Gautier Cognac aims to triple sales

Marie Brizard has unveiled a new look for Gautier Cognac as the company plans to triple the brand’s sales to hit 1 million bottles within three years.

Gautier Cognac’s new look

Speaking to the drinks business at ProWein last week, Kevin Baker, who is global travel retail director at Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits (MBWS), said that the forecast growth for Gautier Cognac was part of Marie Brizard’s “BiG 2018” strategic plan, which – as previously reported by db – kicked off at the start of 2015, and refers to the group’s global resurgence: BiG stands for “Back in the Game”.

As part of this plan, Baker told db that Marie Brizard’s “big ambition is for Gautier to be in the top 10 Cognac brands by the end of 2018.”

To do this, Gautier Cognac, which sells around 300,000 bottles annually today, making it the 18^th largest Cognac brand by volume, would need to reach 1m bottles in the next three years.

“Gautier is a jewel and we have high hopes for it,” said Baker, recording that the brand has been voted “the best Cognac in the world” twice.

“We need to make more people aware of this amazing juice,” he added.

He also showed db the Cognac’s new look, which will start to appear in markets around the world from July this year.

Using shades of brown and aquamarine, the colours have been chosen to reflect Gautier’s roots in barrel making and the location of its cellars, which were installed in an old watermill.

Significantly, the quality-level is much more prominent on the new packaging, with VS, VSOP and XO now in a script that is much larger than anything else on the label – a move that Stanislas Ronteix, marketing and commercial director for MBWS, said was to help consumers “better understand the quality levels.” (See below for Gautier Cognac’s XO before and after the repackage).

Before: Gautier Cognac XO
After: Gautier Cognac XO. As part of the repackage, brand owner Marie Brizard has increased the prominence of the quality level