Altos is to double its ready-to-serve cocktail offer by adding a strawberry flavoured pre-mix margarita.
Altos Strawberry Margarita (rsp: £15/75cl) will roll out in Asda and Tesco as well as on Amazon and Gopuff this month, before rolling out across the wider grocery channel later this year.
It was made using Altos’ 100% agave Plata tequila, triple sec and agave syrup, before being infused with the flavour of “ripe strawberries”, said the brand.
It offered “subtle strawberry sweetness with a perfectly balanced finish,” it added.
The NPD follows the introduction of Altos Lime Margarita in February 2024.
The ready-to-serve cocktail had “successfully recruited a younger, more price conscious consumer looking for an easy and minimal effort solution for margaritas”, Altos owner Pernod Ricard UK said.
In the last year, the tipple had amassed sales of £1.7m, establishing itself as the number one bottled margarita cocktail in the off-trade, it revealed. [NIQ 52 we 4 January 2025].
With a growing roster of ready-to-serve cocktails, Altos was able to offer shoppers an “affordable entry point” to the tequila category, Pernod Ricard House of Tequila (HoT) CEO Michael Merolli told The Grocer.
“The 75cl bottle is at a lower price than a bottle of Altos Plata so it is a great way to encourage people to try [tequila],” Merolli said.
Should Strawberry Margarita prove successful, Altos could further expand its ready-to-serve range with more flavours in the future, he hinted.
“We want to make sure that it works in the right way and that people are entering the brand to try Plata, or Reposado,” he said. “We have some innovation in the pipeline and a third flavour that is ready to go, but first we have to analyse the results from the first two [launches].”
UK a ‘key’ tequila market
Altos is the third largest tequila in UK grocery. Its sales are up by 34.4% to £7.1m [NIQ 52 we 22 March 2025].
The UK was an increasingly important market for Pernod Ricard’s HoT, Merolli said, citing the threat posed by tariffs set to be imposed by US president Donald Trump on Mexican imports from this month.
“We still don’t know a lot of things [about tariffs] but it’s not good to be dependent on one market,” he said. “It’s not clear what the effect on price will be yet but there will be an impact for sure. I’m not sure the brands can absorb all of the impact on price, especially in the US at the moment where there is high inflation and the market is not that dynamic anymore.”
“We have to be successful in the US but we want to grow in the rest of the world. For Altos, the UK is one of the key markets.”
HoT was therefore increasing its investment in the UK market, having last year given Altos its TV debut, Merolli said.
“This is not a short-term bet; we have a sustained plan for the next three to five years,” he added.
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