The Grapevine

Wine Industry News for September 12, 2016

September 12th, 2016

Some days, being a lab rat sounds pretty good. Sure beats drinking flavored whiskey. Also, Pennsylvania is a new frontier, of sorts.

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Flavored Whiskies Propel Top Spirits Growth
According to Friday’s Shanken News Daily, “leading spirits marketers are finding it challenging to achieve significant progress as key categories like vodka, rum, Scotch whisky and liqueurs are showing little if any growth. The top 10 spirits marketers experienced aggregate volume growth of just 0.9% in 2015, according to Impact Databank.”

To combat the stagnant state of the market they’re turning to flavored whiskies. Among the notable brands are Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey, Jim Beam Maple, Jim Beam Honey, and Crown Royal Regal Apple. If you’re not stocking them now and offering cocktail recipe ideas, you might consider doing so.

Pennsylvania as New Frontier
PA residents can now legally order wine from out of state and out of state wineries are taking notice. No wonder, as Pennsylvania is no small market – the state-run authority that controls beverage alcohol sales in the state, the PLCB, is the single largest purchaser of wine in the world! You can read more about the influx of applications on the Central Pennsylvania Business Journal website.

More Good News: Wine is Good for Your Brain
Readers of Town and Country and Food & Wine already know that wine will help you live forever. Well, not really, but it may help strengthen your brain. The bad news is that it’s not drinking the wine that has this effect, but studying wine. The Food & Wine article cites a study done by the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. Sure, you get a bigger brain, but you don’t have all the fun …

Better news from the University of Reading, one Professor Jeremy Spencer, and his test-subject rats, who found that consuming Champagne can help stave off the effects of Alzheimers and other brain diseases. Three glasses a day is all it takes. No word on how far in advance you need to start this regimen. And no indication whether bubbly other than Champagne has the same effect. Tough job those lab rats have …

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