended with juniper, giving the beer notes that resemble a gin and tonic and increasing the options available to consumers. The new variant is targeted at those who are not traditionally beer drinkers, Wild said, in particular female consumers.
And the new lines join Wild’s existing portfolio of non-alcoholic beer-mix drinks, which range from classics such as shandies with lemon to cross-category beer blends with flavours reminiscent of cocktails such as margaritas and caipirinhas
Wild senior product manager Tanja Krüger said: “Non-alcoholic beer-mix drinks are literally getting things moving on the market. Their potential is considerable for two reasons: they can cover a wide range of flavour preferences for the young and old alike. And these soft drinks are also ideal for many different everyday consumption situations – from enjoying a beverage at lunch or at parties all the way to isotonic thirst-quenching after exercise.”
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