Girl Power: Alcoholic Drinks for Women

Cards and candy are nice, but this past Mother’s Day, some Target stores celebrated moms with a different treat: wine.

A three-shelf display strategically placed near the checkout held several dozen $9.99 bottles of MommyJuice, created by a female wine industry veteran who came up with the name after hearing her young children point to her wine glass and say, “That’s Mommy’s Juice!”

Target’s MommyJuice display comes at a time when Beam Global Spirits & Wine’s Skinnygirl brand has transformed the alcoholic beverage industry by giving women an alcoholic brand they can call their own. Skinnygirl has quickly expanded from ready-to-serve margaritas to reduced-calorie wine, vodka, sangria, a white cranberry cosmo and a ready to drink pina colada.

Joining Skinnygirl on retail shelves are a rising number of reduced-calorie and other types of female-friendly wines and spirits, including not only MommyJuice, but also wines like “Mommy’s Time Out” and “Diva”; as well as spirits like Little Black Dress vodka; Mike’s Lite Hard Lemonade malt beverage and Firefly’s Skinny Tea, tea flavored vodka made with the zero-calorie sweetener Truvia.

Adding momentum to the trend is the fact that more women hold high-level positions at alcoholic beverage businesses.

Women account for about 20% of winemakers, up from about 10% two decades ago, according to the Wine Institute, San Francisco, a public policy advocate for California wineries.

“Women are clearly becoming a more prominent part of the business,” said spokeswoman Gladys Horiuchi.

Take Cheryl Indelicato, a member of the Indelicato wine family and the DFV Wines business. She just launched HandCraft artisan wines for the “busy, modern woman.” HandCraft will donate $1 for every bottled purchased in 2012 to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

Another factor aiding the female-targeted wine and spirits business is that stereotypes of women and alcohol are fading, said Tom Pirko, managing director of Bevmark, Buellton, Calif.

Not too long ago, spirits marketers tiptoed around the female demographic because of the association with losing control and vulnerability. What has changed is that women now demand to be seen as equals when it comes to alcohol consumption, and marketers are responding.

“Now, it’s open season,” Pirko said of marketing alcoholic beverages to women.

Female-oriented drinks have changed since “Sex in the City” turned the Cosmopolitan into the must-have cocktail. Since about 85% of purchase decisions in the $12 to $15 range for wines are female driven, wine brands like MommyJuice and Mommy’s Time Out create an emotional connection with women.

“It lets women take possession and have something that’s all theirs,” Pirko said.

That’s what Cheryl Murphy Durz, vice president of marketing of Clos LaChance Wines, San Martin, Calif., had in mind when she created MommyJuice for her family’s winery. She wanted to create a brand that addressed women and the stresses they face.

“Almost everything I do is for the kids or my husband or my boss or the school or a friend/neighbor,” said Murphy. “A glass of wine is something that is truly just for me.” 

MommyJuice is currently sold in Target stores in Northern California, select Safeway stores, Stew Leonard’s and Brackett’s Market in Bath, Maine, among several other retailers.

The brand is conducive to food retail sales because women with children are its target market. Clos LaChance even caters to supermarket shoppers with clever materials that read, “Made for Mom’s Who Have Survived the Grocery Store Temper Tantrum.”