IESSI has what so many non-alc brands lack: complexity
This is a brand with true depth of flavor and a commitment to design that very few others can match.
This is an excerpt from our newly released 2026 Report: The New Rules of Brand Building in Bev/Alc. It’s our most comprehensive look at the industry yet. And it’s free to download ↓
Like a lot of good stories, IESSI starts with family. Founder Nicolas Maiarelli grew up in Udine, in northeastern Italy, drinking aperitivo and learning how to make amaro alongside his Nonna. In 2023, that family recipe evolved into IESSI: an alcohol-free aperitif made using bitter orange, ginger, rhubarb, gentian and chilli pepper.
That’s a powerful list of ingredients and indeed, IESSI is a powerful drink: flavorful, bitter, and defiantly not a lesser version of its alcoholic forebears.
Bitter is here to stay
The interest in bitter flavors isn’t a resurgence — they’ve been around for centuries — but bitter is certainly having a moment. That’s very noticeable in the alcohol-free space. Or, at least, in the more successful alcohol-free brands.
“When it comes to alcohol-free gin or alcohol-free whatever, you lack the strength, length and depth in the flavors,” says Romain Llobet, who joined as Partner and Strategic Director at IESSI after 23 years in the food and bev business.
“When it comes to bitter it’s fantastic, because you’re happy, you have flavors, you don’t feel like you should have drunk something else. I think in alcohol-free right now, if there’s no flavor, people are abandoning the idea.”
For IESSI, flavor is a story. There’s an “arc” to the drink, as Nicolas says: a beginning, a middle and an end. That requires complexity, and bitterness delivers that instantly.
“You can finish a drink and feel satiated,” he says. “Whereas if the flavor’s too light, you risk entering the realm of a soft drink.”
People don’t want to be preached to
That complex, bitter flavor is one part of the IESSI brand. The other is how it presents itself in a sector that often pushes its product as an “alternative” to alcohol, or a “better choice”. Frequently, the messaging feels preachy. IESSI is anything but.
“First of all, we’re not a wellness brand,” says Nicolas. “We don’t talk about sobriety. We’re not in the business of telling you what you should and shouldn’t drink. We’re about making sure that, in those moments that you don’t want to drink or drink a lower ABV, that you have an exceptional and out of the ordinary experience ... we never talk about sobriety. We never impose this idea that drinking is bad. For us, IESSI is a brand built around being inclusive in those social moments.”
Let’s talk about the branding
That deep ruby liquid. The bright orange label. Those sloping glass shoulders. It’s clear that IESSI’s branding and packaging has been designed with a lot of love. Nicolas says that, from the get-go, he wanted it to live “in the realm of premium spirits”, taking reference points from beautiful bottles of bitters, mezcals, rums and gins, rather than sodas.
IESSI needed to be both new and timeless — something that feels like an instant classic, but that won’t seem dated in two years’ time. And Nicolas was clear: absolutely no lazy nostalgia or clichéd Italian visual references. “It’s not an easy brief,” he admits.
He brought in Florent Gomez Siso, founder of studio AD-REM, who saw the liquid and instantly knew the Pantone reference he wanted to use for the label. (By the way, that exact colour of the liquid is very important. Nicolas says they experienced some variation in the earlier batches due to normal variations in natural fruit juice, and now use a natural carrot concentrate to get a more uniform, rich red).
“We wanted to create a brand that feels contemporary, but the other thing I wanted was to be bold,” he says. “The fact that the label is wrap-around with big bold text and the colour really stands out — when you see a bottle on a backbar, that’s all you see.
“We want to own who we are. Just because it’s an alcohol-free product, doesn’t mean we have to be meek and slink to the back of a shelf.”
IESSI’s strategy: win over the bars first
When Nicolas first launched the brand, he’d pack his backpack full of bottles and walk it round to bars in Paris. His ambition is for people to discover IESSI in the absolute best restaurants, wine and cocktail bars. “If it’s on the menu and you trust the sommelier, the chef, the bartender, even if you’ve never heard of the brand you know it’s been ‘vetted’, for lack of a better term,” he explains.
Today, that’s how they land most customers. Nicolas says they get a huge number of people trying it in a restaurant and ordering it online, and for them that’s the best feeling, and the perfect story.
“You know there’s the expression: it took me 10 years to be an overnight success,” he says. “I hope that we follow the same trajectory with iessi. We’ll plug away, 10 years, restaurant by restaurant, bartender by bartender, and then we’ll reach critical mass.”
Alc-free’s reckoning is coming
Alcohol-free brands are going to live and die on flavor. You can’t rely on being a mixer or a secondary ingredient — your base-level product has to be exceptional.
And Nicolas has a harsh diagnosis for anyone in the alc-free sector that isn’t hitting that mark:
“Half the products on the market today don’t deserve to be on the market in five or 10 years’ time.”
NEW RULES FROM IESSI
Flavor is everything
Complex, multi-layered tastes are mandatory for any alc-free brand.
Branding is extremely seductive
Don’t underestimate the power of colour, type and form.
Win over the bars, and everyone else follows
Your on-premise relationships are the driving force for brand discovery in the wider world
The New Rules is a labor of love by nihilo.agency
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