IWSR: Spirits up 2.3%, Total Alcohol Consumption Down 0.2%

Total U.S. beverage alcohol consumption was down slightly last year, according to market tracker the IWSR, but distilled spirits continued their low-single-digit overall growth trend. Beer continued to pull the total alcohol market down, with a decline of about a half percentage point in total category volume.

Craft spirits trends for 2018

I wrote this for the latest edition of the American Craft Spirits Association‘s e-newsletter. Thought I’d share it with you, as well.  It’s hard to believe that yet another year is behind us. If 2017 proved anything, it’s that these are indeed exciting times to be in the craft spirits business. And that’s going to…

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503 Cocktails launches Wicked Mule in a can in PDX area

503 Cocktails is launching its first canned cocktail, The Wicked Mule, this week which is available in liquor stores around the Portland, Oregon metro area, just in time for Christmas. The Wicked Mule is a local take on the classic cocktail of a similar name—503 adds vodka, real ginger, candy sugar, a good spritz of…

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Live, from Falls Church, it’s Speaking Easy Podcast w/ The Drinkable Globe!

Last Friday, the guys at Speaking Easy Podcast (thanks co-hosts Alex Luboff and Jordan Wicker and producer Tyler Lloyd!) were kind enough to record a live episode before an audience at my book event at Cafe Kindred in Falls, Church, Virginia. The event was hosted in conjunction with One More Page Books & More, marking the third time the Falls Church independent…

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Two Decades of Diageo

It almost seems like Diageo plc has been around forever, given the fact that it owns so many classic, venerable brands, including Johnnie Walker scotch, Smirnoff vodka, Tanqueray gin and Guinness stout. But as a company, it’s still a year away from legal drinking age—in the U.S., at least, not in its U.K. home—as Diageo…

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