Dill pickles, cookie dough, and peanut butter and jelly hardly sound like inspiration for adult beverages, but each of the aforementioned flavors were launched by vodka-makers within the last year. As these new product introductions show, one of the largest trends in the spirits category is unusual flavors, analysts say.
“Flavors accounted for 14 percent of vodka sales in 2007; now they’re up to 20 percent of vodka sales,” says Danny Brager, vice president, group client director and head of the beverage alcohol team at Nielsen, New York City. “In 2007, there were four major flavors — Raspberry, Orange, Vanilla and Lemon — and they accounted for 70 or 75 percent of all the vodka sales. Now those four are about 40 percent of all the flavored vodka sales because there’s just so much more to choose from.”