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According to the
Financial Times
, the premium
gin market has been growing by 18% per year for t
past five years in Spain, with imported brands suc
Hendricks enjoying even faster growth.
As to how Fever-Tree really took off in Spain –
that comes down to the sort of surreal luck that no
amount of marketing could have dreamed up. Rich
Hamilton, the artist regarded as the father of Britis
pop art, bought a bottle of the tonic water soon aft
its launch in 2006. He liked its shape and contents
much that he decided to take one to his friend on h
next trip to Spain. That friend happened to be Ferr
Adrià, owner of el Bulli, the restaurant which, until
closed last year, was regarded as the best in the wor
One evening about a year later, Warrillow receiv
a phone call. It was el Bulli’s sommelier, wanting to
know if Fever-Tree had a Spanish importer. “We’d
actually been looking for an importer there and ha
so far found one who said that Fever-Tree would ne
work in Spain. But Ferran is Spain’s culinary poste
boy and he has tremendous power.”
Adrià invited the pair to dinner at el Bulli. After
35-course meal, they stayed late chatting in school
French – Adrià speaks little English and they had
Spanish – and he recommended a Catalan importe
of kitchen equipment who was well-connected in t
trade. But then came the real coup: Adrià was insp
to concoct a dish based around the tonic. Called so
de Fever-Tree tonica, it was a granita of bitter oran
peel, rose petals and liquid nitrogen, and it remain
on el Bulli’s menu until it closed in 2011.
So what next for this brand? A Mediterranean to
water with geranium, thyme and lavender is set to
launch, developed specifically for vodka, followed b
the wider roll-out of a drink called Lemon, which h
been created in co-operation with Adrià. It’s curre
only available in Spain, but over the next few mont
the rest of Europe will get its first taste. You could s
that cheers or – more appropriately,
salud
– is in or
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times cheaper, and this may go some way to explaining
the high price tag (in the UK, Schweppes costs
approximately 12p per 100ml to Fever-Tree’s 38p). It
may seem like an excessive expense, but the duo argue
that it makes sense. If drinkers are shelling out for
expensive premium spirits (as is increasingly the case),
it’s only logical that the mixer is of equally high quality
– after all, it makes up 75% of the drink.
Warrillow, 36, first showed entrepreneurial nous
at Newcastle University, where he started a company
hiring out his friends as waiters while taking his
management and marketing degree. He then joined
advertising agency SWK, before going to the East
India Company, researching the gin market. It was
while exploring opportunities with gin that he was
advised to call Charles Rolls, a marketing expert who
had just resurrected the Plymouth gin brand.
The two men initially discussed alcohol, but the
conversation soon turned to tonic and it wasn’t long
before they hatched a plan. They agreed that there
was a gap in the market and they would address it
together. In the following months, Rolls, now 54, and
Warrillow divided their time between research in the
British Library, and trips to Rwanda and Ivory Coast
to source the best quinine (the key ingredient in tonic
water) and ginger. “Sourcing the ingredients has been
the real work involved in setting up the brand,” says
Rolls. A year later, the first bottle of Fever-Tree tonic
water rolled out of the bottling plant.
Barely six years on, the mixer is served in seven
of the world’s 10 best restaurants and exported to
28 countries, including Australia. Fever-Tree was
even named Drinks Company of the Year at the 2011
Drinks Business Awards, the first time a non-alcoholic
beverage company has won the accolade.
The Spanish gin-and-tonic craze began in the
early noughties in San Sebastián, where a food critic,
Rafa Garcia Santos, began to drink it as a digestif.
A popular and influential game-show host, Jordi
Estadella, who later went on to host gastronomic
television shows before his death in 2010, also
championed the drink soon after and the fashion
quickly spread across the country.
From left,
tonic
entrepreneurs Tom
Warrillow and
Charles Rolls with el
Bulli’s FerranAdrià
Bobby Gin, one of
Barcelona’s hip new
watering holes, will
serve you whatever you
like, so long as it’s gin
Premium
Fever-Tree
have plugged
in the upm
drinksm
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