Next best thing to watching the sun set?

Buying a drink that looks like one.

I came across Sunwink on holiday in LA last year and was sold on the spot. Cobalt glass catching the light, colour radiating. The product could have literally been anything, it was in my basket.

Sunwink makes ready-to-drink sparkling tonics built around organic superfoods and positioned around benefits like de-stressing, debloating, immunity and recovery.

I wouldn’t normally be browsing anywhere near that shelf, particularly on holiday, so the branding and packaging were totally doing their job.

Most brands in this category land in a similar place. Muted palettes, soft neutrals and familiar wellness cues. Nothing usually jumps out. Sunwink goes cobalt where others stay safe, using colour and light to grab attention before you’ve read a single word.

One in four Gen Z and Millennial drinkers plan to cut back on alcohol in the coming year, and what they’re moving into now increasingly looks like it belongs on the same table. Skipping a round used to come with the visual cue that something was missing. Now it doesn’t.

That matters because this category doesn’t come with built-in signals. Wine, beer and spirits have spent decades building recognisable cues around quality, taste and occasion. Functional drinks have to create that understanding for themselves.

You can see that shift happening across the category. Seedlip built its reputation through botanical illustration and glass. Lyre’s recently moved towards a more metallic-heavy look. Gordon’s and Tanqueray stay close to visual codes people already recognise.

It certainly worked on me. The bottle had my attention long before I knew what was inside it.

I swapped a Sunwink for a G&T that night and didn’t miss a thing. (apart from dehydration, midnight melodrama and singing love songs to houseplants).

Sometimes packaging isn’t competing against another brand but convincing people to cross the aisle entirely.