*By Jerald O’Kennard is President of Beverage Testing Institute / BevTest
For many entrepreneurs building spirits brands, the first creative push goes into the name, bottle, logo, label, and story. That instinct is understandable because packaging is visible and branding is exciting. The label is what distributors, retailers, bartenders, investors, and consumers see first.
However, in beverage alcohol, the label might win the first try, but the liquid must win the second purchase.
For brands entering the U.S. market, formulation, identity, and labeling should not be treated as separate workstreams. The strongest adult beverage brands start with a clear product strategy: what the liquid is, who it is for, how it will be served, what quality messaging it can credibly support, and how it compares to benchmarks within its category.
Only when what is in the package is determined should the brand decide what belongs on the package.
BevTest’s perspective on product development is simple: quality is not just whether a product tastes “good.” Quality is whether the product delivers for its category, price tier, intended use and occasion, competitive set, and brand promise. A sipping tequila, flavored whiskey, botanical gin, cream liqueur, and ready-to-pour cocktail all need to be evaluated differently in the context of their category’s quality benchmarks, not just sales benchmarks.
In terms of sales success, this is a winning sequence: formulation should fit the occasion. The occasion should inform the identity. That identity should guide the package.
Start With the Product Promise
Before a brand locks in packaging design, it should be able to answer a few basic questions.
First, what is this product supposed to be? Is it a traditional expression of an established category, uniquely modern, or a riff? Is it meant to be sipped neat, poured over ice, mixed into cocktails, served chilled, sampled at retail, or positioned around a specific occasion?
Second, who is it for? Is the primary buyer a bartender, gift purchaser, collector, or casual consumer?
Most importantly, what is the product’s promise?
That promise should be more precise than simply “premium,” “smooth,” “craft,” or “different.” Those words are commonplace, they are not strategies. A real product promise is something the liquid can actually prove.
A blanco tequila may promise a bright agave character, a clean citrus slake, and cocktail versatility. A barrel-finished bourbon may promise distinctive oak notes, brown spices, and a soft sipping profile. A vermouth may promise culinary complexity, lower-ABV approachability, and aperitif-style refreshment. A flavored whiskey may promise immediate aromatic gratification, balanced sweetness, and an effortless shot or mixed-drink occasion.
Each promise has unique consequences. It affects the proof, sweetness, aromatic intensity, mouthfeel, finish, packaging cues, label copy, price positioning, and buyer strategy.
One useful exercise is to describe the product without marketing language. Before writing the brand story, the team should simply identify and write down the liquid’s truth.
What is the base spirit? What are the dominant aromas and flavors? How sweet or dry is it? How much alcohol heat is present? How long is the finish? What is the best serve? What products will it sit next to on the shelf? What price tier does it justify?
If any of those answers are unclear, the brand is not ready to ask the package to do its work.
Formulation Is Strategy When Building Spirits Brands
Formulation is often treated as a production step, but it is one of the most important strategic decisions a new adult beverage brand must make.
Proof, sweetness, flavor intensity, texture, color, finishing technique, and ingredient choices all influence how a beverage is perceived. They also affect category identity, formula approval, label language, shelf placement, distributor education, cocktail performance, and consumer expectations.
Proof is a great example. A higher-proof spirit may carry more flavor and perform better in cocktails, but it can also feel less approachable. A lower-proof product may be easier to drink, but it may struggle to deliver the intensity or perceived value expected at a premium price. Neither choice is automatically right or wrong. The right choice depends on the product’s promise and intended occasion.
Sweetness is another key variable. It can create immediate appeal, especially in flavored adult beverages and liqueurs, but too much sweetness can reduce sessionability. A product that scintillates in a small sample may feel heavy after a full pour. This shows up often in the field as a ‘one-and-doner.’ A product that works as a chilled shot may be lacking as a cocktail ingredient.
Texture and finish are equally important. Consumers may not describe mouthfeel in technical terms, but they respond to it. A spirit whose texture feels thin, hot, artificial, or disjointed can undermine a premium price point, even if the aroma is attractive. And a long, clean, balanced finish signals quality before the consumer can explain why.
Color also shapes expectations. Before a consumer smells or tastes the product, color has already given a sensory cue and made an impression. A deep amber whiskey, a crystal-clear vodka, a pale salmon aperitif, or dark botanical liqueur each create a different expectation. A product’s color should be intentional, stable, category-appropriate, and attractive.
For emerging brands, the key lesson is simple: formulation decisions become commercial decisions. The liquid determines what the brand can credibly say and how the product can perform.
What Beverage Alcohol Quality Really Means
Quality is not the same thing as intensity, age, complexity, or a founder’s personal preference.
A quality spirit should be technically sound, balanced for its style, expressive enough to be memorable, consistent with its category and price point, and ultimately, pleasurable in its intended serve.
BevTest evaluates quality with several key questions in mind.
Does the product show typicity? In other words, does it taste like what it claims to be? A gin should deliver a recognizable botanical flavor profile, whether London Dry or Nouveau. A bourbon should show appropriate grain, oak, and maturation character. A tequila should express its agave base. A cream liqueur should taste well integrated and layered rather than merely sweet.
Is the product balanced? Alcohol, sweetness, acidity, bitterness, oak, spice, smoke, botanicals, fruit flavor, and texture should feel seamless. A beverage can be bold without being brazen, and it can be delicate without being weak.
Are the components integrated? This is especially important in flavored, finished, and specialty products. If the flavoring sits on top of the base spirit, if oak feels hammered on like siding, or if burn breaks through the finish, the product will feel unpolished, or worse.
Does the finish support the positioning? The finish is often where quality perceptions are confirmed or lost. A premium product with a short, rough, synthetic, or overly sweet finish will struggle to earn repeat purchase. As one of our veteran sommelier panelists put it, “the money is in the finish.”
Does the product work in its intended use? A neat pour, cocktail base, chilled shot, and a ready-to-drink serve all require different sensory architecture. A product should perform well in how the brand expects people to consume it.
Finally, how does it compare to real competitors in its category? Emerging brands are evaluated next to established products with broad distribution, aggressive pricing, and familiar quality cues. A new brand does not need to imitate those products, but it does need to understand where and how it stands next to them, metaphorically and literally, on the shelf.
Use Sensory Evaluation Before Finalizing the Brand
Internal team tasting is useful, but it is not enough.
Founders, investors, production partners, friends, and early supporters are usually too close to the product. They know the story and the efforts made to build it. They may have a financial or emotional investment in liking it.
Blind sensory evaluation separates the liquid from the name, packaging, brand story, and expectation. Benchmarking against category peers shows whether or not the product is truly differentiated, whether it justifies its price, and whether its sensory strengths are obvious enough to matter.
This is especially important before the brand commits to packaging. Once glass, labels, closures, carriers, cases, point-of-sale materials, and sell sheets are produced, changes become much more expensive and harder to execute.
Brands should consider testing prototype variations before locking down packaging, especially the label: proof adjustments, sweetness levels, flavor intensity, barrel finishing options, botanical balance, dilution behavior, chilled performance, and cocktail performance. For items with a defined serve strategy, the serve should be tested as seriously as the liquid itself.
If a brand expects its spirit to be used primarily in margaritas, Old Fashioneds, spritzes, espresso martinis, or highballs, it should know exactly how it performs in those cocktail builds. If the spirit is positioned as a super-premium sipper, it should be assessed neat and compared against similarly priced competitors.
One common scenario is brands discovering, too late, that the product’s intended market does not respond to it as expected. The liquid may be too sweet for bartenders, too subtle to drive a purchase decision from retail sampling, too expensive for its sensory deliverables, or too misaligned with the language on the label.
Sensory testing can identify those kinds of issues early, when they are still easily fixable.
Let the Liquid Guide the Brand Identity
Once the liquid is clearly defined, brand identity decisions become easier and more cohesive.
The liquid should guide the visual identity. A crisp, dry, citrus-forward gin suggests different colors, typography, bottle shape, and copy than a lush, floral, lightly sweet gin. A high-rye, spicy whiskey supports a different identity than a soft, dessert-like finished whiskey. A clean, mineral, agave-forward blanco tequila should not be branded like a fiery party shot unless that is truly the product’s occasion.
This does not mean the package should be literal either. A smoky spirit does not need smoke on the label. A botanical spirit does not need leaves. A coastal brand does not need waves. These are often boring, reductive, and unoriginal choices. The best identity creates an expectation the liquid can satisfy.
Strong brand identity comes from alignment. The name, package, color palette, closure, bottle weight, label texture, typography, claims, and back-label story should all point in the same direction.
Every packaging choice sends a signal, and how that signal is interpreted depends on the audience. Heavy glass may imply luxury, but it can also trigger environmental concerns. Bright color may imply flavor or refreshment, or it may read as unserious. Minimalist design may imply modernity or purity, or it may read as pretension. Heritage typography may imply tradition, or it may read as unoriginality. A clear bottle may suggest freshness or visual flavor cues, or it may read as cheapness. A dark bottle may suggest seriousness, age, or protection of the liquid, or it may read as stodginess.
A brand’s packaging is never going to please everyone, nor should it try, but if the liquid and package send conflicting signals, the consumer may not know what to expect. Worse, they may expect something the product cannot deliver.
Labeling Decisions: Compliance, Clarity, and Credibility
An adult beverage label is not just a design surface. It has to satisfy compliance requirements, communicate clearly, and create a credible commercial impression.
For emerging brands, label decisions should start early because they are connected to formulation. Category designation, formula approval, flavor claims, age statements, production language, origin references, and fanciful names can all affect the approval process and the final consumer message.
The first question is class and type. What is the product legally and commercially? Is it whiskey, flavored whiskey, distilled spirits specialty, gin, flavored gin, liqueur, agave spirit, vodka, rum, or something else? The answer affects how the product can be labeled and how buyers will understand it.
The next question is whether the front label makes the product easy to understand. A consumer or trade buyer should not need a long explanation to know what the product is. Creativity is valuable, but confusion is costly.
Fanciful names can be useful, especially for flavored or specialty products, but they should clarify rather than obscure. A memorable name is helpful only if the buyer still understands what is in the bottle.
Flavor claims require discipline. If the label suggests a particular fruit, spice, botanical, barrel treatment, sweetness level, or production method, the liquid should deliver that expectation. Overpromising creates disappointment. Under-communicating makes the product harder to sell.
Production claims require even more care. Words such as “craft,” “small batch,” “handmade,” “barrel-finished,” “estate,” “natural,” “organic,” “gluten-free,” and “authentic” can be powerful, but they should be accurate, supportable, and meaningful. Claims should not be added simply because they sound premium, super-premium, or ultra-premium.
The back label is another common trouble spot. Many founders try to fit the company history, production philosophy, founder biography, tasting note, and cocktail strategy into a few square inches. A better approach is to use the back label to reinforce the product’s most important and defensible points of difference. A QR code is often the better place for longer stories and deeper supporting detail.
A good label should not say everything. It should say the right things.
Common Mistakes Emerging Brands Should Avoid
The first mistake is building super-premium packaging around average liquid. Luxury packaging raises expectations. If the product does not deliver a matching sensory experience, the disconnect can hurt repeat purchases and trade credibility.
The second is overloading the label with claims. New brands often want to communicate every possible point of difference: origin, ingredients, production method, family story, sustainability, cocktail use, awards, flavor, lifestyle, and occasion. The result can feel unfocused, overwhelming, and stifling for consumers, who are likely to move on.
The third is copying category leaders without understanding their liquid strategy. It is easy to imitate the visual identity of successful brands, but those brands often have distribution, price architecture, heritage, marketing support, and liquid profiles that make that identity work. Visual imitation seldom creates lasting differentiation on its own.
The fourth is designing for the founder instead of the buyer. The founder may love the story, and should, but the distributor needs a reason to carry it. A retailer needs a reason to stock it. A bartender needs a reason to recommend it. A consumer needs a reason to buy it, then buy it again.
Finally, many brands treat compliance as a final check. That can create delays, redesigns, or compromised messaging. Formula, category, claims, and label language should be considered as the product and brand are being developed.
A Practical Product-to-Package Workflow
Emerging adult beverage brands can reduce risk by following a disciplined sequence.
Start by defining the target consumer, market channel, and use occasion. A product designed for high-energy venues, craft cocktail bars, or premium retail gifting should not be built the same way.
Next, establish the competitive set. Taste and evaluate against products in the same category, price tier, and channel. Understand both the quality benchmarks and sales benchmarks for the category before deciding how the new product will be different.
Then develop and test numerous prototypes. Evaluate proof, sweetness, aroma intensity, texture, finish, and cocktail performance. Do not assume the first version is the best version. It very rarely is.
After that, get blind sensory evaluation and trade feedback. Objectively identify the product’s real strengths and weaknesses, then determine whether the liquid supports the intended price and positioning.
Once the product direction is clear, identify the strongest credible claims. These should come from the liquid, production choices, and documented facts, not from a generic list of premium-sounding words or made-up stories. Trade gatekeepers are too savvy for that now.
Then translate those strengths into brand identity. The design should prepare the buyer for the experience the product actually delivers.
Before finalizing packaging, review formula and label implications. Confirm the class/type, required label information, formula considerations, and supporting data for any claims.
Finally, test the package against the liquid. Show the bottle, gather expectations, then taste the product. If the label suggests one experience and the liquid delivers another, the brand has a problem to solve.
The solution may be a formulation change, a label change, or a positioning change. Whatever the solution is, the issue should be identified and addressed before launch.
What Brands Should Have Before They Approach the Market
Before talking seriously with distributors, retailers, or strategic partners, an emerging adult beverage brand should be prepared to explain the product clearly and confidently.
At a minimum, the brand should have a concise product description, a defined category position, a target price, a competitive set, a core serve strategy, separate-but-unified trade-facing and consumer-facing tasting notes, documentation for key claims, and a plan for production consistency.
The brand should also be able to answer a simple question: why does this product deserve shelf space?
That answer should not rely only on the founder story or package design. It should connect the liquid, the market opportunity, the buyer’s needs, and the consumer occasion.
A distributor wants to know how the product will sell. A retailer wants to know where it fits.
This is an important second question: what bottle comes off the shelf to make room for the new one? A bartender wants to know how to use it. A consumer wants to know when to use it and what to expect. The brand’s job is to make all of those answers very clear.
Build the Brand from the Bottle Out
The strongest adult beverage brands do not ask the label to do all the work. They create a product with a clear point of view, then use the package to make that point of view easier to understand, easier to sell, and easier to believe.
That starts with formulation. It continues through sensory evaluation, benchmarking, positioning, brand identity, label language, and trade education. Each step should make the next one sharper and more precise.
For emerging brands, this product-first approach can save time, reduce costly mistakes, and create a stronger foundation for the U.S. market.
Before deciding what should go on the bottle, understand what is really in the bottle. Lead with the liquid, then follow with the label. That gives a brand its best chance for success at launch and beyond.
Jerald O’Kennard is President of Beverage Testing Institute / BevTest, an independent beverage research, marketing and consulting agency that has conducted and published blind tasted, reviews of wines, spirits, beers, and ready-to-drink beverages for five decades. BevTest works with producers, importers, retailers, and brand owners to test and improve product quality, competitive positioning, sensory performance, claims, packaging, and market viability.