My stance is really simple; rather than compete with the big alcohol brands, the non-alc category would do well to let the established alcohol trademarks make their 0.0% versions, allowing new brands to focus on pioneering different non-alcoholic liquids. If you are a new brand doing non-alcoholic gin or non-alcoholic rum, be warned. I do not see a purposeful role for new brands mimicking what…

De Witte was known to the trade as a gentleman and subtle operator. It’s no surprise that the near 350-year-old, family-owned company opted for a similarly smooth, equable character in Leo Evers to succeed in one of the biggest roles in European spirits. “It sounds like a cliché, but I like to spend the first 100 days in a new role observing the position and analysing…

Fawn American to own a major spirits brand – and the person who unveiled the truth about Jack Daniel’s black master distiller. Shay Waterworth meets a woman on a mission to change the face of American whiskey History in the making Fawn Weaver is tenacious. Having entered the spirits industry less than a decade ago, she now owns several distilleries across different continents. Her flagship…

Four years after its last permanent introduction to its portfolio, Irish whiskey brand Redbreast announced the release of its latest expression, Redbreast 18 Year Old. This new, permanent member of the Redbreast family was created by the team at Pernod Ricard’s Irish Distillers, led by Redbreast master blender David McCabe and Redbreast master blender emeritus Billy Leighton. The iteration is a single pot still whiskey…

Black distillers have played a significant hand in the creation of the modern spirits industry. But all too often their contributions have been overlooked and input kept outside of the boardroom. Today, perhaps the most famous story of black erasure in the spirits industry is the one central to Uncle Nearest whiskey. Nathan ‘Nearest’ Green was a former slave who mentored a teenage Jack Daniel…

The industry’s largest bar and beverage trade fair, Bar Convent Berlin, will return in 2024 for its 18th edition this October. The show launched in 2007, with this year having more than 500 exhibitors, 12,000 visitors and over 80 talks and seminars focused on the global bar industry. The event will return to Exhibition Centre Berlin for a second year after it relocated, where bar…

Walking into Ben Branson’s Sylva gives Ex-Machina vibes. Except it’s not AI robots being created at his lab, it’s aged non-alcoholic spirits. Branson, founder of Diageo non-alcoholic spirit Seedlip, launched his latest project, called Sylva, at the tail end of the summer. Sylva is a non-alcoholic distillery and maturation lab at his home in Essex, UK. Since the development of the non-alcoholic spirits category, recreating…