Move aside Champagne, Zoncello limoncello spritz raced off the shelves during the festive season, selling a record 455,000 bottles in December.
Social media has been fuelling growth, with Zonzo Estate owner Rod Micallef struggling to keep up with demand since launching the product in mid-2023.
“There’s thousands of videos of how people are drinking it,” Micallef told Perth Now.
“There’s people freezing it and turning it into a Slurpee, people mixing it with gelato — it’s gone absolutely berserk.”
Zoncello, which has been credited with putting the wine category back in growth, cracked the million-bottle sales mark in its first year on the market.
Dan Murphy’s began stocking it nationally in August 2023 and it went on to become the retailer’s no. 1 new wine product for 2023. Zoncello is now available at a wide range of independent and big-box retailers throughout the country.
“In December, we were sending out 100 pallets (around 65,000 bottles) a week,” Zonzo Director Rod Micallef told the Australian Financial Review this week. “It was insane.”
Micallef entered the spritz space during the pandemic, when he decided to launch a product that would appeal to buyers online.
“Like every winery, we needed cash flow,” he said. “We needed other products, not just wines. That’s how we ended up making a spritz.”
His first release was a bottled Bellini, which he recently relaunched as ‘Bellina’. Then he turned to his homemade Limoncello for inspiration.
“We were the first in the world to bottle a limoncello spritz,” he said. “I’ve googled the crap out of it, and I can’t find anyone who did it before us.”
At Endeavour Group’s first Supplier Forum of 2024, Buying and Merchandising Director Tim Carroll said: “Its soaring popularity has resonated not only with younger audiences with sweeter palettes but also older drinkers who see it as a nod to Italian history. This has been an incredible example of innovation, following consumer trends feeding back into an established brand story.”
In February 2024, Endeavour Group CEO Steve Donohue said lemon-flavoured drinks such as Zoncello and Hard Rated had been major growth drivers for the group.
“People are loving anything that is refreshing and lemon flavour is one of the most refreshing drinks out there,” he said.
“What we’ve also seen is an explosion in demand for limoncello, for example. We just about doubled our sales in limoncello in Dan Murphy’s in December.”