Spencer Matthews’ mission to create a ‘clean’ drinks category

Former Chelsea lothario Spencer Matthews has gone sober. Now, he tells db about his mission to create a new ‘clean’ drinks category with a low ABV ‘spirit’ brand.

Matthews launched Clean Liquor Co. last month at a party in London, where guests including sister in-law Pippa Matthews (ne Middleton), and former Made in Chelsea co-stars Hugo Taylor and Jamie Laing were served cocktails made with CleanGin, a “predominantly juniper” flavoured ‘spirit’ bottled at 1.2% ABV.

“You’d have to drink 30 Clean G&Ts to make it the same as a regular G&T”, Matthews said on the night.

This also puts it at the top end of what the government classifies as “low alcohol” drinks. In the UK, you pay £28.74 of Spirit Duty per litre of pure alcohol, but ‘low alcohol’ products are exempt from this tax.

It is the first product in the portfolio to hit the market, and has already been listed in around 469 Sainsbury’s stores nationwide, with an RRP of £24.99.

The brand’s website also hosts a webpage dedicated to “clean” takes on classic gin-based cocktails, including a Clean Americano, Clean Club and Clean Cobbler.

Although Clean Liquor Co. is concentrating on retail in the run-up to Christmas, Matthews and his  harbours an ambition to change the way consumers order drinks at the bar, and put his company at the heart of that change.

Matthews told db he wants consumers “to order anything they want from a bar, and be able to get a ‘clean’ option.”

“So you could go up to a bar and you could ask for four G&Ts, two ‘clean’.

The morning after the launch party, Matthews was in high spirits and clear-headed, gearing up for a day of interviews with Justin Hicklin, Clean Liquor Co.’s chairman and a founding director of the Gin Guild. Hicklin told db he was introduced to Matthews “through a mutual friend” in April, when the pair decided to launch a non-alcoholic drinks brand.

Disrupting the gin sector

It’s stirred up controversy in the world of botanical spirits.The EU sets out definitions and technical standards for three categories of gin: Gin, Distilled gin and London (dry) gin. Cutting across all of these categories are the requirements that all products using the word “gin” must have a minimum ABV of 37.5% and that they must taste predominately of juniper.

When the news broke that Hicklin is part of the Clean Liquor project, Nicholas Cook, director general of the Gin Guild, told the drinks business that a low or non-alcoholic product calling itself ‘gin’ is “not acceptable”, and that selling a low ABV product modelled on gin is “directly trading on the back of the renaissance and success of gin, and the interest of consumers in that category.”

On the launch night, Hicklin said that gin distillers “need to recognise we have the skills to produce a fantastic liquid without alcohol”, and “must change” to adapt to consumer trends.

Sales of non-alcoholic gin alternatives have soared both in volume and value in the UK, driven by the launch of non-alcoholic ‘spirit’ Seedlip in 2015. William Grant & Sons launched its first ultra-low alcohol spirit, bottled at 0.5% ABV, this year, while Pernod Ricard also unveiled its own non-alcoholic dark spirit after it brought ABV-free spirit Ceder’s to the UK in 2018.

Distill Ventures, an accelerator for small brands backed by Diageo, acquired a minority stake in Seedlip in June 2016, giving the spirits giant a share in the company. Diageo upped its investment in Seedlip to a majority in August. Today the brand is served in over 6,000 cocktail bars, hotels, restaurants and retailers in 25 countries, is also became the official partner of the Michelin Guide in the US.

Matthews told db he “took inspiration from Seedlip” when he started developing his own label in April this year.

When he was going to bars after going sober, he often drank Seedlip. “It opened my eyes to that whole category and the opportunities there.”

The reality star-turned entrepreneur said he is not concerned by the competition from drinks giants like Pernod Ricard, as he believes “after the success of Seedlip, a lot of brands rushed to market and made substandard products.”

Matthews and Hicklin are working with UK-based gin producer Union Distillers to create the ABV-free spirit, which Hicklin told db goes through “four different distillation processes” before it is completed.

“To get the depth of flavour”, Hicklin said, “we have to use significantly more botanicals….we’ve had to work really hard.”

“We’re aiming to emulate a London Dry Gin,” Matthews said.

Although he was “impatient” to launch his own label, “the thing that kept me sane was that I wasn’t really blown away by anything I had tried.”

“We took inspiration from Seedlip,” he said, “and no one else.”

Matthews added that there are many more products in the pipeline, including spirits inspired by Bourbon and Tequila, and added that the company is in talks to secure a “seven-figure” sum from an unnamed investor in the US.

“We’ve launched with a gin,” he said, “but that’s not to say we wouldn’t launch with something different elsewhere.”