Every year many consumers consider a pause in January to opt out of alcoholic beverages for a dietary reset month. However, no sacrifice is required today with so many new options to lift your mood with innovative low or no alcohol beverages. It's no longer the Shirley Temple choice of yesterday but a more complex beverage with unique features that provide the taste consumers crave as well as the complexity provided by traditional spirits and cocktails. The availability of traditional spirit flavor profiles that mirror gin or tequila is provided today through the industry craftmanship of flavor creation experts. However, a higher quality taste for that authentic taste experience and the availability of even more elusive flavor profiles required of the darker spirits like bourbon and whiskey is the new frontier.
Flavor Producers has been the pioneer and leader in the creation of natural and organic flavors for both alcoholic and non-alcoholic spirits or cocktail/mocktail beverages for over 40 years with the flexibility to create custom taste profiles that are trend-forward. The current need for greater taste complexity while embracing lower sugar and less alcohol as well as natural ingredients is a current parallel consumer driver linked to the demand for healthier and more sophisticated beverage options in this category.
Developing a low or no alcohol ready-to-drink beverage has more challenges for the developer to achieve the sophisticated profile along with the necessary stability of the beverage based on the processing conditions. Including functional mood-enhancing ingredients like adaptogens is also an important consideration to address prior to finalizing the characterizing profile of the beverage. "There are Tasteful Technologies™ that modify the taste of these adaptogen ingredients to reduce the negative taste impact while also considering characterizing flavors that lean into the taste profiles," says Tony Moore, Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Flavor Chemist at Flavor Producers. "These Tasteful Technologies™ are more advanced than traditional masking flavors used by the industry historically. Flavor Producers offers an evolving and more sophisticated flavor creation toolbox for these types of low or no alcohol beverages that assists in delivering the authentic taste using items like hops, oak and juniper extracts as well as an extensive natural and organic botanical or fruit WONF flavor and extract line that provides the developer with the necessary range of ingredients to build in the required taste transitions expected by the consumer", Tony Moore adds.
The commercially successful non-alcoholic beverage or spirit must have 3 taste transitions for the consumer. The first is the initial sip that has the aroma and taste onset that pulls and attracts the consumer into the drink. Then, a second immediate transition occurs involving the sensorial sensation that the beverage is warming and relaxing. Finally, the third taste transition involves finishing with the perception of a smooth mouthfeel but includes the unexpected complexity of layering multiple botanical, fruit or smoke notes that warrant further consumer consideration to take their next sip.
In 2021, Mintel survey results confirm that the non-alcoholic spirit must have the taste experience of the referenced cocktail.
Consumer trend insights provider, Tastewise, reports that the significant category YoY growth in social media conversations around spirit ingredients with the highest concentration of social penetration in mocktails include gin, whiskey, tequila and liqueurs along with accelerating interest in ingredients like elderflower liqueur for these non-alcoholic beverages. The opportunity to create a non-alcoholic cocktail with the complexity consumers demand is an opportunity that can be achieved with the improved flavor tools and expertise from Flavor Producers.
Let's toast to the opportunity to reduce the innovation time with no alcohol cocktails and spirits that taste Transparently Delicious®. Create your next innovation by requesting samples of your own natural or organic flavors and extracts at www.flavorproducers.com.
Visit our website at www.flavorproducers.com to order your sample immediately or contact us at [email protected] to request other wine, beer, spirit or cocktail profiles for your next innovation.
