Butterfly Cannon create the fanatically flavoursome Trøve, a new low ABV botanical spirit brand

Tapping into the post-Covid upsurge of interest in a more balanced lifestyle, Trøve is a range of lower ABV, calorie-light, botanical vodka spirit drinks. Distilled with real fruit and botanicals that amplify natural flavours, such as Raspberry with Lemongrass & Mint, Valencia Orange with Lime, and Green Apple with Ginger, to give the same complexity and mouthfeel as full-strength spirits. Premium drink brand owner Distil Plc came to us to build a brand around this unique product story that stood out in the growing low & no alcohol category.

Working with the team at Distil, we quickly realised that what set Trøve apart was their master distiller’s obsession with getting every last drop of flavour out of the real fruit used in its production, even if this meant raising a few eyebrows with his botanical combinations. This insight led to the brand story of ‘Fanatical About Flavour’, which was at the core of everything we designed.

A heavily textured ‘craft’ label stock with juicy, hand-painted illustrations of fruit brings the all-important taste appeal and captures the hands-on, traditional skills of the master distiller. But sliced up and mashed up with graphical patterns to create a contemporary collage of explosive flavour, leaves no doubt about his unconventional, maverick approach. Gold foil and blind debossed stamp details give quality reassurance.

At the heart of this flavour explosion sits the brand word-mark – layering up the unconventional edginess with dramatically modern, sans-serif letterforms featuring angled cuts, spot gloss UV and sharply bevelled embossing with deliberately offset gold key lines. The ownable ‘Ø’ of Trøve interacts with the sliced fruit illustrations and can also be used as a standalone device for digital.

The glass bottle is angular, smooth, chunky and easy to hold – the perfect backdrop for the bold, oversized label. A pale blond wooden cap is a last reminder of the craft that has gone into delivering full-on flavour that is light in calories and ABV.

Our thinking was collected into brand guidelines that are being used to roll out the brand identity across comms as Trøve builds on the success of gold and silver medals at The Spirits Business Low & No Masters 2021.

“As always, it’s been a pleasure to work with Butterfly Cannon. Their brand identity and packaging designs for Trøve beautifully capture the intense, natural fruit flavours that are distilled into the heart of our liquids, with the right lightness of touch for our low abv, low-calorie botanical spirits.” – Kate Alexander, Distil Plc Marketing & Operations Director