Marco Ferrari remembers his years in the U.S. with Bacardi and Stolichnaya. But for the last 13 months, he’s been ensconced in Bologna, Italy, busy expanding
‘s U.S. business to 10,000 cases this year from 2,000 cases two years ago.
Amaro Montenegro is the No. 1 Amaro in Italy, where it’s enjoyed after dinner.
It’s gained a bit over 10,000 cases by focusing on New York and California. We were surprised, given its No. 1 position in Italy, that there wasn’t any special effort at the moment to sell into New Jersey and Philadelphia, where it is “very established in the Italian-American Community,” Ferrari replied. But that wouldn’t grow volume much from the 2,000-case plateau of a couple of years ago.
“There’s huge difference between way Italians drink Amari at the end of a meal and how Americans typically consume bev/al. The “Italian community tends to be a narrow market” in the U.S., he said.
That’s why he and his staff — just three people, plus Montenegro’s importer, Total Beverage Solutions of Charleston, S.C. — are focused on bartenders.
“We jumped on spontaneous success and high level of interest from bartending community. We’re trying to embrace what’s happening.
“We’ve created a community of bartenders — eight in New York, four in Los Angeles — from some of the best bars,” he says. “They are genuinely passionate about the brand. And they have amazing followings on social media.”
“They play with our drink, see what it can do. They’ve managed to create some signature cocktails, including the MonteNegroni, MonteManhattan and MonteMule.”
Working with bartenders will open the door to consumers, Ferrari said. He believes the brand will be adopted first by the more experimental consumers, so starting late next year, he will begin to focus on consumers. But 2016, he made clear, “very much will be a bartender strategy.”
“We’re starting to see interest from the larger chains,” he said. But that can be dangerous: It is just as deadly to grow too fast — to outpace your manufacturing and supply chain capability — as it is to lose sales.
“We have a very fine balance between the complexity of 40 herbs and spices.” Not only does that require care in macerating, boiling and distilling but it also means you can’t grow a brand until the farmers who supply the raw materials can keep up.
Still, he’d like to be in some of the chains. “Our decision will be based on velocity increasing in the next year or so. Every point of distribution that we’re in is rotating faster. Our top seven accounts are selling incredible amounts compared to brands that have been around longer than we.”
He’s also seeing rapid growth in Canada, the UK, Australia. “It seems like the English-speaking countries are most excited by the brand.”
The product is key, Ferrari told us. “We want bartenders to focus on our quality. We recently received a gold medal from the Beverage Tasting Institute.”
But it also has a story. “We celebrated our 130th anniversary. During Prohibition Amari was perceived as having pharmaceutical properties, although we can’t promote that any more. That brings emotion to our product.”
We asked about the choice of Total Beverage Solutions as the U.S. importer. “They have interesting success stories in beers, wines and spirits. They put together an interesting business plan for the next few years. And there’s a great cultural fit.
“We have similar values. As brand owners, we believe we need to be the ones supporting our brand, investing for its long-term success. TBS also is investing behind the brand. They are results driven. They value the quality of people over quantity.”