ProsEcho Falls

The sparkling wine will be available in standard 70cl and mini 20cl bottles

Echo Falls is moving into prosecco with its latest release: ProsEcho Falls.

The sparkling wine (11% abv) is due to hit the market in late October, with an eye to tapping drinkers outside the Echo Falls brand’s light wine heartlands. It will hit shelves in standard 70cl and mini 20cl bottles (rsp: £10/70cl).

The brand “overindexes with wine newbies and our research shows that a recognised brand is important to this group’s purchasing decisions”, said Echo Falls brand manager Laurence Hinton. “Prosecco has been successful at attracting new shoppers to the category but with prosecco penetration at only 32.8% of the population, there’s still plenty of room for growth.”

Accolade is touting the NPD as mixing well with Echo Falls Summer Berries Vodka, which it launched in November 2017. It suggested it could “match up with ‘party and release’ moments when, for most newbies, cocktails and spirits are the drink of choice”.

The launch will be backed with branded ProsEcho falls sippers in the on-trade, as well as “unique serves for Christmas and tactically through the year”, said Accolade. 

It’s the latest in a series of “disruptive” launches from the brand, which, as well as moving into spirits with Summer Berries Vodka, took the brand into bag-in-box with a double variant festival-ready pack containing two 1.5-litre bags of its Fruit Fusion Summer Berries and Peach & Mango flavours. It also signed up as the official wine of TV phenomenon Love Island.

Echo Falls’ core range has suffered in the mults over the past year, both Sainsbury’s and Morrisons having slashed numerous SKUs from their shelves since the spring.

The brand ranked 12th in The Grocer’s recent ranking of Britain’s Biggest Alcohol Brands. However, its value sales were down £16.2m year on year to £163.1m - a 9% dip on volumes down 11.7% [Nielsen 52 w/e 21 April 2018].

The news comes as take home sales of Prosecco have grown by a cool £23.4m (6.5%) to £384.8m over the last year. However, this was a significantly smaller increase than the prior year, when sales grew an eye-watering £53.3m (17.3%) [Kantar Worldpanel 52 w/e 9 September 2018].