“Mixology, cocktails, hospitality are in my blood – it’s a family thing,” Sahil Beri says when asked about his rise to the top of Innovation Beverage Group where he is now Chairman, interim Chief Executive Officer and Master Blender. “Both my brother and I have worked in the industry but it started with our dad,” he continues. “He was in the Middle East in the 1980s where he worked as a bartender, before eventually becoming food and beverage manager. Then eight or nine years later he moved to Australia.” Which is where the Innovation Beverage Group story began.

In the early days it was Beri senior, Anil and son Raj running the company which was then called Australian Boutique Spirits. Sahil was studying to be a pharmacist at the time. While he enjoyed the drinks and conviviality of the industry, he had no intentions of joining the family business, “I was adamant that I was going to do something on my own,” he laughs.

However, he did enjoy a taste of what was to come. “My dad and brother knew I had a talent for blending drinks, so they brought me on board to create a range of bitters.” Not just any old bitters but Australian Bitters, the brand that currently holds a 45% market share in Australia, the second largest market for bitters worldwide.

It made sense given Sahil’s pharmaceutical know-how and appreciation of mixology. The task in hand was to create a bitters range specially formulated to complement Australia’s unofficial national drink – Lemon, Lime and Bitters. “The product that everyone was using was imported all the way from Trinidad,” Sahil informs. “It didn’t make sense, so we decided to make our own. We wanted it to have a similar flavour profile to Angostura [the brand in question], because that’s what everyone here was used to. However, we wanted to give it a twist of our own and make it here in Australia.”

It worked. Australian Bitters, or Aussie Bitters as they’re affectionately called were such a hit that brother Raj pitched the range to Coca-Cola Europacific Partners in Australia and they took it on straight away.” But while the bitters were gaining momentum back home, Sahil was in London working in hospitality. “I’d finished my exams, spent some time in community pharmacy and had become disillusioned with it, it felt like retail to me. So I took time off, headed to London and worked in a bar. With my background in bitters, I helped them to launch a range of tonics and sodas which they produced in-house. ”

When he returned to Sydney 15 months later, his father was ready to retire and wanted his sons to take over the business. “With everything I’d learned over the years, I realised there was a lot I could do and I jumped straight into it,” he says excitedly. “That’s when we changed to the current business which focuses on a range of alcoholic beverages – not just bitters.”

That was in 2016. Since then, the company has grown exponentially, not only developing products but manufacturing and marketing them too. In fact, the award-winning portfolio currently includes 13 alcoholic and non-alcoholic ranges, all of which look to follow the lead of Australian Bitters by disrupting age-old brands. Sahil has also grown with the company, rising through the ranks and taking on positions as Master Blender, Chief Operating Officer, Chairman and now interim Chief Executive Officer.

While he admits that he misses sitting in his lab, “tinkering around and creating products, something I only get to do 5-10% of my time these days,” he laments, he is proving that he’s also adept at propelling the company beyond Australia and into the consciousness, and glasses of discerning drinkers around the world. Recent big wins at the Los Angeles International Spirits Competition should certainly help. The Aromatic Bitters was awarded up Best in Class with an impressive 94 points, followed by Gold for the Grapefruit and Orange Bitters, with one of the other brands, Bittertales, winning Gold for its Aromatic Bitters.

This article was orginially published on the Cocktail Lovers