Industry News
• Moët Hennessy brand manager jailed for theft
Brand manager for Moët Hennessy, Romain Brunot, has been jailed and fined for stealing £75,000 of Champagne and spirits. Over a four year period he appropriated 400 bottles of Krug and 400 bottles of Belvedere vodka that had been left over from events, including those held at the Dorchester Hotel and Heston Blumenthal’s restaurants. Brunot [...]
• Jameson whiskey global sales up 25%
NET SALES of Jameson whiskey rose 25 per cent worldwide in the six months to the end of December, the French spirits giant Pernod Richard said yesterday. Announcing its results for the second half of 2011, Pernod Ricard, which owns the Jameson brand through its subsidiary Irish Distillers, said the Irish whiskey was the company’s [...]
• Diageo pours cold water on P.Diddy tequila rumour
Diageo said today that super premium Scotch had been a stellar Chinese performer in the first half of 2011/12, but the firm poured cold water on press reports that US rap star P.Diddy planned to launch his own tequila brand.
• Latin America’s growing taste for whisky
With Latin American markets becoming more stable, consumers south of the border are raising a dram. Scotland’s whisky industry has long placed its bets on Asian countries as drivers of future growth, but as Latin Americans’ taste for global luxury increases, distillers are hedging their bets. Scotch whisky exports to Central and South America increased [...]
• Beam boosts earnings by 10%. Let’s drink to that!
Beam Inc’s fourth quarter earnings rose 10% as the spirits company saw margins improve despite slower than expected sales growth. The company’s adjusted earnings topped Wall Street’s expectations, though Beam forecast current year earnings rising by a high single digit percentage while analysts questioned by Thomson Reuters expected 10% growth. Ahead of the report, some [...]
• Pernod Ricard plans Absinthe campaign
Pernod Ricard is looking to reignite the fortunes of its absinthe brand following last year’s legalisation of the spirit in France after a nearly a century of prohibition. The company is set to launch a marketing campaign which plays on the drink’s cultural history. The French drinks giant first produced the spirit, commonly referred to [...]
• Liquor sales surge, steal market share from beer
The U.S. stock market’s worst performance in three years didn’t damp Americans’ taste for cocktails. Spirits sales by suppliers including Beam Inc. and Brown- Forman Corp. rose 4 percent to $19.9 billion in 2011, the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S. said today at its annual industry update in New York. Americans weren’t afraid to [...]
• Skyy Vodka gets nod to add lip gloss to its disingenuous marketing
AN ALCOHOL company has been given the green light to offer free lip gloss as a promotional tool because the make-up product does not appeal to young people, the alcohol industry’s advertising complaints panel has determined. A research centre at Curtin University complained about the promotion, which offered a free Napoleon Perdis lip gloss with [...]
• Cognac sales enjoy record 2011
Soaring demand in China has resulted in global Cognac sales reaching record levels last year. Industry body the Bureau National Interprofessional du Cognac (BNIC) said more than five bottles were sold every second in 2011, with the total number of bottles sold rising by 6.4% to 162.9 million. The Far East, which accounted for more [...]
• Skyy Spirits Changes Name to Campari America
Company Aligns More Closely with Gruppo Campari, Puts Emphasis on Expanding Portfolio of Award-Winning BrandsBeginning January 2012, Skyy Spirits, the wholly owned subsidiary of Davide Campari-Milano S.p.A. (Reuters CPRI.MI – Bloomberg CPR IM), will change its public identity in the US, Canada, and Puerto Rico to Campari America. This name change simultaneously aligns the company [...]
• All Bacardi rum supplied to U.S. bottled in Jacksonville
Don Facundo Bacardi Masso purchased a small distillery in Cuba nearly 150 years ago and his legacy lives on through the Bacardi rum that is bottled in Jacksonville. The Bacardi Bottling plant in North Jacksonville produces 45,000 cases of rum daily and supplies 100 percent of the Bacardi rum that is consumed in the United [...]
• US hails win against Philippine alcohol barriers
The United States on Wednesday said it had prevailed in a World Trade Organization dispute with the Philippines over barriers to the Southeast Asian country’s alcohol market that hurt U.S. brands like Jack Daniel’s. “This is an important victory for American distilled spirits producers and workers,” U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement. [...]
• Study: Alcohol Marketed Heavily On Digital Media
Beer and spirits marketers increasingly turning to social media. It’s illegal to sell alcoholic beverages to anyone under 21 years of age, but a new study concludes that hasn’t stopped the industry from marketing to underage consumers. The Center on Alcohol Marketing and Youth (CAMY) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has [...]
• Looking ahead to alcohol trends in 2012
For those of us who concern ourselves with the world of beverage alcohol, 2011 was nothing if not a most interesting year. After years of struggling sales, Cognac suddenly came roaring back. In the face of an economic crunch, craft beer grew more eclectic, more expensive and overwhelmingly more popular. Mixologists began raiding their pantries [...]
• Beam Purchases Award-Winning Irish Whiskey Cooley Distillery
Beam Entering Fast-Growing Irish Whiskey Category. Beam Inc. BEAM -1.01% , a leading global premium spirits company, today announced that it has entered into an agreement to purchase Cooley Distillery, the award-winning independent Irish whiskey producer. The acquisition of Cooley, the industry’s only remaining independent Irish whiskey distillery, will mark Beam’s entrance into one of [...]
