THE symbol of dinner parties of the 1970s, it was as fashionable as flares and Swiss fondues.

Now Mateus Rose, the Portuguese wine in the distinctive flat bottle, is making a comeback, spurred by a television advertising campaign aimed at young female consumers.

The switch to rosé wine – sales increased last year by 29% – has come largely at the expense of lager, and is part of a wider move by the big drinks companies to create a tipple that is more appealing to women.

Britain’s biggest brewer, Scottish & Newcastle, last year launched Jacques, a fruit-based alcoholic drink that is being marketed as an alternative to wine. Next month it will launch a pear “cider” that will be pushed by a big marketing campaign in the New Year.

Red Bull, the company behind the energy drink of the same name, has begun distributing Sabai, a pomegranate-flavoured wine spritzer drink. It is being sold in Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

And C&C Group, the Irish drinks company, has just launched a low-calorie variant of its Magners cider brand in the UK, initially on sale exclusively in Asda stores.

Although the image of women out on the town binge-drinking has been given prominence in some sections of the media, drinks industry executives believe they could do more to develop products that are more specifically aimed at females.

Nigel Trood, managing director of Red Bull in the UK, said that whereas a guy going to the pub after work might opt to drink a beer or two, women tended to choose a glass of wine or a gin and tonic, which have much higher alcohol content. He argues that there is a big gap in the market for drinks that have a nice taste but are lower in alcohol, hence the creation of Sabai, which is 4.5% ABV (alcohol by volume), similar to lager. While it might be difficult to pigeonhole, being neither an alcopop or a wine, Trood said: “This could be an amazing category.”

The way these new drinks are being marketed is an attempt to capture the current vogue for food and drinks that seem health-ier or are derived from natural ingredients.

While soft-drink manufacturers have made great efforts to get to grips with the health agenda, the makers of alcoholic drinks appear to have found it harder to find more acceptable replacements for the much-maligned alcopops and other premixed products, known in the industry as RTDs (ready to drink). Trood is optimistic about the prospects for his curious hybrid, but accepts that “there is not enough product out there to put on shelves to create a category”.

Tim Seager, managing director of Scottish & Newcastle in the UK, said that the female “opportunity” has “never been as widely understood and targeted” as it is today. That coupled with an ever-growing focus on health is driving the innovation team at the company.

“If you go back 10 years, what was the main concern in people’s lives? It was all about security and peace. Now, it is about health. It’s quite a major topic.”

But rather than aggressively developing brands specifically for women, Seager said the challenge was to create new drinks that can be enjoyed by both sexes on “shared occasions”, to use the marketing terminology, such as meal times.

Cider, which along with rosé has enjoyed staggering sales growth over the past couple of years, is one of those products that fits the bill.

But that has not stopped C&C Group from launching Magners Light in the UK, following similar launches in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. It is a product that the company cheerfully admits is far more appealing to women than it is to men.

Maurice Pratt, chief executive of C&C, said: “Magners Light is sold in 330ml bottles rather than the regular pint-size bottles you get in the on-trade, which is a further sign of it being a female drink rather than a male drink.”

C&C, which is expected to announce a 34% drop in operating profits this week, is also well aware that “light” beer and cider have always struggled in the UK. Consumers assume – wrongly– that light means lower alcohol when in fact it means fewer calories. Pratt is quick to point out that Magners Light has the same ABV as the regular cider.

Whether consumers will ever appreciate the distinction, as they have done in America where light beers have taken a larger slice of the market, is a moot point. The evidence suggests that, to date, they have failed to do so.

When Anheuser-Busch introduced Bud Light to the UK a few years ago, it proved a dismal failure with drinkers, who assumed it was a low-alcohol product. It was withdrawn.

S&N has been testing a lower-alcohol version of Foster’s called Quench, and is evaluating the results, but analysts do not expect it to become a big brand.

A report earlier this year by Mintel, the market-research firm, suggested that sales of low-alcohol and alcohol-free drinks, whether beer, cider or wine, were stagnating. Last year, the market for these sorts of drinks was worth just £58m, and the report predicted that it would grow by about 4% over the next five years.

The report cited a lack of innovation and promotion by manufacturers as a significant reason for the poor prospects of this part of the drinks market.

Publicans also point out that customers who want to drink less are far more likely to stick to soft drinks rather than get stuck into the low-alcohol lager.

Paul Symonds, chief executive of Laurel, the pub group that owns Slug & Lettuce, said: “The quality of soft drinks has much improved.”

But consumers of light and low-calorie drinks will have more to choose from, and the ladies will drink to that.

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