The Sparkle Behind Saint Spritz with Mallory Patton

Summary
Laurie Forster pops the top on a sparkling convo with Mallory, founder of Saint Spritz, the refreshingly clean ready-to-drink spritz brand. They dive into the fizz behind Mallory’s inspiration, how she's shaking up the beverage aisle with better-for-you ingredients, and what it’s like juggling startups and sippy cups. From inventive flavor profiles to the brand’s surprising connection to America’s fastest-growing sport—pickleball—this episode is equal parts business, bubbles, and bold moves. Bonus: sneak peeks into where Saint Spritz is headed next on the retail map! 

Drinks Tasted

• Saint Spritz Amalfi
• Saint Spritz Sicily
• Saint Spritz Hugo

Key Takeaways

• Saint Spritz aims to provide a healthier alternative to traditional spritzes.
• Natural juices and wine are used for sweetness instead of artificial sweeteners.
• Mallory founded the company with JoJo Fletcher (Season 12 Bachlorette) and her brother in law Ben Patton.
• Motherhood has equipped Mallory with adaptability for entrepreneurship.
• Saint Spritz is expanding its availability in major retailers like Target and Total Wine.

Check out Saint Spritz online HERE and their Instagram Page HERE

Upcoming Events

June 4th Wine Comedy Show at Turks Head Wines

June 7th Maryland Crafted VIP Experience

June 25th Red, White & BBQ Virtual Tasting

Transcript

Laurie Forster (00:01.274)
All right, Mallory, welcome to The Sipping Point.

Mallory (00:05.282)
So happy to be here.

Laurie Forster (00:07.416)
Awesome. Well, you have a company named Saint Spritz. I already shared with the listeners your amazing background, but this is a ready to drink Spritz. And we all know over the last couple of years, if you've been to Italy or you've really been anywhere in the US, the Spritzes are all going crazy and everyone loves them. But you guys wanted to design an even better Spritz, right? The better for you Spritz, if you will.

And so I know people would just love to know a little bit more about the story. I know you're an entrepreneur, you're a mom, but how did you end up in the ready to drink spritz business?

Mallory (00:45.614)
Yeah, honestly, we were experiencing the same thing that you're saying. It was like...

We were over in Europe drinking so much Aperol Spritz. It was all over social media. It was on the White Lotus, like just this beautiful bright orange Spritz. It was an obsession culturally. And when we got back from our trip, we were like, man, there's so many great drinks that are ready to drink now in cans. Like, let's just go to the store and buy these because it's kind of a pain to mix the drinks together each time. How much Prosecco are you putting in? How much soda? What's the ratio? It's going to taste different if I make it versus JoJo makes it versus the hotel bar.

versus a dive bar and we just wanted something consistently good every time and when we got to the formulation stage and we were obsessed with that bright orange spritz we were shocked to find out that it had red dye 40 yellow 6 added sugar and we knew we wanted to create something that didn't have all that stuff so it was important to us to capture that craze of the spritz but make something that was better for you

Laurie Forster (01:47.026)
And I love that you say that because in researching for our interview, and I'm a huge Aperol Spritz fan and now a Saint Spritz fan having tasted yours, but I had no idea that it had red dye 40 and yellow dye 6. And so I think sometimes with cocktails, we don't think about that factor, but that's so big and present in the world right now with everybody focusing on our food being more healthy and what we put into our bodies.

I would think that would have been really surprising to you all as well.

Mallory (02:21.07)
It was shocking to me and I think mostly when I share with friends that it surprises them. And I think consumers now care so much about what's in the label, what's going to their body. So I was shocked I didn't know. And as a mom of two kids, don't give, I try to not give my kids stuff with Red Dye 40 and I think there's been a lot of press about how bad.

Dyes for you in general. So I really wanted to come with something that made we could feel good about drinking I think so much today is like people are drinking less but more conscious of what's what it is that they're drinking

Laurie Forster (02:55.546)
And I know you were really conscious about the sugar aspect of this as well. What do you do differently than maybe some of the other ready to drinks on the market just to make it healthier from that standpoint?

Mallory (03:09.282)
Well, was really important for us that like we wanted everyone to be able when you look at the back of the can and the ingredients to know what all those things were. And we it was important for us. We felt like there were so many seltzers and the world didn't need another hard seltzer, right? It was like we wanted to capture that bright, bold cocktail in a can. And we wanted to get that sweetness just from natural juice and the wine.

And we were really proud to have achieved that without adding in a bunch of sweeteners. for me at least, I'm very sensitive to fake sweets. So in formulating process, stevia and stuff like that, it sits on my mouth weird. So it was really important for us to have a really clean label, simple, easy to pronounce ingredients. just why add a bunch of stuff you don't need to?

Laurie Forster (03:56.176)
Yep, and I love that there is real wine in there. You know, it's not, it is a wine cocktail. And monk fruit is such a great way to get sweetness that's healthier. It's actually in the creamer I use in my coffee, super creamer. So I love that you're incorporating that as well. But since we're doing so much talking about the spritzes, I guess we should, you have three flavors. We're gonna, I'm gonna try them all here during the interview, just a little bit. But let's start with the Amalfi, which is,

And you know, your version of the traditional here, spritz that people may have had when they're over in Italy or by the pool or what have you. So tell me a little bit. This, guess, is probably the first one that you really wanted to. Perfect. Get the action going there. I'm ready. Cheers!

Mallory (04:45.324)
So good. Cheers.

This is our hero SKU This is like the whole reason we started the company, right? The popularity of those bright orange spritzes. So this is like our baby. I absolutely love it. What we found is that like bitter sweet flavor was just so refreshing and I really rose out of the Rose all day era and now I have two kids. Like a spritz to me is just so much more lighter, so much more effervescent and I can have one or a couple and I feel okay. It's just light and

I find that our flavor profile mimics that iconic Italian spritz but is almost a little bit, it's lighter, it's less heavy syrupy, it's more refreshing I find.

Laurie Forster (05:31.442)
Yes, and in the can, guess it says two servings per can. You're serving it over ice, just like in an Aperol spritz or whatever kind of spritz you might have. And I do like it has a good balance between that, the bitter orange and that sort of refreshing seltzer that makes it what it is. And you're right, in Aperol spritz, you're making with a Prosecco or any other sparkling wine, it's about 12 % alcohol.

I believe this is just 5%, right?

Mallory (06:01.676)
Yeah, it's just 5%. Really, for me, I say it's like a beer.

something you can just have after a long day of work or on the patio with your friends. It's just refreshing and light and not too heavy. I think people are really drinking less these days, but like I said, it's just something you enjoy. And when we were formulating, and I think this is really important to note, I had pulled so many of my friends and talked about like, what is it that you want in a drink? And it was so clear from so many of the people that I spoke to, like they cared less about the calories and more about like,

chemicals. Like I don't care about some extra calories. I don't want to put any chemicals in my body. And for us, our calorie content is the same as like a glass of Chardonnay, right? And when we created the formula, I just wanted to hit that and with the juice, you have the full body. So I think we did a really good job with that.

Laurie Forster (06:54.29)
Absolutely delicious. And of course the packaging is gorgeous. It does make you think of being in Italy or being by the pool at a resort somewhere. And so, you know, I think it's perfect now as we're starting to see the sunlight come back here on the East Coast and we're ready, ready for this kind of kind of drink.

Mallory (07:09.634)
Yes. Our slogan is a departure in every can. So it's we want you to crack the can and just have that feeling of like, OK, I might not be on a patio in Italy, but this is a nice little break I'm having to myself. having that ready to crack in a can is much easier.

Laurie Forster (07:25.318)
Right.

Laurie Forster (07:29.498)
And Italy is one of my favorite wine destinations. I've been there probably four times now. And I love that each of these flavors as we go through are a different destination. We started with the Amalfi and in a moment we're going to head to Hugo, I think, and see what that's all about. But you mentioned being a mom and you have a lot of friends that also work, you know, working or entrepreneur moms.

Mallory (07:46.712)
Thank

Laurie Forster (07:56.934)
you know, how did you kind of get this business off the ground, which I know from my own experience is a huge undertaking and balance that with what you have going on in your personal life and raising children. Give us some tips on what you found that's worked for you.

Mallory (08:17.346)
I think, look, it's been an adjustment for sure going from full stay at home mom to entrepreneur launching a beverage business. But I think what motherhood helped me do was prepare for kind of the chaoticness of being an entrepreneur. As a mom, it's just everything gets thrown at you. You can never predict, you can never plan, especially traveling with kids, you can never plan. I think it allowed me to be adaptable.

Laurie Forster (08:42.898)
Mm-hmm.

Mallory (08:47.084)
and prepare for anything that gets thrown our way, which obviously in the beverage business is like every day something crazy.

Laurie Forster (08:55.026)
That's true. every day is different. know, you in my business, it's not like, you know, a job where you go and you're doing the same thing every day. You're having to kind of change gears all the time. And that's motherhood as well, I know from my experience.

Mallory (09:13.258)
Yeah, as founders we wear a lot of hats, you know, and we launched this. This is a family founded business. We're all in it. You know, it's very commingled, right? so it's been just a journey adjusting like okay as a mom like I know I do have to block off time like I've got a lot the workday and I have to block off. I got to be present with my kids and I got to be present with my business and it's very difficult to be present in both at the same time. So it just got a time block so that the time

actually gets well spent and it's the kids enjoy it and you accomplish work. can't juggling at the same time I found has been... yeah.

Laurie Forster (09:52.73)
Yeah. And you kind of bring up another aspect that can also be challenging in starting a business, starting a business with family. So how do you delineate between the three of you yourself at JoJo and Ben? Do you each have distinct different roles in Saint Spritz or is it sort of tag team give and take?

Mallory (10:13.736)
So we tag team on a bunch of stuff, but we all definitely have like our lanes, but I definitely think as founders in a startup, like we're all, we're all pitching in on so many different parts of the business. And obviously like each of us has our strengths and we try to tap towards that. know, Jojo's definitely very like brand and content and social media and all of our paid stuff that you see on Instagram. She manages that and makes it look amazing. And I handle a lot of the B2B sales and skew development and actual tech

technicalities of getting set up with our distributors and then Ben our other co-founder who's JoJo's brother I explained to you It's really like the CFO CEO So we all kind of bring something different to the table that ultimately just it's it's a good It's a good working relationship and I think we're so we're so used to always being together because we're a very close family that it's very it's very natural

Laurie Forster (11:01.65)
It sounds like.

Laurie Forster (11:08.326)
That's nice. Yeah. All right. So let's take a little trip to Sicily because I know you have other flavors and I'm sure people want to know them all so they can go check them out. So your Sicily flavor, obviously with a lemon thematic, lemoncello sort of theme.

Mallory (11:26.018)
Let's go.

Yeah, so all three flavors are meant to be iconic Italian spritzes that, you know, the three most popular ones you'll see in Italy, right? So you've got the Amalfi, the Sicily, and the Hugo. The Sicily, which you're having right now, is supposed to be that lemoncello spritz. But what we wanted to do is sometimes lemoncello can be too, too sweet, so we wanted to really balance it out with that fresh basil. So it just has this, like, refreshing, I call it, like, spa lemonade feel to it. And I'm like, gosh, these are so amazing.

And what people will say is like, I don't even taste alcohol in this. This is like scary. It's so good. So that was kind of the goal. We wanted it just to be light and refreshing and not overpowering in any sort of way.

Laurie Forster (12:10.704)
Yes, and I do love that. there are some hard lemonade type things on the market and they're either super sweet or they have that fake sugar. And I know what you mean that has like this weird aftertaste and then you just know it can't be good for you. Yeah.

Mallory (12:20.141)
Yep.

Mallory (12:24.822)
Yeah. Exactly. So these, we feel good about drinking. They're so light. They're so refreshing. And you know, what's been interesting to see is just how different consumers use it, right? Like my sister who actually works with the brand now too, she doesn't drink a lot. So she'll have a

Sicily and she'll cut it with soda water. So it's like even less ABV But then we'll be at tastings in store and people are like, I love this Sicily I add vodka to it I make this like Lemonade vodka drink and I'm like, wow, like it's amazing and even with the Amalfi in the wintertime seeing customers Mix it like they were making old-fashions with it, which is really cool. It kind of like a spritz here old-fashioned I just it really it's been really cool to see that you can do it so many different ways

Laurie Forster (13:10.298)
Yeah, I know earlier you mentioned pickleball. So tell me a little bit about how you get involved with pickleball events. know it seems all the craze around where I live here in Maryland, really, the whole country has gone nuts for pickleball. So anything you can share about that?

Mallory (13:26.254)
Everybody is obsessed with pickleball and it's so funny because a couple years ago in Texas somebody had said to me like you should put a pickleball court in your backyard because we couldn't fit a tennis court and I was like what is pickleball now we are like fully addicted Jojo has become like a pickleball influencer basically she's obsessed with pickleball

They just built courts in our community and we love it and I think it fits really well with the occasion for our drinks because pickleball in Being different from tennis like you can't really play tennis and have a few drinks versus like pickleball is a little more social You could have a spritz and play pickle. It's it's a perfect occasion for it So as a brand we've really leaned in and we've created an event that's called the st Spritz country club And that's where we have like little pop-up events in different cities and we do like a little pickleball thing

and everybody comes out and plays and we share the sprints with everybody and it's just, you know, it's fun to get out there and be outside. That's part of like our brand lifestyle.

Laurie Forster (14:26.065)
that's great. And how would people find out about these pop-ups?

Mallory (14:31.042)
The best way would be to follow us on Saint Spritz's Instagram. All of our events will be shared on there and that's how we usually market to everybody to come.

Laurie Forster (14:35.42)
Okay.

Laurie Forster (14:42.514)
Perfect. All right, I love that. Okay, so our third and final flavor, which has a stunning color as well. Tell me about the Hugo version of your spritz.

Mallory (14:44.536)
Yeah, it's a person.

Mallory (14:56.686)
She's a beautiful girl. We are obsessed with the Hugo. It's the second most popular spritz in Italy. Absolutely delicious. She's purple. When you pour her over ice. For us, as a digital first brand, we launched DTC And Instagram has always been a big piece of our story because of JoJo's following and how we launched. And when we picked our three iconic spritzes,

Laurie Forster (15:00.956)
Purple.

Laurie Forster (15:10.258)
Hehehe.

Mallory (15:23.434)
a traditional Higo Spritz at the bar is just clear. And we were like, man, we've got the Amalfi that's this beautiful, bright orange, and the Sicily that's this cool yellow, like, can't just have like a clear drink. So we worked to make it special in our own Saint Spritz way, and we found a way using butterfly pea extract, which is a natural ingredient, to make it this vibrant purple. And we thought it just brought something special to the drink, and people have really loved it.

And I think our, you're tasting it now, but it's elderflower, mint, and lime. And it's just, I became obsessed with Hugo Spritz's once I ordered them at the bar. But I think for me, why I love ours so much is I love the Saint Germain flavor, but I've got to use a lot of it in Prosecco to get as much elderflower as I want. And I noticed the cocktail then becomes like kind of syrupy.

Laurie Forster (15:51.088)
I love that.

Laurie Forster (16:06.983)
Mm-hmm.

Mallory (16:15.926)
And I think the Saint Spritz Hugo really captures those amazing flavors of the elderflower without having that syrup taste to the cocktail. So we love the Hugo. That's like our, we always say our surprise and delight.

Laurie Forster (16:31.442)
It really does have that elderflower, and I agree with you, the liqueur that you typically make, use to make drinks or put that in champagne is real sweet and can kind of overtake things. So I love that. And when I saw the color earlier, I was going to say it reminds me of I have this Empress gin, which uses the same butterfly pea coloring as well. And it's just so gorgeous.

Mallory (16:54.231)
Yes.

Yeah, I've seen that too. It's so beautiful and it's kind of delicate to work with because the color of the butterfly pea changes with pH. So as you start to formulate with the wine, you've got to balance it just to get to the perfect hue and we are obsessed with it. We love it.

Laurie Forster (17:13.958)
Love it. It's super delicious. And these three are perfect for like spring garden get togethers, summer by the pool, really anything. do love that. Especially I'm obviously I'm a sommelier. Wine is my thing. But sometimes during the day, you know, or at other events, you don't, know, wine is fabulous, but it's going to be three, you know, three times the alcohol possibly.

Mallory (17:38.401)
Yeah.

Laurie Forster (17:39.642)
as what we have here. So I love having the option to have something that gives you that spritz, that wine spritz taste without all of the alcohol.

Mallory (17:44.419)
Yeah.

Mallory (17:48.266)
It's lighter, it's more refreshing. I don't know if it's age or kids, when I drink, and I was a very big wine drinker. I worked in business development, so I was always taking clients out and drinking great wines. And I just now, I'm like, man, I don't know how I did that in my 20s. If I drink a bottle of wine, you can count me out for the next seven days.

Laurie Forster (18:08.751)
Right. And that's actually how I got into wine was in a job in software sales and based out of Dallas. So I was in Texas back in the day and taking clients out for great meals and great bottles of wine. And you're right. In your 20s, you can bounce back a little bit differently than as we move on. So really appreciate this. So I know you're you're in retail as well. People can go to Saint Spritz dot com and purchase on your website. But what are all the ways they can find out about

Mallory (18:26.603)
Yeah!

Laurie Forster (18:38.918)
where they can get these three spritzes so they can try them themselves.

Mallory (18:42.792)
Yeah, you can always head to saintspritz.com. We have a store locator that shows everywhere we're rolling out. As I mentioned, we launched direct to consumer with our website, but our biggest news that we're sharing, I think it's rolling out on social like in a few days, but it's hit last week. It hit the shelf. We're national at Target, which for us has been a huge undertaking and it's huge news. And we're so excited. We're everywhere that Target sells wine. You can grab it all three flavors. and we're also,

in Total Wine, we're in 505 Walmarts. So it's a little bit scattered on that, but if you go to our store locator, you can see everywhere we're available. In Texas, that's where we begun our journey. We have our most distribution. We're in HEB, Total Wine, Target, Tom Thumb, Albertson's, and then some cool smaller placements like Eataly, which are a really great spot to enjoy our drinks. So definitely head to the store locator.

Laurie Forster (19:40.178)
I love that.

Mallory (19:41.934)
pull it off the shelf because our job is getting in there. We gotta get people to try it.

Laurie Forster (19:43.218)
Get out there.

Laurie Forster (19:48.966)
Well, thank you, Mallory, so much for your time. love every one of these spritzes taste delicious. And I love your tagline that I saw on your website that is better for you and ready for you. So this is easy to pour over ice, but you can know you don't have any of the fake dyes and too much sugar and all of that. So thanks for really thoughtfully thinking through that in your Saint Spritz can. And thank you so much for being on The Sipping Point.

Mallory (20:15.8)
Well, I appreciate it. That is a huge compliment coming from Sommelier So I'm happy to be on here and we'll hopefully get everybody going to retail.

Laurie Forster (20:20.604)
Well, thank you.

Laurie Forster (20:25.51)
Yeah, keep in touch, keep in touch. All right, Mallory, thank you for coming on. I just want to say cheers.

Mallory (20:28.994)
Cheers!

Thanks so much, Lori.

Laurie Forster (20:35.14)
Awesome.