The Zoncello Limoncello Spritz. Image courtesy Zonzo Estate

By Meg Riley

When Zonzo Estate launched its spritzy blend of Limoncello and Prosecco in March last year, it hoped to capture the attention of younger drinkers and pay homage to memories of an Italian summer. What Zonzo didn’t expect, was to sell over one million bottles in the space of a year, and be scrambling to secure the packaging to keep up with the exponential demand. Now that the dust has somewhat settled and the lemon has begun to leave his lungs, Zonzo Estate director Rod Micallef talks to Meg Riley about the spritz’s shock success.

Rod Micallef is the director at Zonzo Estate, a winery, restaurant and event venue in Victoria’s Yarra Valley. Over the past 12 months, Zonzo has become synonymous with its innovative Prosecco product: the Zoncello Limoncello Spritz; a blend of house-made limoncello and sparkling wine.

No sooner had the product been bottled and launched, the Zoncello began to take off with a ferocity not seen all too often in the wine industry at the time. The bottles of spritz were selling so quickly that Zonzo’s packaging suppliers couldn’t keep up.

Micallef first learnt how to make Limoncello, a lemon-flavoured Italian digestif, from the father of one of his friends when he was just 19. Although he continued to make the spirit well into his adult life, Micallef dismissed the pleas from friends and family to produce limoncello commercially, as he was worried he would not be able to replicate the quality on a larger scale.
When the pandemic lockdowns hit Victoria leaving many to distil their thoughts, Micallef began researching the viability of commercial-scale for the limoncello, and decided to take the leap.

“I spent many nights peeling lemons,” he recalled. It was during one of these late-night lemon-peeling stints that he was struck with the idea to make the limoncello into a spritz.

“While I was peeling lemons, I would dream about other things we could perhaps do with limoncello,” he said.

“I did some research, and we could not find any other limoncello spritzes—bottled, canned, or anything—anywhere in the world. And I thought ‘surely not, someone’s had to have done this’, but they hadn’t.”

The product launched in March 2023, and was available in Dan Murphy’s stores nationally by late September of the same year. By the end of December 2023, it was the top selling wine product at Dan Murphy’s.

At one point, Zonzo attempted to define exactly who its consumer was, however Micallef said the drink’s popularity appeared to span across generations, from those new to alcoholic beverages to those who had been drinking for decades.

Micallef suspects this wide-reaching appeal could be due in part to nostalgic or emotive memories associated with the spirit—many peoples’ first encounter with limoncello was likely as a complimentary digestif after a restaurant meal, or perhaps on holiday in Italy, he reasoned, so perhaps this was behind their fond associations.

With the addition of Zonzo’s Prosecco, the limoncello spritz took off. A new product both in the world of limoncello and wine, the spritz is 9% alcohol, and classed as a wine product.

Capturing a market

Working at the helm of Zonzo Estate for over 17 years, Micallef had run into his share of challenges in the hospitality industry already, although his focus had not always been on wine.

“I didn’t understand the wine business very clearly, because it was all new to me,” he said.

In an attempt to understand their consumers, Micallef invested heavily in researching Zonzo’s wine consumers.

“What we found was to capture an existing wine lover and bring them over to our brand was near impossible, it was so hard,” said Micallef.

“Our sales for anyone above 45 were like 2%,” he said.

Recruiting consumers over 45 to Zonzo Estate wine was a difficult battle, Micallef explained, because these consumers already had their set favourite wines.

“They might like their Curly Flat Chardonnay or their Mount Mary Pinot, and to get them to even buy a bottle and try our reds and whites was near impossible, it just wasn’t happening,” he said.

“The younger generation of drinkers weren’t interested in red and white wines, and are probably still not, quite frankly.

“So we thought: we need to revolutionise this a little bit—we need to bring some fun products into our range so we can try and achieve some new age wine drinkers, and try and attach them to our brand.”

“[Then] when they’re ready and their palates are developed and hopefully they want to move on to reds and whites, we will capture that audience.”

Zonzo’s mission to appeal to younger consumers with an element of ‘fun’ began before the Zoncello, first with a pink Moscato, which “wasn’t revolutionary”, Micallef noted.

Following this, they launched Bellina, a peach-flavoured bellini combining peach nectar and Prosecco, believed to be the first bottled Australian bellini to market. This was a “superstar” product for Zonzo. As with any thriving product, Micallef said others were quick to pick up on the bellini’s success.

“In beverage there are a lot of fast followers…you’re not alone for long.”

“I believe now there’s over 12 Australian bellinis,” he said. “Ours is still strong and it’s still doing all right, but once the others come in they all take a little percentage here and there, and it is what it is.”

Then came the Zoncello Spritz. To say the product was a hit would be somewhat of an understatement.

“In its first year of production, we sold over a million bottles,” said Micallef.

“We have actual stats that prove that we are getting the new-age wine drinker,” said Micallef. “Those stats come from Dan Murphy’s.”

“And I hope that one day, the wine industry will really love us for it, because we’re bringing people back into the category.”

New heights and hot air balloons

A glance at the success of Zoncello may have many assuming that the business spent a fortune marketing the product in its early days, but Micallef explained that they never had the chance.

“Zoncello has been our least-ever marketed product,” he said.

Although its success far surpassed Zonzo Estate’s previous wine products, Micallef said the first Zoncello branded passenger hot air balloon was not due to arrive until May 2024, over a year and a million bottles after the product first hit the market.
Zoncello only had one branded hot air balloon in that interim time—not fit for passengers and only flown on two occasions.

There is no denying that this marketing spend is still well out of reach for many. However, what is important to note when assessing the marketing spend on this product, no matter how exorbitant, is that compared to Zonzo’s marketing spend on other products, it was still far less.

“We go all out on marketing,” said Micallef. “I spend more on marketing then I make on sales […] because I believe in building brand and [that] the brand is the power.

“This is the funny story […] we say we sold a million bottles in the first year, and it all sounds terrific. But I’ve never been so busy to be so broke in my life.

“The thing is, producing that much so rapidly and adapting to that rapid production increase gave us a lot of cash flow issues.”

As the business owner, Micallef explained that the explosive rate of success effectively tied his hands—and his funds from investing in marketing the product.

“Cash flow was all going into buying bottles and muselets and corks and stickers and lemons—there was no cash flow left.

“I’ve never seen invoices like that in my life,” he explained. “I was paying invoices of over a million dollars in one invoice for bottles and corks. For me, it was so scary.

“It was new to us […] we hadn’t had that success before, and nor did we expect it.”

With a pay cycle of 300 days between purchasing the glass bottles, producing the spritz and then finally selling the product and receiving payment, Micallef explained that he didn’t have the money on hand to advertise the way he normally would. In spite of this, he said the investment in strong packaging worked as a form of advertising in lieu of other marketing ventures.

“We design well, and we love making beautiful products,” said Micallef. “And shelf presence speaks for itself.”

Although Zonzo didn’t pursue its usual channels for paid advertising for the Zoncello, Micallef said they leant heavily into small-scale influencer marketing.

“We did a launch party where we had about 40 influencers, some media, and then they did the rest. We’re so grateful to them for supporting our brand, and really getting behind us.”

This support from micro influencers helped the product gain traction organically—traction like Zonzo had never experienced before.

“We were getting that many tags a day, it was out of control.”

Liftoff

In September 2023, when the product hit shelves in Dan Murphy’s, Micallef said he was lost for what to forecast in terms of manufacturing for December. He was advised by the retailer to aim for roughly the same volume as the Bellina, ‘plus a little bit more’.

In December 2023, just three months later, the Zoncello spritz was selling 100 pallets in a week at Dan Murphy’s alone.

“It was chaos.”

In a desperate attempt to keep up with demand, the spritz was packaged in a variety of different formats.

“It went out with a plain cork, it went out with a plain muselet, it went in a different glass bottle at one stage. We couldn’t get a bottle line to commit to that many bottles for us,” said Micallef.

Zonzo was sending the liquid to three different bottling lines at once in an effort to keep up with the sales. Some of the bottling lines also had specific requirements which warranted tweaks to the packaging—Micallef recalled one bottling line required them to have a foil hood on the bottle, and so they had to design a hood to fit the packaging before the product could be bottled there.

In keeping with the product’s nod to Italian summers, the hood was designed to look like a folded-up umbrella reminiscent of those seen on the Amalfi coast.

In spite of Zonzo’s best efforts, for three weeks in December 2023 the Zoncello spritz sold out entirely.

“I’d love to see what our sales would have been if it didn’t,” said Micallef.

Having now adjusted to the demand for the spritz, Micallef said the estate is well and truly on top of all its manufacturing and scheduling, and is looking ahead to the coming months.

“Who knows what this summer is going to bring for that product?” he said. “I don’t know. There’s a lot [of lemon-flavoured spritzes] out now, […] but I think we’ve still got first-to-market advantage—a lot of people love the brand.”

“It wouldn’t take much for an Aperol Spritz to bowl me over and bring one out on their own—because they’ve got the cash to do whatever they want—but I’m really happy that we could make this bit of a change in the Australian wine industry anyway.”

Although the sudden growth was a bit of ‘shock to the system’ for Zonzo Estate, Micallef said that the team all rolled up their sleeves and rose to the challenge, peeling more lemons than any of them ever expected.

“We’re saying that we’ve got lemon-lined-lungs now,” Micallef laughed, adding that they’d all developed suspiciously robust immune systems since.

Recruiting the younger drinker

“For way too long, wine has been made to be too complex. There’s a lot of barriers for someone to start drinking wine,” said Micallef. “There are books called ‘Wine for Dummies’, for example. It shouldn’t be that complex to get into.”

“This is something that’s consumable—there’s no other book that exists that says ‘Pasta for Dummies’ or what have you. It’s a consumable good, it shouldn’t be made that complex.”

This could be a barrier to younger consumers especially, Micallef said, as the invisible rules may make wine feel confusing or intimidating.

“I’ve seen it, because I’ve run a restaurant: young people are nervous to order wines.

“I don’t think it’s a money thing at all. I think they feel they don’t have enough knowledge to enter [the wine category], and they feel that you have to probably be a bit older and more mature to understand wine.

“I speak to our younger staff about it, and they say exactly that: they’re scared.”

Through the success of Zoncello, Zonzo has seen growth of roughly 370% on its other wine products.

“So our goal of achieving a new age wine drinker that hopefully wants to try some of our other products is absolutely working.

“I also think they will trust our brand more, because we gave them something they enjoyed once, so they’ll try something else.”

“I hope that we’re leading the way for others and I know we are because we’ve made enough noise that Treasury, De Bortoli, Yellowtail, they’re all coming out with Limoncello spritzes, according to what rumours are telling me. So we must have made some change.”

Since the release of the Zoncello Spritz in March 2023, a number of other wine products have appeared on the market capitalising on the success of the limoncello spritz.

De Bortoli released its “Limoncello Spritz”—made with Prosecco and ‘bright lemon flavours’— in July 2024, acknowledging that the product was in response to an observed market trend.

“According to Innova Market Insights, citrus flavours continue to dominate, comprising 32% of the beverage market—a trend De Bortoli Wines proudly embraces with the Limoncello Spritz,” the company said upon launching the product.
Australian Vintage was also quick to monitor the popularity of the Zoncello, releasing its own “Lemsecco”—a blend of Prosecco and ‘real lemons’—in September 2024. According to Australian Vintage, its own research showed that one in three new wine consumers enter the category through a sweeter or fruitier wine.

“Lemsecco taps into the rising trend of fruit-forward, easy-drinking wines that resonate with younger consumers who increasingly gravitate towards fun and flavoured beverages,” said Australian Vintage in its release of the Lemsecco.

“Using real lemons, Lemsecco meets younger expectations with a product that’s not only enjoyable but isn’t overly sweet like its competitors.”

At the end of September, Zonzo also introduced a 200ml canned format for the Zoncello Spritz at Dan Murphy’s, where the cans retail for $25.99 for a pack of four (at 8% alcohol each), compared to one 750ml bottle, which contains 9% alcohol and retails for $21.99.

This article was originally published in the November 2024 issue of the Australian & New Zealand Grapegrower & Winemaker. To find out more about our monthly magazine, or to subscribe, click here!

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