Don Julio, a Mexican tequila brand, recently made its India entry. Alcoholic beverage company Diageo had acquired the Don Julio brand in 2014. Over the years, the brand has expanded its product range to include various tequila expressions, like Blanco, Reposado, Añejo, and extra-aged variants.
Each of these expressions is known for its distinct flavour profile and quality. Storyboard18 caught up with Shweta Jain, chief business officer, Luxury, Reserve & Craft, India & South Asia, Diageo.
Edited excerpts:
Tell us more about the entry of Don Julio into India. What led to the decision now?
I would love to share with you some consumer insights and foresights, and the “now” is connected to that. Don Julio is not a new brand. It has been at the centre of tequila’s growth, more specifically in markets like the US, and, of course, the home of tequila itself – Mexico.
It has grown in a way no other spirit brand has grown. So the “now” is very much connected to two insights: one is that, as we all know, premiumisation in India is at its peak and the consumer adoption of various categories, let alone spirits, has really accelerated in the past few years.
In the post-pandemic world, we discovered that consumers are trying out various cocktails and spirit categories based on sensory attributes, on different occasions. Even within a day, they were enjoying them in different formats.
So, we love our Scotches, and within Scotch, we are seeing a lot of flavour exploration. With our brands, specifically like Tanqueray, we realised that the world has accepted tequila, in its new-found avatar as a sipping drink and as a magnificent base for cocktails like Paloma and Margarita. The ask was increasing rapidly, and, we, at Diageo, believe that Indian consumers are premiumising in real time. So, we realised that we could not make them wait for a few months. So, we brought Don Julio right at the time when Mexicana, as a culture, is really finding a lot of favour.
How is Don Julio going to live up to consumer preferences and tastes in India?
Don Julio was introduced in 1942 and it has been what we call the ORIGINAL Tequila. It has a rich breadth of varietals, starting from Don Julio Blanco, which is where your 100 percent Agave tequila journey starts with Don Julio.
Don Julio 1942 is the epitome of tequila-making, and, as you might have caught already, at many top-end occasions, it is being popped open, in place of champagne. It has produced very ‘Instagrammable’ moments with celebrities in both Hollywood as well in India.
Then we have the beautiful range of aged tequilas, which are the Añejos that we’re getting shortly. After that, there is the Reposado, which is one of the most favourite sipping tequilas.
The other distinctive factor is that there is a whole story around how the Don Julio bottle became almost the mark of the tequila category, and growing the Agave plant in its natural habitat. There is a certain region in Mexico where it is grown, and it takes six years before it can be harvested. Extracting the Agave plant is an artisanal process.
It has the versatility of a vodka, malt and a cognac and actually plays into all those occasions. Plus, Don Julio sits at the heart of cocktails like Margarita and Paloma.
If you see a data point around bars and fine dining in India, it is that the cocktail menus are getting deeper and wider. They are completely driven by consumer demand, and their interest in exploring various flavour profiles.
Could you throw some light on the demographics Don Julio is targeting?
We have a broad categorisation and very deep understanding of young affluence in India. It is what we call the legal drinking-age entrants who are not necessarily following a defined ladder, possibly a generation before followed. They go by the sensorial profile of liquid that they like and not necessarily by a price point. They are happy to explore. This is the generation that have travelled abroad, whose knowledge of various types of extractions of spirits is strong, and are willing to experiment and personalise their drinks.
In the launch events for Don Julio, we had personalised Palomas doing the rounds. The garnish and the types and the ways of putting salt around the rim of the glass are also talking points. So, the kind of consumers we’re seeing adopting this are the younger people. It is actually the casual occasions where we are happy as consumers try a cocktail, and, at the same time, sip a malt, tequila or a liqueur.
What kind of marketing strategies are you incorporating for Don Julio?
The key point about Diageo entering a category is its commitment to play in the cultural moment that the brand represents. I think we are seeing Mexicana as a cultural moment. Mexican music, food, and the whole language are having a huge moment all over the world, more specifically in India, because our flavour profiles also match — especially the colorfulness, vibrancy of all five senses, from music to the way the art element comes across.
So, I think our strategy is simply bringing to life the world of Don Julio as expressed in our positioning, which is Por Amor (for love). This is the tequila created for love, this is Mexicana, as a culture, with Don Julio at the heart of it.
Tequila, as a category, is also very new in India. So, it is going to take us a fair amount of time and focus. Diageo always does this when we get into building a category. It walks with our consumers, educating them, working with them to understand and differentiate, because a tequila is not a tequila unless it is 100 percent Agave. That’s what Don Julio is all about — the quality, the whole craftsmanship, etc.
We have a long road ahead in collaborating with bar owners, restaurants, and even cultural ambassadors. We had the honour of the ambassador of Mexico joining us when we were doing the launch celebrations in Gurugram. I think we are all going to collaborate hugely to get Indian consumers to understand and explore the world of tequila because they are, by nature, loving this exploration.
Can you enlighten us about the alcohol beverage industry’s growth in India in 2023? What are your growth predictions?
We are seeing an unprecedented kind of horizontal growth where a lot of exploration, even at a given price point, is happening. Even if you look at whiskey or Scotch, we see that, say at the entry level, we introduced Johnny
Walker Blonde earlier this year.
This was a Johnny Walker expression, which is very cocktail-forward. Its profile is very much a sociable long drink. It makes for a great Johnny, with lemonade or iced tea. It shows that consumers want to, even within their preferred kind of spirit, explore flavours.
This is a growth opportunity that we saw. We are continuing to see an opportunity that with gin, vodka is also back, various flavors of, say Smirnoff, are being re-found by many consumers. We are definitely seeing an expansion horizontally.
Even on the top end, the way our Single Malt portfolio shapes up with Singleton, Talisker and Godawan, we are seeing a lot of horizontal exploration where occasions are expanding. What we did see and with the extended Diwali period as well as the wedding season catching up, there has been a certain uplift in the peak. So there were some pockets this time where we saw a huge fast-track on certain days or weeks.