The Spirits Post is an international press review about the spirits industry brought to you by Eugenia Torelli, an Italian spirits journalist and judge. If this newsletter was forwarded to you by a friend, you can subscribe here to receive it directly in your inbox:
Hello everyone!
We start today in global travel retail, where IWSR’s latest data shows the old order is shifting: Japanese whisky and agave spirits are muscling in on territory once dominated by Cognac and flavoured gin. Mexico brings mixed news too, with José Cuervo’s owner having a rough year on the stock market. Elsewhere, Sazerac stays tight-lipped over acquisition rumours, Diageo faces strike action in Scotland, and Brazil’s record 2025 harvest gives us a chance to see where sugar cane actually sits among the country’s big crops.
And for something a little different: a look at how spirits stories travel — and how yesterday’s Financial Times piece on Scotch became today’s Italian headline.
Enjoy!
Markets
Japanese whisky and agave lead the way as travel retail evolves
IWSR’s latest Global Travel Retail (GTR) analysis shows the channel continuing to outperform domestic markets, with combined spirits and wine volumes up 5% in 2025 and spirits value up 7%. But the finer details tell a more interesting story: Japanese whisky surged 44% in value (volumes up 37%), driven by traveller curiosity and a genuine willingness to spend at premium tiers, while Scotch and American whiskey both grew a steady 10%. Cognac, by contrast, suffered one of its worst declines in decades, though early 2026 signs look more positive. Flavoured gin also fell as shoppers shifted towards vodka and RTDs. Europe and Africa/Middle East led regional value growth at +11% each.
You can read Helen Jagger’s article for IWSR:
France
Cognac’s Charente vineyard keeps shrinking as growers seek other outlets
Declarations for the 2026 Charente harvest show the region’s Cognac-dedicated vineyard now stands at 83,619 hectares—down 5% (4,295 ha) year-on-year—out of a total 95,388 ha still in production. The gap is being filled by other outlets: 9,431 ha are now assigned to alternatives, including 7,640 ha of dual-purpose grape varieties destined for basic French wine without geographical indication. The figures illustrate the scale of Cognac’s ongoing crisis, with the sector continuing to shrink through a mix of declassification and outright vine-pulling, which is trending towards 13,000 ha.
You can read Alexandre Abellan’s article for Vitisphere:
Cognac double le vignoble déclassé en vin de France et réduit de 5 % sa surface pour l’AOC
Companies performance
Fever-Tree’s UK business returns to growth after a tough spell
Fever-Tree reported H1 2026 revenue up 7% to £183.6 million, with growth across every region. The UK, its home market, grew 3% to £49.5 million, helped by a strong off-trade performance and a new “Straight Up or Mixed” campaign, even as the on-trade remained under pressure. The US, its largest market, rose 7% to £66.9 million, boosted by its Molson Coors partnership and its first national marketing campaign. Non-tonic products, led by ginger beer, now make up 47% of group sales, up from 39% three years ago. The company is also pursuing a legal challenge over Extended Producer Responsibility packaging costs, having already booked a £5.4 million charge it hopes to partly reverse.
You can read Nicola Carruthers’ article for The Spirits Business:
The full FY26 interim results webcast is available via Fever-Tree’s investor relations site.
Mexico
Tequila sales slide across Mexico, the US and Spain as younger drinkers switch categories
Mexico’s Tequila industry is losing ground not just at home but in the US and Spain too, according to INEGI data, with the Chamber of the Tequila Industry forecasting a 3% sales decline this year following 3.2% growth in 2025. Director General Ana Cristina Villalpando points to younger consumers favouring lower-alcohol or alcohol-free drinks. US exports, which account for the bulk of the 584 million litres Mexico produces, fell 1% last year, with Spain and Germany also down. Revenues have now declined for five straight months—the longest such streak on record—hitting joven and reposado hardest while blanco and añejo held up better. The sector’s biggest player, José Cuervo owner Becle, has lost 22.5 billion pesos in market value this year alone, with shares down 30.5%, a decline that widened after CEO Juan Domingo Beckmann’s attendance at a controversial political gathering in August.
You can read the news via El Informador:
Tequila, en crisis: Disminuyen ventas en México y el extranjero
M&A
Sazerac stays quiet as reports link it to German schnapps maker Berentzen
Bloomberg reported this week that Buffalo Trace owner Sazerac is in talks to acquire Berentzen-Gruppe, the German group behind Berentzen liqueur, Puschkin vodka, and Caribbean rum blend Tres Países. Sazerac declined to comment on “market speculation.” If it goes ahead, the deal would follow a busy run for the US firm, which has recently bought UK-based Au Vodka and Kentucky’s Garrard County Distilling, alongside an unsuccessful unsolicited bid for Brown-Forman earlier this year.
You can read Nicola Carruthers’ article for The Spirits Business:
Source for the original report (subscription required):
UK
Strike dates confirmed at Diageo’s Cameronbridge distillery
Unite Scotland has confirmed strike action at Cameronbridge—Europe’s largest grain distillery—starting 28 September, over Diageo’s proposed job cuts as part of its global restructuring. More than 100 workers, including distillation and process controllers, technicians, and engineers, will take part in successive days of action over three weeks, aiming to halt production entirely at the site, which employs around 200 people. Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham said there was “no justification” for the cuts given the company’s profits, while the union has also raised safety concerns, given that roles are being cut without any proposed reduction in output.
You can read Shay Waterworth’s article for Drinks International:
Brazil
A record harvest — and where sugar cane actually fits in
Brazil’s 2025 agricultural output hit a record R$927.2 billion, up 18.4% on 2024, driven overwhelmingly by soya and maize, which together made up 88.7% of the country’s grain harvest. Sugar cane ranked third among Brazil’s most valuable crops by production value, behind soya and maize but ahead of coffee and cotton, with its value up a comparatively modest 3.6% year-on-year—a much smaller jump than coffee’s 44.7% or cotton’s 29.5%. It is worth remembering that sugar cane’s value reflects its many uses well beyond cachaça: the crop is Brazil’s dominant sugar and ethanol feedstock too, and it was actually the Southeast region’s strength in sugar cane, coffee, and oranges that kept it in second place nationally behind the grain-driven Centre-West. So while cane remains a heavyweight crop for Brazil, spirits are only a small slice of what it is grown for.
You can read the news from IBGE, Brazil’s national statistics agency:
Valor de produção agrícola atinge recorde de R$ 927,2 bilhões, impulsionado por safra de grãos
Something to learn
How the press recycles a good story — and why that’s not a bad thing
Some publications carry more international weight than others. The Economist, The Times, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian in the UK and US, as well as Der Spiegel in Germany or Le Monde and Le Figaro in France, are widely looked to by journalists elsewhere, who can cite their reporting freely without worrying about boosting a competitor’s profile.
Italy gave a neat example of this mechanism just last week with a story about whisky. On 6 September, the Financial Times published a piece on Scotland’s unsold whisky stocks:
It was not really news to anyone in the trade, but to a general reader, it could easily sound like it. An Italian journalist at La Stampa picked up the story and built her own piece around it, interviewing reliable whisky experts and citing the FT as her source:
La crisi del whisky fa tremare la Scozia. Boom di invenduto e distillerie sul lastrico
Translation: “Whisky crisis shakes Scotland: unsold stocks soar and distilleries face ruin.” (quite hyperbolic, I know)
Gambero Rosso, a food and wine publication, followed suit with its own version, also crediting the FT and using a similarly dramatic headline:
(No author is named, as the news has simply been translated, re-worked, and published.)
It is an efficient mechanism when there is no fresh news directly from the source—I use it myself sometimes, though I am not one for sensational headlines.
Do you spot this same pattern in your own country’s media? Feel free to reply with any examples!
That’s all for today. Have a great weekend, and see you soon!
Cheers, 🍹