to official Grand Prix events and watching parties. “When we started working on Idle Hour, one of the first partnerships we dreamt about was the Grand Prix,” Idle Hour co-founder Ewen Pettit told Inside Retail.  “We knew that was where we wanted to be. Formula One is not just a racing sport, it’s a cultural sport. It may be surprising, but a lot of people who went to the Grand Prix a couple of weeks ago didn’t actually watch the race.” According to Pettit, many Grand Prix fans attend the event to engage in other parts of the festival: good food, cocktails, music, and social connection. “We want to reach those people, and experiences like the Grand Prix enable us to do that,” said Pettit. “We only launched in 2020, so we’re unbelievably thrilled with how quickly we’ve been able to make an impression on the market, so the job for the next year is to increase our availability and to be a part of those branded experiences. “It’s an ongoing relationship. It’s not just a race to us.” Culture of exploration One thing many markets around the world have enjoyed throughout the last few years is an explosion in handcrafted and boutique alcohol. This trend has been fed by a growing desire for new experiences from consumers, and a general willingness to try new things and say goodbye to familiar brands, said Pettit. “I’d call it a culture of exploration,” Pettit said. “Our business exists to capitalise on that culture. We’re not distillers by trade, what we do is see opportunities for drinkers to experiment and try new ideas, and build brands that will resonate with them.” In the case of Idle Hour, rather than following vodka’s pack leaders into being highly distilled, its rye-based vodka is only distilled once, and only to around 74 per cent alcohol. It also offers both filtered and unfiltered variants of its spirit. This means that rather than creating another neutral spirit, Idle Hour retains the tastes of its ingredients and is able to be used as a cocktail spirit. “What we wanted to do was apply the lessons from adjacent categories, like gin, bourbon and whiskey, and apply them to vodka,” Pettit told Inside Retail.  “I think the revolution in vodka is going to come from no longer treating it like a neutral spirit, and instead making it to have more character, more depth and more texture.” Pettit, who worked for international brand strategy agencies that worked with some of the world’s leading alcohol businesses, founded Idle Hour alongside Lachie Goldsworthy, formerly of Balter Brewery. The aim was to take the experiences the pair had from their time working across international markets, specifically the approach seen in many brown spirits, and applying it to a homegrown variety of a traditionally international drink. “When you think of vodka, there’s a lot of importance put on provenance. Made in Russia, or Poland, or Finland, for example,” Pettit said.  “Essentially, they’re trying to get vodka to be as close to pure alcohol as possible. But what really helps in Australia is that we’re permitted to distil to different specifications to have more character.”