Brown-Forman has announced it is launching Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Seltzer in Australia.

The RTD range mix Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey with sparkling water and a twist of natural fruit flavours. The two flavours take their cue from classic cocktails: Zesty Lemon inspired by The Whiskey Sour and Blood Orange inspired by The Old Fashioned.

Available in 330ml cans, each contains 1.7 standard drinks and less than 160 calories. They are available at bottle shops around the country this month with an RRP of $26 for a four-pack.

Jack Daniel’s RTD Assistant Brand Manager Amanda Kitzer said she was “beyond excited to share the latest addition to Jack Daniel’s RTD portfolio and the first dark spirit base seltzer in the Australian market”.

According to a recent Rabobank Beer Quarterly report: “Australia is leading the hard seltzer push in Asia-Pacific and will remain the top destination for companies. Japan has considerable potential for hard seltzers as well. A large flavoured-alcohol consumer base is common to both markets and is the target segment for hard seltzer brands.” 

The launch already has Jack Daniel’s fans in the US drooling. Whiskey Riff asked: “Will we see these black beauties come to the United States and Canada? A trademark application for the name ‘Tennessee Seltzer’ was filed this past June so it bodes well. Plus, are you really gonna make a ‘Tennessee Seltzer’ and not even sell it in Tennessee? C’mon man … For the time being however, they’re only available in Australia.”

Australia is one of world’s biggest markets for Jack Daniel’s, so it makes sense that Brown=Forman decided to launch the new RTD here. Jack Daniel’s is the number one RTD brand in Australia, selling more than four million cases per year.

Brown Forman did put its toe in the water in the US by releasing a Jack Daniel’s Whiskey & Seltzer in the US in June 2020 in selected markets and sales of its Jack Daniel’s Country Cocktails skyrocketed 92.1% to 2.7million cases in 2020. The latter range offers eight flavours: Black Jack Cola, Cherry Limeade, Berry Punch, Downhome Punch, Lynchburg Lemonade, Watermelon Punch, Southern Peach and Southern Citrus.

“Globally, Jack Daniel’s RTD exceeded 12 million cases and New Mix crossed 8 million cases,” CEO Lawson Whiting noted during an earnings call in June. “Remarkably for the year, we sold approximately 5 million incremental cases of RTDs. Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey was approximated 2.1 million cases, and our flavour whiskey portfolio grew to 3.3 million cases, an incremental 500,000-plus cases were added for the year.”

CFO Jane Morreau added: “Our developed international markets collectively delivered strong underlying net sales growth, up double digits for the fiscal year. This growth was driven by higher volumes of Jack Daniel’s RTDs in Australia and Germany, broad-based volumetric growth from Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey as well as the launch of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Apple, which in year one is already the size of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey was in year four in Europe.”

Brown-Forman has also partnered with Pabst take its RTD business to “an even higher level’ in the US. Whiting explained that Pabst is “really going to beef up our Jack Daniel’s Country Cocktails” range.

“We’re going to sell them the glass,” he said. “They’re going to then distribute it throughout all their channels that we don’t traditionally access to.

“And so, they’re going to make it. They’ve got better capabilities as it relates to packaging, configurations, things like that, so we can have some mixability, pack sizes and shapes and so forth like that … in effect, we’ll get a royalty, an agreed-upon royalty and it will scale up as they grow. That’s the simplest way to talk about it.”

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