COME the end of October, the Kingston-based distributor of alcoholic beverages Select Brands Limited will launch its newest product, a sorrel-infused Stone’s ginger wine, one year after acquiring the brand through a company called Ringtail International, which it jointly owns with Barbados-based Stansfeld Scott, a wines and spirits distributor.

A mock-up shows the iconic green Stone’s ginger wine bottle remains, but the sorrel-infused wine will now have a rusty red label and cap.

“We don’t want to share everything today, but over the next couple weeks, you [will] go to the supermarket and see something new on the shelf…”David McConnell, co-managing director of Select Brands, said before his voice trailed off into a whisper as his co-Managing Director Andrew Desnoes showed the mock-up of what the packaging for the new sorrel-infused Stone’s ginger wine will look like.

“In the mind of the consumer, Stone’s is ginger. It’s wine, but it’s ginger wine. When we did our research, overwhelmingly what came back to us, is that if we are to extend the product line for Stone’s, what other product goes well with ginger?” Desnoes chipped in, but paused mid-sentence to ask, what his body language suggests, a rhetorical question used to only emphasise why sorrel was chosen as the first new ingredient to create an innovation for Stone’s ginger wine brand. That innovation is to be released almost exactly one year after the global property rights for Stone’s ginger wine was bought for an undisclosed sum by its Ringtail joint venture from Accolade Wines, an Australian company.

But innovation is not the only thing Select Brands is doing with the Stone’s branded ginger wine.

“The biggest move is shifting the products destined for the US to be produced in Jamaica,” McConnell pointed out. Previously, Stone’s ginger wines that are sold in the United States were produced in United Kingdom where the product was developed by Joseph Stone around 1740. The transfer meant 30,000 cases of the product that were bottled in UK were now being bottled in Jamaica, and McConnell was quick to point out, “with Jamaican ginger”. The bottling plant in Jamaica turns out more than 100,000 cases of the product each year.

“Remember, out of our production facility in Jamaica, we supply all of the Caribbean, Jamaica and the US and now we are adding a new product…[and] we have high hopes for this product.”

“The next one will be sending the 200 ml size to the UK,” Desnoes added as he revealed that the first container load of the product in the 200ml size landed in Bristol last Thursday and will have a small campaign highlighting the product to consumers.

This marks the fourth year in which Stone’s ginger wine is produced in Jamaica. The company said it was “a COVID project” that got delayed due to logistics issues.

“But we launched in 2020 and have been producing products from there since then consistently,” McConnell pointed out. But Stone’s is not the only thing Select Brands produces in its production facility.

“We also do Irie Moss rum cream and more recently, created some more products aimed at the hotel industry,” he added.

The products targeting the hotel industry come under the Prestige brand, a range of mix liquer, which, along with Irie Moss, was developed and is owned by Select Brands.

“Irie Moss is a niche product now with a relatively small base but growing exponentially, so we are very happy with that and it is going on its path in that rum cream subcategory. Prestige is less than a year old, and we have won over the hotels and it is going very, very well with sales just growing and growing every month. And with Stone’s, we are unbelievably happy and proud with what is going on with Stone’s. We are now a year into owning the brand, we have been manufacturing it for four years and one year now owning it, we have been distributing it for 10 years…and with immense pride, the very first thing we did with Stone’s was to bring the production for the sales in US which was manufactured in the UK, to being produced right here on Spanish Town Road.”

Going full time into manufacturing is a sea change for an entity which, 13 years ago, was started to import and distribute wines in Jamaica, after the founders left J Wray & Nephew in 2011, three years after it was sold as part of the Lascelles de Mercado group to CL Financial, a Trinidad-based insurer, which at the time of purchasing, Lascelles de Mercado was a conglomerate with dozens of companies in dozens of countries.

Both McConnell and Desnoes have well-recognised last names in Jamaica’s wines and spirits market with their ancestors being among those who built the sector. At the time, they said, a lot of changes were taking place in the industry they know best.

“But when we were starting in 2011, we weren’t concerned with those things. We just said the market was in need of somebody new to bring something exciting and new to the consumer and we started to focus on a really select portfolio, finding some of the nicest wines and spirits, and even Tortuga rum cakes and bring them back to the country,” McConnell said.

But the two said they still faced initial scepticism but quickly dismissed them in the minds of their customers by going “above and beyond” to satisfy their demands.

Now, 13 years on and with the company to enter its 14th year in early November, the duo said they believe they have a healthy mix of products, though they are constantly on the look to add new lines to their portfolio.

“Apart from doing everything we are doing, we have added a new partner, Treasury Wine, and their main brand in Jamaica is 19 Crimes. So we started selling that in July in the market and that is going very well,” McConnell continued. Treasury Wine Estates is an Australian global winemaking and distribution business with headquarters in Melbourne. Its 19 Crimes red wine was previously distributed in Jamaica by Betco Premier Limited, a wine purveyor.

Growth for Select Brands also involves its people. From a small group, it now has over 100 employees and is quickly outgrowing the space on Spanish Town Road in St Andrew that it has been in since inception in 2011.

“We have expanded to the point where we can’t expand any more, and a few years ago, we started looking at where we are going to be as we are growing and we have secured lands out at Caymanas [in St Catherine] and are now in the final stages of design with build out to start next year for our new headquarters, warehouse and factory.”

McConnell said the space at the new facility should triple the warehouse space for the company with it to be designed for purpose. That facility is expected to be opened in 2026, in time for its 15th anniversary,” Desnoes noted.

Andrew Desnoes, co-managing director of Select Brands, shows off the 200ml Stone’s Ginger Wine that the company now exports to the UK. (Photo: Karl Mclarty)

MCCONNELL…we also do Irie Moss rum cream and more recently, created some more products aimed at the hotel industry. (Photo: Karl Mclarty)

The headquarters of Select Brands on Spanish Town Road, St Andrew. (Photo: Karl Mclarty)

Select Brands’ newest product, Stone’s Sorrel Green Ginger Wine.

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