Maybe you’re sitting somewhere cozy right now, all snuggled up under a warm, soft blanket. Grandma’s hand-knit socks on your feet. Your favorite baggy sweatpants and oversize cuddly sweater wrapped around yourself. Maybe a nice cup of AC-Tea Punch is warming your hands, chilly from a winter’s stroll. Then you’re perfectly set up to hear the story behind one of the most loved seasonal FitLine products.
Who better to tell the story than Vicki Sorg, who was right there when her husband and CEO of PM-International, Rolf Sorg, had the brilliant yet simple idea for the product? Simple, successful, right?
It’s a tradition for Rolf and I to host a Smoke Fest every winter when it starts getting cold. Rolf is an avid fisherman, as many of you may already know. He’s always fishing with his buddies as much as he can. It’s his way of relaxing. So, he invites a bunch of his friends for the Smoke Fest and they go fishing all morning long and smoke the fish for the rest of the day. I’m usually in the kitchen cooking a stew, making some potato salad or whatever goes along with that. Depending on the weather it’s a one or two-day event. We have tents set up outside and a bonfire going the whole time because it’s cold out. It has to be cold! Otherwise it’s no fun. Bonfires, the soft crackling of burning wood, makes everything so incredibly cozy and more fun!
It was early December one year at a lake in Speyer. We had the fire going and we were making Glühwein (mulled wine) with a good red wine, cinnamon, cloves, star anis, some sliced oranges, and a little bit of lemon. Now, I don’t know if you know, but we’ve experimented with Activize before, mixing it into champagne for example. This time Rolf said, “Hey, why don’t we just put some Activize in the Glühwein and we’ll be able to keep going as the fish are smoking.”
Honestly, this first party we had with the “Acti-Glühwein,” as we called it back then, was like a two-day thing. We talked, fished, listened to good music, ate the fish with our hands. We woke up the next morning, everything was white, a blanket of snow had covered the whole camping ground. But still, we kept on going because the “Acti-Glühwein” kept us warm and energized.
After this epic weekend we thought: Why don’t we create a product, that tastes like Glühwein without having alcohol in it, which also supplies you with loads of energy at the same time, to keep you warm during the cold season? We really like it the old-fashioned way though, prepared with red wine.
Sooo, who’s up for some AC-Tea Punch?