With its unique focus on low-alcohol meads, Bemuse has reinvented the style to produce an enjoyably fresh drink and, also, create a pioneering drinks category. A light, social, low-alcohol and low-calorie drink, the Bemuse mead range can be enjoyed all year round, on their own or as an accompaniment to food.” ​ ​ In addition, we have our rum brand, ARLU Rum, which is a range of spiced and flavoured rums imported from the Caribbean and blended with unique flavours and spices in the heart of Manchester. Shoppers can choose from Blood Orange, Passionfruit and Mango or Original Spiced flavours.

He says: “We saw lots of love from traditional rum drinkers and new consumers coming into the category.” Fruit fusion and flavored wine brand Echo Falls has unveiled a new look for its Fruit Fusions 5.5% and 9.0% portfolio.

New variants also came from Spirited Union Distillery last year. The producer launched four botanical rums: Queen Pineapple & Spice, Sweet Orange & Ginger, Pink Grapefruit & Rose and Organic Coconut.

The Blood Orange Rum and Blood Orange Gin RTD cans are not only both fail-safe fan favourites, they provide a fun Halloween tipple at our usual premium quality. At our year end (as of Jan 2021) Didsbury Gin’s revenue growth is up by 170% vs last year with profits significantly increasing and this can be attributed to significant e-commerce growth. Mangrove’s Gillett agrees that consumers are looking for “genuine authentic rums with natural flavours”, and he adds that flavours such as pineapple have done well. He says: “We are seeing a huge amount of innovation in flavoured and spiced rum at the moment and almost any flavour is being added with mixed results. Didsbury Gin is a range of bright, vibrant & zesty gins, which includes the original, as well as three flavoured gins: Strawberry & Sicilian Lemon, Raspberry & Elderflower and Blood Orange & Ginger. They are all available in 20cl and 70cl bottles. We also have limited edition flavours of our gins – and have just launched a Manchester Tart limited edition.Doing stuff like this is fun,” Liam says. “It keeps you grey, it keeps you sleepless! But life’s too short to sit on ideas. Just roll the dice and do it.” To maximise sales, we believe retailers should work regionally and champion fast growing brands. In fact, many already do. We’ve seen this work to great mutual success as it helps retailers to meet the needs of their shoppers within different regions, while enabling brands like ours to showcase our range and grow from a regional into national footprint. Started by two friends James Harrison and Tommy Gaughan, who wanted to create a small batch, column distilled rum that they themselves would want to drink. The result is an expertly blended golden rum spiced with vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon and dried fruits. Highlighting the spicy notes of cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla in rum should be a more approachable flavour push for retailers than the traditional gin botanicals of juniper, orris root and angelica.

We’re expecting consumers to want to support smaller brands, especially unique British ones like ours.” Their meticulous approach to this sweet spirit means each bottle takes six months and thirty-five recipes to complete! We’ve drank in a lot of world class bars, and there are a lot of world class bars in Manchester, so we know what we like and what we don’t like. There’s small things. Every single seat in this bar has a coat hook. Minor details but they make the experience that little bit more comfortable.” Jessica Smith, marketing executive at Continental Wine & Food (CWF), says in 2020 the company introduced Jolly Roger, a range of flavoured rum liqueurs. Davies says: “The category is diverse and that is a good thing. Our rum brands are eclectic: Salford rum is distilled in Manchester; Diablesse rum is Manchester-based, but was born out of a love for the Caribbean and a yearning to do something different; Nusa Caña is distinctly Indonesian, and explicitly works to resurrect a longstanding but perhaps overlooked history with rum.She says: “After trialling different flavours that work well with rum and researching consumer trends, we launched three complementary flavours: Vanilla, Honeycomb and Roasted Pineapple. All are infused with authentic Caribbean rum to produce wonderfully rich, sweet, and spiced rum liqueurs.” Our panel – made up of 10-accredited spirits experts and rum-loving consumers – put 35 spiced rums to the test, spanning supermarket steals to big-brand bottles. Made by rum lovers by blending the best rums from the Caribbean and leaving them to rest in oak barrels before infusing with Jamaican vanilla and ginger for an incredibly smooth, versatile spirit. When we arrived, the rum room was busy. People had dressed up for the festival, with flowery shirts being standard attire for gentlemen, mine included. Together we did a couple of circuits of the room, stopping to sip samples and chat to the brand representatives. We learned a lot about rum, almost without fail the reps were generous with their knowledge and their samples. Together we sipped rum which had been aged in bourbon casks; we tried some aged in sherry casks and even one with had spent some time in a port cask.