Baz Luhrmann partners with Absolut for Australia’s first ever limited edition Absolut Oz

Australian film director Baz Luhrmann has been enlisted to create the first ever Absolut limited edition bottle celebrating Australia. Called Absolut Oz, the collaboration will see the one (1) litre sized bottle available in leading outlets nationally as of March 2014.

Says Julien Hemard, managing director at Pernod Ricard Australia: “We are extremely pleased and proud to be collaborating with one of the great visionary minds of the contemporary world in Baz to realise the first Australian ABSOLUT limited edition. Baz is one of the world’s renowned inspirations in creativity. Working with ABSOLUT, Baz has captured the unique essence of Australia.”

As part of its creation, Luhrmann travelled to Sweden and the southern town of Åhus, home to the Absolut distillery and the sole source of the pure water which goes into each and every bottle of Absolut. Here he trialled and experiment with various ingredients which would eventually go to make up this quintessential blend that aims to capture the essence of a particular chapter in the unique story that is Australia.

Inspired by Australia’s robust and deeply seeded beach culture, Luhrmann believes our taste palette, like other senses such as smell, has the power to transport us to places both known and imagined, and this became his mission when he found himself in the snow bound Swedish landscape back in December 2012.

At this point Luhrmann was neck deep in the final stages of his feature film, ‘Gatsby’.

Says Luhrmann: “Working for the last three years on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous novel,  it has been very hard not to think about alcohol, as, after all, ‘The Roaring 20’s’ were a time of Prohibition, when, of course, everyone drank. And my wife Catherine and I did our research. For Catherine it is about the champagne. But for me it is about the cocktail. And it is hard to think about the cocktail without thinking about great vodka.

“Absolut Oz is a distillation of the unifying truth that we are all equal under the sun”, Luhrmann added. “While creating the drinks which feature and celebrate Absolut Oz, we reflected on that moment when the sun dips below the horizon and, as we say in the movies, the magic hour is upon us.”

Luhrmann worked closely with Absolut to create four special cocktails, each of which is a toast to four famous beaches around Australia. They are The Tama-Glama, The Hells Bells Beach, The Cable Beach ‘Stairway to the Moon’ and The South Avoca Elevator.

Absolut Oz – subtitled ‘A Baz Luhrmann Production’ – is the first Australian limited edition Absolut Vodka which joins a notable repertoire of other editions celebrating iconic global destinations including Absolut London, Absolut Brooklyn (NYC), Absolut Mexico and Absolut SF (San Francisco). This innovative approach in creating new and inspiring limited editions has maintained Absolut Vodka’s positioning at the very zeitgeist of the spirits sector for over two decades.

Absolut Oz’s spiced orange flavour profile reflects the explosion of the spiced spirits trend which is currently escalating around the world. The flavours by Absolut are driving growth for the vodka flavour segment here in Australia, and currently represents 95% of this market sector nationally*.

Absolut Oz will be on shelf March 2014 and will feature a specially designed neck tag with story notes, images and recipes for each of the four cocktails created by Luhrmann.

Absolut Oz will retail for $54.99 and will be available for a strictly limited period in the 1 litre bottle size only.

*Source – Aztec National Value MAT vs.YA, data to 28/4/13