(HU) Erősebb, büszkébb és színesebb – Megújul a Cinzano Vermouth

Last month, Gruppo Campari used the 260th anniversary of Cinzano to mark the start of a new era for the vermouth and sparkling wine brand. Lucy Britner was in Turin with the MD of the company’s Italian Icons unit, Andrea Neri, and global director of sparkling wine & vermouth Biancamaria Sansone to get the low-down on the next steps for Cinzano.

Gruppo Campari has a proven track record for changing the fortunes of dusty old brands. Take Aperol: The firm used a key serve – the Aperol Spritz – and the rise of cocktail culture to propel the brand. In fact, during a half-year results presentation in August, CEO Bob Kunze-Concewitz hailed the “standout performance” of the brand, now the group’s largest with around 14% of Campari’s total sales in the six months to the end of June.

Kunze-Concewitz also shared a slide of Instagram posts, centred around the Aperol Spritz. One post, from US model Kate Upton, showed 96,740 likes.

Fast-forward a month to Turin and a group of journalists and bloggers are surrounded by carefully-curated, Instagram-centric scenes. From old tractors and rolling vineyard shots in nearby Langhe, where some of the brand’s sparkling wine comes from, to tours of vermouth’s home, Turin, in classic Italian cars, Campari wanted visitors to understand where Cinzano comes from.

“What we need to do is leverage in a positive way all of this heritage and the historical traditions – and put the focus on the craftsmanship and history – and use this as an opportunity to reinvent and reshape the brand,” Andrea Neri, MD Italian Icons, tells me. (The other two Italian Icons are Campari and Aperol.)

Brand Cinzano’s volumes are split roughly 50/50 between vermouth and sparkling wine.