“In Spain, there’s a tradition called la hora del vermut,” says Cueva Nueva founder Phi Peinado. “It’s a midday pause where people gather at their neighborhood bar, share salty snacks, good conversation, and a couple glasses of vermut.”

This tradition isn’t happy hour, he’s quick to emphasize, It’s about celebrating the day while it’s still unfolding. It’s also, according to him, unpretentious, communal and “uniquely Spanish”.

His brand, Cueva Nueva – which he set up together with co-founder David Neimanis – is a way of grabbing that feeling, bottling it, and inviting the world into a tradition that’s about slowing down and enjoying the moment.

Why don’t more people drink vermouth?

It’s fair to say that vermouth isn’t one of the buzzy drinks of the moment. And that’s a terrible shame because having tried Cueva Nueva, it’s exceptional.

According to Phi, it’s a very misunderstood drink. Most people don’t realise it’s a wine, he says, or that it can be enjoyed on its own. It’s also been seen as the least exciting part of many classic cocktails – the one ingredient it’s ok to cheap out on.

It’s actually a different story in Spain, where it is buzzy. Vermut culture was fading away with an older generation, but around 2007 younger drinkers started becoming curious about the category and reclaiming it, prompting a wave of new vermut bars across the country.

“People who travel to Spain usually understand the hype pretty quickly,” he says. “You’re hard-pressed to find a bar or sunny terrace where vermut isn’t being enjoyed. But there hasn’t been much effort to export that culture – not just the product – to foreign markets.”

Phi thinks there’s a huge space here. Consumers want lower-ABV drinks, they want global flavors, and they want more affordable ways to drink. “There’s a lot of room for vermouth to finally make some noise,” he says.

Ok, so how is Cueva Nueva going to do it?

Cueva Nueva isn’t reinventing a category, it’s borrowing from a much-loved and very successful culture. Phi says he’s not expecting Americans to stream into old-school Spanish tabernas at 11am and sup on a round of vermut (shame). But he does expect them to enjoy Cueva Nueva in dive bars, at aperitivo-focused wine bars and in neighborhood watering holes that have already mastered the same kind of vibe.

“Our job is to find how the spirit of la hora del vermut can live within the existing US culture,” he says. “We show people how we like to enjoy it, through happy hour events, parties, and an organic, culture-forward content strategy.”

Phi says European imports into the US market often play on ‘fanciness’. In contrast, Cueva Nueva is showing up where people are drinking, and taking the vermut culture to them.

QUICK FACT: that’s why it’s called Cueva Nueva, which translates to ‘new cave’. “It’s this idea that new caves aren’t created; they’re rediscovered,” says Phi.

What’s working?

Cueva Nueva’s strategy is disarmingly simple: it’s run by two guys living a great life in Spain, and that is the brand.

Phi says him and his co-founder have always been clear that they’re building the brand for themselves, and they trust their own taste. They’ve made a liquid that they love; they’ve put it in a bottle that they think looks great; they host parties they’d actually want to attend; and they create content that they’d stop scrolling for.

“Instead of over-analyzing what other people might want, we focus on doing what feels right to us, and doing it well. That mindset also helps when you’re operating with startup constraints. It keeps decisions simple and honest. And while it might sound a little conceited, the reality is pretty straightforward: if we’re not fully bought into the idea, why would anyone else want to join the party?”

This attitude comes through in their website, which shares thoughts on must-visit tapas spots and musings on why la hora del vermut is so special. It also shows up on their Instagram, where they share candid photos of people enjoying tapas, drinks and bars in Spain. It’s all very likeable.

“Unlike larger brands, our content strategy usually starts with a dumb idea and one of us saying, Okay, let’s do it right now before we talk ourselves out of it,” explains Phi. “The philosophy is pretty simple: if we want to win, we need to have more fun than everyone else.”

That fun part feels extremely important. In the world of big bev brands there’s a lot of lofty statements, and glossy film and overpromising. There’s something appealing about stripping it all back to something simple and real: two guys, enjoying some drinks in the sun, with some friends.

Finally, a word on distribution

Phi says that when they started Cueva Nueva, they partnered with an importer that focused on natural wines from Spain. It made sense, because vermouth technically lives in the wine category, and this partnership would give them access to cool kid wine shops and bars without massive marketing budgets.

But they were struggling to access the classic neighborhood bars they imagined themselves in – where vermouth would sit happily alongside a round of beers. These bars wouldn’t hit minimums with products that weren’t core to their business, says Phi.

So the brand shifted to a different partner that functions more like a traditional wine and spirits importer – and it’s working.

“At the end of the day, bars need to be able to add a case of vermouth onto their gin and whiskey order,” says Phi.

Finally, in New Rules tradition we asked:

What’s the brutal truth you’ve learned about building a bev/alc brand?

“Early on, it’s tempting to say yes to every opportunity that comes your way because you want to reach more drinkers. But if you can’t fully support a market, show up properly for a partner, or invest in an idea the right way, you end up stretching yourself too thin, and doing a mediocre job everywhere.”

And, is there anything you’d do differently or tell other founders to do differently?

“The main advice we’d give other founders is: don’t wait so long. Just get started and get people interacting with the product. Keep it simple. Once you start, there’s no turning back, and that’s a good thing. It won’t be perfect out of the gate, but starting sooner helps you understand what actually isn’t working and fix it along the way.”

THE NEW RULE

It’s tempting to think brand-building is long and complicated, and requires a lot of deep strategy. Sometimes it does. But sometimes you just need a simple philosophy, and the willingness to stick to it.

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The food and bev space, right now, is plagued by trend blindness. Entire brands are being built around protein, fibre, adaptogens, beef tallow… whatever founders can grab onto.

The truth is that humans are fickle, and it’s easy to mistake a flash in the pan moment for a long-term business strategy. Good brands don’t care about trends; they care about carving their own path, and ploughing their own furrow – in a field, two fields over.

That’s where Esther founders Margaret Kerr-Jarrett and Emunah Winer (also the founders of Nihilo, the agency behind this newsletter) are right now, as they build a new kind of rum brand.

Why rum? It’s a huge category. The ultra-premium part of it is one of the only spirits categories that’s growing year-on-year, and around a fourth of cocktails consumed in the US are rum cocktails.

“Many people drink rum,” says Margaret. “But people don’t have any brand association with rum, and they don’t think about it in the same way as other categories like gin or vodka or wine, where they have brands they like and know and relate to.”

No pirates, thanks

Esther launched earlier this year (it’s currently on sale at 20 stores in Ohio - where the founders live - and shipping to most states at drinkesther.com) and it brings a completely different take on rum. It’s 100% Colombian rum - grass to glass - and it’s not sugary, it’s not covered in pirates and palm trees, and it doesn’t use any of the other lazy tropes.

Instead, Margy and Emunah made great, surprising liquid (its a unique blend of pot still and column still rum, and the flavor profile is a nod to reposado tequila), and then placed a bet on one major brand asset: that green cap.

“It’s cool to test real language and positioning in the market,” says Emunah. “And the thing that we set out to do is working: the green cap is capping. Everyone, from a mile away, is like ‘get the one with the green cap’.”

That cap was a very early decision, according to Emunah, who says they quickly realized that they needed a cost-effective, different way to disrupt the packaging. The business wasn’t at the point of investing in a custom glass mold, so they landed on the cap as a strategic solution. It would be the visual point of differentiation, and the thing to make Esther stand out on-shelf.

The big, beautiful cap

Getting the cap right took months of R&D. To start with, it’s huge (really, you have to see it in real life). “That meant we had to go in circles, finding the right bottle with the right threading to work with a screw cap that would still feel proportionally ok,” explains Emunah.

Once the practical wrinkles were ironed out, the pair started exploring more aesthetic considerations. The shape had to feel iconic and ownable – not a cube or an orb, but something identifiably theirs. And the color had to work equally hard.

“The green was something we landed on,” says Emunah. “It’s the colour of sugar cane, but that’s just a coincidence. The truth is it’s nothing like anybody would ever expect. We feel like it can cross generations between Gen Z, feeling like it’s punk rock, and older consumers feeling like it’s interesting and weird, but still appealing to them.”

The cap also plays well in the long-term as the brand scales and potentially changes bottles – it might get bigger or subtly change shape, but Esther will always be, as Emunah says, “the one with the big green cap”.

What is a disruptive brand, really?

We’re talking about the cap a lot because it does exactly what branding is meant to do – it stops people, it makes them ask a question, and it opens up a silent conversation.

“Most people aren’t walking around thinking about rum,” says Emunah. “We have to first make them think about rum, and the only way to do that is to grab their attention and make them be curious. I’d rather somebody engage with this from a point of curiosity than not at all, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

“Often we get the question: why the green. The answer is because you’re asking why. That’s what being disruptive means – it’s not for the sake of it, it’s disruptive because the only way people are going to learn that they like rum is by us forcing them to think about it in some way.”

Think about what Patrón has done for tequila, turning it from a throwaway drink you’d do shots of to a spirit you can sip. Then think about the fantastical world Hendrick’s has built around gin, to emphasize that it’s not a dusty old person’s drink.

The right brand can upheave an entire category. That’s Esther’s ultimate goal.

Looking good won’t fix rum… but Esther might

It’s not that there aren’t other rum brands, also hoping to remind people why rum is so great. The problem is that many of them think designing a clean, neat label is enough to do so, says Margaret. Esther has the branding, yes, but it’s also addressing some of rum’s other challenges: flavor and narrative.

When it comes to taste, most rums have additives, they’re sweet, and they’re often found in sticky, sugary cocktails. In contrast, Esther is additive-free, and it’s smoother and more sippable, it has a unique grassy undertone that plays well in cocktails of all kinds, and its more likely to win over drinkers.

The second problem comes down to communication and storytelling. People don’t care about the tired old story of pirates, and unlike other spirits, such as tequila, rum can’t trade on a clear narrative around origins and making either. What Emunah and Margy are aiming to do with Esther is chart a new chapter:

Forget what you think you know about rum, ignore the same old story you’ve heard before, and try this instead.

THE NEW RULE:

There’s always room for a new voice in a category – the trick is finding the angle, narrative or iconic bit of branding that lets you tap into what’s missing, and create your own space to build from.

YOU CAN ACTUALLY TEXT ESTHER: 614-260-6707

www.drinkesther.com (ships rum to most states)

IG: @drinkesther

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Boring boring boring, brand laddering, tribal beers

Sometimes, you get the feeling that bev/alc brands are trying to strip the joy out of everything.

That might be a preachy non-alc business that’s trading on virtue’ or a company hell-bent on adding extra ‘healthy’ ingredients to their liquid. Or it might be Heineken and their Heineken 0.0 ‘ultimate’ – which has no calories, no alcohol, no sugar, and is being introduced to a set number of states after a successful pilot in the US last year.

It’s hard to know who Heineken is appealing to here. GLP-1 users? Health nuts? People that feel the 69 calories in a normal Heineken 0.0 is just too much excitement to handle?

In a semi-related story, Drinks Trade published a story about ‘better for you’ RTDs, for example vodka mixed with electrolytes. So good so virtuous, but when are drinks brands going to embrace being fun and a bit naughty again?

Brands that aren’t venturing into this new, purist area of drinking are experimenting with high and low - and we mean culture and liquid. On the one hand you’ve got Johnny Walker launching a more affordable version, and on the other you’ve got Remy Cointreau setting up a new, more high-end ‘Prestige’ division.

The NY Post says jelly shots are back (lowbrow?), meanwhile non-alc wine brand Wednesday’s Domaine is actually moving into alc, with a range of 6.5% wines (high brow going sorta midbrow?)

Brands seem to be deciding that the space they inhabit is more of a sliding scale than a fixed zone, and that’s freeing them to make some interesting plays.

Finally, we wanted to talk about beer for a second. If we’re being honest beer, right now, does feel a little bit like the awkward +1 at the wedding. Nevertheless, beer brands are really sliding into their own niches, and using that to power their growth.

For Sam Adams that means doubling down on sports and some very local love; for Girl Beer it’s about fruity, light beers that are very much being marketed towards (you guessed it) women; for Garage Beer it’s about being the joker in the room; and for Tuborg it’s about losing themselves in the world of Gen Z in a very ‘How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?’ kind of way.

Keep scrolling for some spiky little dopamine shots of news:

BUY BUY BUY, SELL SELL SELL

-RTD brand BeatBox Beverages now belongs to Anheuser-Busch InBev. It cost them $490m. (this actually happened in Feb, so apologies for being a little late to the party).

Our take: not entirely surprising. It lets ABInBev tap into a massive format trend (RTDs), it borrows a bit of BeatBox’s cool, and it harnesses some of that zany, barely restrained, youthful spirit that people love about BuzzBallz.

-Everyone in the world knows that Tilray bought Brewdog. Andrew Wardlaw, who runs consumer research group MMR has an interesting take, saying the story is less about the deal, and more about what it means around alcohol’s relevance, and the importance of portfolios.

-Notorious canned brand Four Loko is allegedly exploring a sale, with a potential price tag of $400m.

-Don’t believe the ‘no-one’s drinking’ narrative. Brown-Forman (which owns Jack Daniels, Woodford Reserve, El Jimador and Chambord) is actually doing pretty ok, thanks.

-Sazerac just bought Dirty Shirley.

THE NO-HANGOVER CLUB

-“My experience with non-alcoholic wine – and the feedback from most of my industry colleagues – has been overwhelmingly negative,” says food and travel journo Vicki Denig in a piece questioning the perceived NA wine ‘boom’. She gets into the weeds of why it’s falling short. (TLDR: it’s really hard to make them taste good).

-Despite the above, plenty of brands are still trying to crack non-alc wine, including Butter Wines which has launched ButterZero.

-0% Peroni now comes in lemon and blood orange.

Our take: now that big brands have found their 0% legs, they’re starting to experiment with flavours (Heineken recently launched nectarine juniper and lime versions of its 0.0% beer, and Chouffe also launched a cherry-flavoured 0%). This adds a bit of extra novelty to the category, to keep people engaged.

-Welcome to the world, alcohol-free Lillet.

-Also welcome to the world George Clooney’s new alcohol-free beer brand. BTW, is Americana back?

-Willie Nelson only needed a year to make his THC brand a $80m business. “This story is as good as it gets, and there’s no one more authentic than Willie,” says Forrest Dein, co-founder of holding company JuneShine. “There’s no one who’s more synonymous with cannabis.”

-Liquid Ventures is a new investment house dedicated to low- and no-, and bringing along some impressive industry expertise.

Time for a QUICK PAUSE - we want to work with you, the founders, investors, brand-builders and marketers that all read THE NEW RULES. Here’s how:

SPORTS BOOZE

-We said it was coming, and here it is. Alc-free beer brand Belgian Balance seems to be positioning itself next to the sport world, and Ad Age just published a piece about the growing category of brands that look like sports drinks but actually contain alcohol.

IT’S ALL ABOUT NOVELTY BABY

-The Spirits Business has a story about the world’s coldest martini, with London’s Bob Bob Ricard mixing up some extremely cold cocktails. Is it a gimmick? Yes. Would we still order it? A thousand times yes.

-Speaking of novelty, how about some Nowadays THC at the Indycar Grand Prix?

Our take: makes sense. Pop up where your people already are, harness serendipity, give them a chance to try you, be a bit novel….

-And what about this epic BuzzBallz activation in London, featuring a 10-foot gacha machine? Very fun. Very them.

GOOD LOOKS

-Just love Aperol’s updated packaging, and their willingness to lean into that almost-neon orange. Clever brand.

-Cast your eyes over this incredible packaging for Penfolds. Truly quite beautiful

IT’S ABOUT THE ADJACENTS

-There’s the alcohol brands, and then there’s the rich stream of brands that live in beautiful harmony with them, like the mixers. Stoli just re-released its ginger beer (first launched in 2014 for its Stoli Mule cocktail). It’s got a spicy new recipe that includes ginger, chili and caffeine (majorly hot ingredient of the moment).

-Speaking of adjacent, where does AI live in the world of bev/alc? According to Bon Appétit, it’s definitely not as sommelier.

-And what about snacks? What role do they play alongside the low and no movement?

-Brand accelerator Brand Venture plans to scale lemon and lime concentrate alternative Blessed Zest. We told you the side business is fruitful.

TEQUILA CORNER

-Tequila tequila, everyone loves tequila. The Guardian tries to get to the bottom of its surge in popularity. If you’re good and you read all the way to the bottom, you’re rewarded with some cocktail recipes.

-Guillermo del Toro made a film for Patrón.

COCKTAIL TIME

-Pure argument fuel here: VinePair has thoughts on the 10 most important cocktails of the 21st century. Yes the Negroni and the Espresso Martini are on there.

-Ok, that was your classic cocktails. Now read about Buffalo Wild Wings’ Frankenstein-esque Espresso Proteini. It’s exactly what it sounds like.

FOR YOUR READING LIST

-Some interesting reflections in this piece by Suntory’s François Bazini, on how what works so well for one bev brand doesn’t always translate.

-Amidst the doomer stories about wine, we spotted this one bright spot: a tech founder who’s taking a punt on wine-making with a gloriously devil-may-care attitude. “If Gallo is down and Constellation is down and they’re ripping out 10,000 acres, so what? I don’t care.”

AND FINALLY

-“The number of brands that can be built is far larger than the number that can be sold.” Sober (forgive us) thoughts on why many, many bev brands may be unacquirable.

-How do you annoy a woman that drinks whiskey? You ask her one simple question, according to Substacker and writer Becky Paskin.

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Something is happening. I know something’s happening, because I went to my corner shop (in London) a few weeks back and spotted Suntory’s -196 shochu, vodka and soda RTD on the shelves, right next to BuzzBallz and cans of Heineken and Red Stripe.

It’s the first time I’ve seen it there, but it makes total sense because Suntory is actively expanding in Europe and the USA. It also makes sense because it’s a sign of changing tastes and interests.

We’ve all read about the influence of Korean and Chinese and Japanese culture, and we’ve all seen the growing enthusiasm for flavors from East Asia. You can see some of that in The New Rules coverage from the last 6 months – including soju cocktail brand Wild Mannered, and enzymatic cordial JIN JIN.

So when I spotted that British retail institution Marks and Spencer was stocking its first ever sake, I had to chat with the founder of the chosen brand: Dreamsake’s Matt Brunault.

The quick story of Dreamsake

Matt fell in love with sake in New York (he says the US is actually much farther ahead, in terms of beverage, btw. It got to kombucha, craft beer and natural wine first, and is also on its way to fully embracing makgeolli).

Seeing that sake was a hugely underappreciated spirit in the UK, and the west more broadly, he knew there was a space to do something. Matt found brewery partners in Japan, worked with them to develop a liquid that was “approachable” for a western audience, and identified a price point that would grab new sake drinkers who don’t want to commit too much to their first experience.

Education, pricing, flavor… sake is a balancing act

People might think of sake as a spirit, but it’s drunk more like a wine. And then to confuse things further, it’s at an interesting midpoint of strength. It’s not a beer-level ABV, nor is it spirit- or wine. It’s at the difficult middle.

As Matt says: “It throws you a bit, which is quite interesting.”

For the most part, people also don’t know how sake is made. “What’s challenging, especially for a brand like ours, is that there’s a huge amount of education,” says Matt.

Here’s a quick rundown of the making process, from him:

“You take rice and polish it. The more you polish it, the more you polish away the protein and the higher the ratio of starch to protein. Then you steam the rice and use koji – the same mold used in miso and soy sauce – which turns starch into sugar, and then yeast turns sugar into alcohol.”

The process yields different grades of sake depending on how much the rice is polished. Lots of polishing creates fruity, elegant flavors, less polishing produces more savory, rough, umami flavors – which, says Matt, people in the west aren’t so used to.

These rougher flavors are a lot of people’s first experience of sake, when they order the cheapest option on the menu at their local Japanese restaurant. That can throw them off and make life difficult for a sake brand that wants them to keep buying and trying. It means building in this space is a balancing act, first and foremost.

Dreamsake has to find the sweet spot in so many ways: the right price to convince people to try it; the right brand without playing on visual tropes; the right flavor to keep people drinking it; and the right level of explanation and education.

Japan needs those sake exports

It was a surprise, to me at least, to hear that in Japan, sake is actually in decline.

“It’s seen almost like an old man’s drink,” says Matt. “It’s a national heritage point, like pubs in the UK, but you read in Japan how many sake breweries are closing because the demand isn’t there. It’s really sad because there are all these historical and cultural points, but in Japan everyone’s drinking whiskey and beer and wine. For them, export is now really important.”

The good news is that just this year, The Drinks Business reported that sake exports from Japan are up (the second highest level on record), they’ve doubled since 2020, and the Japanese government has set a very ambitious target for the future.

In this environment, ripe with possibility, Matt hopes a brand like Dreamsake is a “stepping stone”. He admits that the category, in Europe at least, is tiny at the moment – and that’s difficult. However it’s also extremely promising, because there’s so much room for it to grow, and for other new sake brands in the west to uplift one another.

What is it about sake?

I think there’s a few reasons sake is really primed to explode.

1)We’re in the magpie era of consumer behaviour.

There are so many drinks brands on offer. People are extremely ready to be seduced by a cool new soda, or a beer brand with a great label, or a spirit they’ve never heard of.

Keeping them loyal is another story, but persuading them to try something new has maybe never been easier. Novelty is an enormous selling point. On top of that, people in the west have had years of gin, whiskey and wine being drummed into them via huge marketing budgets. But sake? Not so much. It’s new, and that’s very alluring.

2)Our cultural influences are evolving rapidly

Japan and Korea have gained huge cultural currency in recent years. Korean and Japanese beauty brands in particular have carved out a path, and I think smart bev/alc brands can follow that trail, and tap into a lot of pre-existing positive sentiment.

3)There’s something a bit deeper about all of this

I think the growing interest in sake and other East Asian flavors also speaks to changes in how people feel. Whether they’re aware of it or not, consumers are thinking more about ingredients and craft and time. They want less additives, and they want something that feels rooted in a deeper story. Not only is sake preservative and sulfite-free, but it’s born from a long, rich tradition.

“What we really recognize, as a culture, is good craft,” says Matt. “When we look to Japan or Korea or China you see things that are well-crafted. There’s a real obsession with craft … I think our consumption habits are shifting towards better and less. Less quantity, higher quality. And I think in an ever-disconnected digital world, it gives our lives more meaning. Interacting with an Asian product just feels more expansive.”

It’s something that JIN JIN founder Sohn Supradya Aursudkij also told us:

“From soju to kombucha to regional drinks and ferments, they all have deep histories and beautiful craftsmanship behind them and people appreciate that now more than ever. There used to be outdated perceptions about Asian products not meeting certain standards, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There are so many premium, carefully made foods and drinks coming from Asia. People today care about authenticity and story, and Asian flavors offer both.”

There’s a major opportunity here. If someone discovers and loves sake, that’s the first step of discovering more sake, and then more expensive sake. The potential is vast. And I think we’re on the verge of seeing a lot more sake brands – and drinks brands rooted in East Asia – come to the market. The challenge, as ever, is how they use branding, comms, and storytelling to find their place and then sell that to drinkers.

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Cheers.

How to work with us

We started The New Rules a year ago to dissect what it takes to build a brand in the modern bev/alc landscape. It’s been a wild ride, and while many of you know us through your inbox, you might not know that this platform is powered by Nihilo, our brand advisory and agency.

The most common question we get is: “Can you help us build our brand?”

The short answer is: We are not currently taking on full-scale, ground-up branding projects.

What we do offer is a few “New Rules” ways to work with us:

• Advisory & Hourly Consulting: High-impact sessions on positioning, GTM strategy, messaging, or design direction. Think of us as your external “Head of Brand” for an hour or a day.

• A La Carte Creative: Specific, tactical executions for when you have the vision but need the polish. This covers pitch decks, copywriting, social templates, and print collateral.

• Training & Speaking: Workshops or keynotes for teams and industry events. We translate our research and "New Rules" insights into actionable sessions on the current state of the bev/alc market.

Interested? Reach out! hi@nihilo.agency

Cheers,

Margaret, Emunah, and the TNR team.

Most founders in bev/alc start with a liquid, then a bottle, then a distribution plan. But Sistine is doing things differently.

Founders Lauren Alexander and Kate McLamb did not start with a recipe; they started with a mood board. Drawing from Lauren’s 20-year background in fashion, they’re building Sistine as a lifestyle ecosystem that prioritizes curation and intuition over traditional corporate scaling.

The result is a brand that feels less like a grocery store staple and more like decor.

The branding-before-liquid strategy

Sistine started with the brand. They spent months with Black Ink Project – a branding agency in London – before a single drop was formulated.

As Lauren says: “We did branding and story before we ever had a drink, before we had formulated, before we knew what color it would be, anything”.

This wasn’t just about nice packaging. It was about defining the “World of Sistine,” a space that encompasses Spotify playlists, dinner parties, and a specific cultural milieu.

By the time they approached formulators, the visual and emotional parameters were so clear that the liquid had to rise to the challenge of the brand. Even the specific pink-orange hue was decided only after they saw a mockup that reflected that color.

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Hosting as the core product

If you look at Sistine’s social presence, you’ll see as much hosting as you see liquid. Lauren jokes that they could have launched the brand and never had a beverage because they do so much entertaining.

The dinner party is not just marketing; it’s the brand’s origins. Lauren previously ran “Wine Society” in LA, curating natural wine dinners that evolved from educational sessions into wild, high-energy parties. That experience taught them how to build a world where people actually want to belong, using music and curation to set a mood that feels refined but never alienating.

The “anti-RTD” positioning

Sistine occupies an elevated “Third Space” between categories. While technically a pre-prepared cocktail, it intentionally avoids the “Ready to Drink” aisle. By using an organic Chardonnay base and natural botanicals, Sistine has earned spots on elite wine lists, a rare achievement for bottled cocktails.

• The bottle: Aspirational in aesthetic while remaining accessible.

• The can: Served with a “sidecar” of ice to create a modern, elevated ritual.

• The placement: Positioned alongside pet-nats and natural wines, not sugary malt beverages.

The retail advantage: from outlier to pioneer

While restaurants offer credibility, the premium retail environment is the brand’s natural home. This is where the “anti-RTD” stance moves from a defensive position to an offensive market-share grab.

1. Overcoming the gatekeeper

In restaurants, Sistine can face a “purist” barrier from sommeliers trained in single-varietal terroir. In retail, that gatekeeper is replaced by a “curator” or shop owner looking for high-quality, hybrid products that solve a consumer need for premium convenience.

2. Visual discovery and context

Retail provides visual real estate that a wine list cannot.

• The “adjacent” strategy: By sitting next to natural wines and premium aperitifs, Sistine uses retail “neighborhoods” to signal its quality without saying a word.

• The hosting occasion: A shopper buying a chilled Gamay for a dinner party is more likely to grab a 4-pack of Sistine than they are to order a canned drink at a white-tablecloth dinner.

3. The education mandate

As a “category of one,” Sistine must bridge an education gap for both the trade and the consumer.

• Sistine leads the conversation in defining this new category (part wine, part botanical cocktail).

• Retail displays allow Sistine to teach the “sidecar” ritual, proving that the liquid deserves the same reverence as a hand-shaken drink.

In restaurants, Sistine is an outlier. In retail, Sistine is a pioneer.

Mastering the neighborhood

To protect the brand’s status, Lauren and Kate have resisted the urge to be everywhere at once.

Instead of a national “spray and pray” launch, they are mastering Los Angeles neighborhood by neighborhood. This hyper-local focus allows them to remain hands-on, often performing the tastings themselves at independent retailers.

“Until you can prove that you can take over and curate I think in a smaller section it’s hard to scale”.

Lauren notes that people are often shocked to see the founders personally conducting the tastings at bottle shops. But for them, it’s a return to basics that provides direct feedback from buyers and creates genuine velocity through real human connection.

Operating on intuition

Perhaps the most radical “new rule” Sistine follows is its reliance on intuition and timing. From launching the website on 8/8 to consulting with an astrologer on business transits, the founders lean into their instincts as a strategic advantage.

Hell yes.

Go Sistine.

Lean into what it is that guides you.

There are no steadfasts in this industry, or this life. Let’s all drop the pretense that there are.

THE NEW RULE

Sistine reminds us that taste, both in liquid and in culture, cannot be fully automated - and that intuition is still the most fundamental thing we can all tap into. Don’t ever ignore it.

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Cheers.

Candela Mamajuana brings something new to rum. Instead of repeating familiar cues, it introduces a Dominican botanical spirit with real heritage and a modern aesthetic that feels precise, considered, and culturally alive.

Younger drinkers want brands that feel rooted in place and designed for the present; Candela does both. The identity expresses fuego, pride, and the mystique of the Dominican jungle, and the liquid offers a flavor profile that expands what people assume rum can be.

Rum really needs a rethink

Tequila, mezcal and ready-to-drink brands have been a major focus over the past ten years. But rum has evolved more slowly. “It got left behind, and the top brands are still living in the worlds of pirates, sea monsters or patriarch founders,” says Candela Mamajuana founder Alejandro Russo. “Where is the cool, modern rum brand? What rum brand is going to get new consumers who are just learning how to drink excited about rum?”

Alejandro is in the business of changing that. Instead of all the old symbolic cues and all the old traditions that paint it as a simple mixer that goes with your Coke, Candela Mamajuana positions rum as a premium, botanical spirit. It’s aromatic, it’s earthy, it’s layered, and it’s easy to enjoy neat.

You have to frame tradition

Mamajuana is the name for a concoction of rum and honey that’s infused with bark and herbs. It has quite a reputation in the Dominican Republic — where it was invented around 200 years ago — known as an aphrodisiac as well as a panacea. Alejandro jokes that if he had a nickel for every person who said they didn’t drink rum, and then fell in love with mamajuana, he’d be rich.

Previously, however, mamajuana was seen as a tourist novelty item that people enjoyed on vacation. Candela’s challenge was creating a recipe that would be smooth, flavorful and balanced enough to take it from a souvenir to a top-shelf spirit — using the best possible rums and botanicals while staying true to the traditional Dominican recipe.

That focus on tradition and flavors says something about what modern drinkers actually want from rum. They want authenticity, they want something crafty that isn’t pretentious, and they want taste that isn’t held up by sugar and artificial additives. Candela delivers all of this, alongside a reminder that rum can be refined, layered and culturally specific.

Education is part of the job

Alejandro says the hardest part of building Candela has been ongoing education — letting people know what mamajuana is, where it comes from, why it’s special and how to drink it. And that’s a challenge that comes up every single day.

“You’re not just competing with other rum brands, you’re competing with conceptual unfamiliarity,” he says. “But the upside is enormous: when people discover something truly new, they become evangelists. Category creation is slow at first, then exponential. Now we have so many loyal superfans who spread the word. It’s been worth it to be unique.”

The education job doesn’t belong to Candela alone. There’s a new wave of consumers just waiting to discover rum, and to fall back in love with mojitos, piña coladas, daquiris and cubra libres, says Alejandro.

They’re not going to be won over by tired flavor cues or clichés — they want new, better brands that they can show off and post on socials. “New brands that say something about their aspirational status and person.”

Functional vs. emotional

Winning people over to rum isn’t going to happen via the old visual and flavor cues. And it’s not going to happen by showing off how well-aged your liquid is.

Think about it: why do people still buy iPhones, when other smartphones have better cameras? Why didn’t the iPod compete on having the most storage?

Consumers respond to a lot of different things but, often, brands win out by appealing to what Alejandro calls “an emotional advantage”, rather than a “functional, competitive” one. That’s why Candela decided to stay away from aging statements, to avoid getting into the rat race of “this rum is three years” vs “this one is five years”.

“I want consumers to choose Candela because it’s f*cking badass, not because it was aged longer.”

Differentiation is everything

Alejandro says spirits brand founders can fall into two traps.

First, they think it’ll be an easy, three- year ride. In reality, the supply chains, distribution process and sales cycles are long. Forget those three years, and start thinking in terms of a decade.

“The spirits industry moves at the pace of molasses. Be prepared and be patient,” he says.

Second, founders think a cool product is enough to win someone over. The truth is that spirits brands live and die on differentiation. If you don’t have a good reason to exist, then why would someone have a good reason to buy you?

From day zero know why you’re different, why you’re better, and why someone would swap their favorite choice for you.

NEW RULES FROM CANDELA MAMAJUANA

Elevate a category by adding something new, not by imitating what already exists.
Candela’s take on a legendary Dominican botanical rum is different, and alluring.

Build an identity that reflects the world your consumer lives in now
Don’t rely on old tropes and design cues. It’s lazy. And it rarely builds long-term brand value.

Lead with emotional value, not technical value.
People choose brands because of how they feel, not because of aging statements.

Treat spirits as a decade-long build.
Patience, clarity, and cultural conviction compound over time.

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Let’s set the scene: you’re in the Catskills, on a weekend getaway, and all you’re drinking is a homemade cocktail of vodka, fresh garden herbs and cold-pressed coconut water. It’s delicious. It’s refreshing. And suddenly you say: “It’s Mother’s Milk”. A brand is born.

Ok, it’s not quite as easy as that, but as origin stories go, it’s a good one.

A brand built for “better and smarter” partying

Founders Kristie Kish and Jennifer Roman-Matito describe this as the light bulb moment behind Mother’s Milk – an RTD brand that’s built around partying “better and smarter”.

“As we got older, of course, the hangovers became longer and harder and we wanted to be better to our bodies,” says Kristie. “We wanted to get cocktails during the week and still wake up for that early morning yoga class.”

This is the driving philosophy behind Mother’s Milk – and it’s one that’s resonating. Kristie says the response to their RTD coconut water cocktails is often “where have you been all my life?” Or, sometimes, “I need this at all my parties”.

“Mother’s Milk has proven to be cult-worthy,” she says. “It’s super-niche, different and oddly addicting. It solves a problem for today’s consumers who want to feel good AND have a good time.”

We love a niche

Undoubtedly, Mother’s Milk is in an interesting space of its own. It’s not alcohol-free, and it’s not low-alc, but it is bundling a sense of goodness and wellness alongside drinking.

Companies are now being built as a ‘sidecar’ to booze and partying - anti-hangover supplements, pre-drinking drinks that promise to soothe next-day scaries, powders that boost you post-rave. It’s a new sector of liminal brands, and we think they’re onto something.

“If you look at broader cultural and consumer trends, you’ll see a clear shift toward more mindful drinking,” says Kristie, “and that aligns perfectly with what Mother’s Milk is doing. We’re tapping into that moment by putting the good stuff directly into the drink, instead of asking people to fix the problem afterward.

“You see it with things like probiotic sodas - they satisfy a craving while also offering a functional benefit. We’re creating a new category that merges wellness and party culture.”

As we’ve written about before: drinking is being renegotiated.

A brand built by an animator and a hospitality pro

Neither Kristie nor Jen have CPG experience. Kristie is a former freelance animator for Nickelodeon, and Jen worked in the hospitality industry, running events for hotels.

However, Kristie’s background in design and animation was pivotal in shaping the visual identity, packaging and website, and Jen’s hospitality experience and knowledge of the NYC food and bev scene has informed how they show up via IRL activations, and on-premise strategy (or, as Kristie charmingly puts it: “cans in hands, sips to lips”).

That visual branding in particular, says Kristie, has been a major part of Mother’s Milk’s success. Rather than a tool to sell product, it’s intended to convey a feeling or experience – something aspirational and desirable. “It’s that daydream of being on vacation,” as Kristie says. “Or being the wellness girlie who also knows how to party.

“Consumers today want brands that feel authentic, cultural, and real - no fluff, no BS. I think MM feels refreshing because it doesn’t talk at people. It invites them in, and that’s something people genuinely connect with.”

Mother’s Milk knows its people

Beyond the visual identity, what’s working for the brand has been understanding exactly who likes Mother’s Milk and then doubling down on them. Jen says the brand has leaned into a highly targeted, community-driven approach – “a zipcode strategy if you will” – that places the brand in bars and restaurants in specific areas, and then activates nearby liquor stores or supports local events in close proximity.

According to her: “By concentrating our efforts geographically, we’re able to build real awareness, trial, and loyalty instead of spreading ourselves too thin.”

Finally, in The New Rules tradition we asked

What’s the brutal truth you’ve learned about building a bev/alc brand?

“I would have to say three things. One, it’s more political than I ever imagined! Two, foundationally, this is a relationship-driven business. Three, label transparency does not exist in alcohol. We aim to change that.” - Jen

With hindsight what would you do differently or recommend other founders do differently?

“If I’m being brutally honest, if the product is not incredibly unique, and new to the market, just don’t do it. I would also emphasize how often I taste a great product, but the branding and brand identity falls flat.

And vice versa, I’ve tried horrible beverages with horrible ingredients, but the branding and brand identity are spot on connecting with their target demographic.

In 2026, it is equally as important to build a well curated product while simultaneously launching a brand that speaks to it. You cannot have one without the other.” - Jen

NEW RULE

It’s ok to be in a slightly awkward, slightly niche category - if you know who your people are and how to connect with them.

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Young Jerks is the rare agency that makes a signature style feel like a service rather than a constraint. Their work occupies the space between working-class utility and premium refinement - a signature ‘retro-cool’ aesthetic that has essentially become the blueprint for modern packaging. Every brand Young Jerks touches is unmistakably theirs, yet also entirely driven by the client’s needs.

Made up of a team of designers, illustrators and letterers across Brooklyn and Philly, Young Jerks has become a go-to agency for high-end spirits and craft labels (think Pa’lante, Parch, Drowned Lands, and more.) They’re also known as the team behind the identity and packaging for Mr Black – the coffee liqueur brand that transformed the category before being acquired by Diageo in 2022.

We think a huge part of Mr Black’s success is down to formative work carried out by Young Jerks, as well as the brand development they led for ten years. Let’s talk about how they did it.

HOW THE STORY STARTED

Young Jerks originally met Mr Black founder Tom Baker nearly a decade ago. The business had already seen success in its home country of Australia, and as they planned their expansion overseas, they wanted to solidify the brand.

“We had a meeting at 9 o’clock in the morning at a coffee shop, and Tom pulled out a bottle of liqueur and made us drink it,” says Young Jerks co-founder Dan Cassaro.

At the time, there was “nothing but bad vibes” around coffee liqueur, according to him. Drinkers didn’t have positive associations, so Mr Black needed to hit them with a one-two punch: first, grab them with the branding, second, overcome preconceived notions of what coffee liqueur tastes like.

SOMETIMES THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE

Getting over those negative perceptions obviously required exceptional liquid, but it also needed something else: compelling, eye-grabbing, unexpected branding.

When it comes to brand-building, people love to backwards-rationalize and over-intellectualize. But the strategy for Mr Black was simple: make it look cool, get people to try it.

“We were just trusting our gut,” says Young Jerks co-founder Dan Christofferson. “We had a specific idea of the texture of typography, and we wanted to make an impact on those kinds of things … since then I think we’ve developed really specific ideas and philosophies around packaging and branding, but it was helpful in the first few years [of working with Mr Black] to trust our instincts around culture and alcohol.”

The brand also had to be really clear as it pushed into the US. The audience there loved cold brew, says Dan Cassaro, so that messaging had to go front and centre.

At the time, Mr Black was using a stock bottle but Young Jerks added a custom die-cut label – that would ultimately become iconic for the brand – to get that message across. They also sprinkled in some of the “weird, esoteric, arcane, mythological” imagery that the agency is known and loved for, and that Mr Black came to be associated with.

ARCANE VISUALS

When Mr Black later developed a custom bottle, Young Jerks embedded even more of that visual vernacular into the packaging – some of it only revealed once people started drinking.

“They let us hide open and closed eyes, and an oracle on the back,” says Dan Christofferson, who made those illustrations. “We started hiding that language throughout the brand. It became a cool treasure hunt for the brand as it grew, and people could find that stuff and continue the brand story.”

And once Mr Black had this “treasure chest” of imagery? The copy wrote itself. For example, the brand’s ‘sweetheart of the night’ tagline was originally a casual sentence written for a merch collection, but founder Tom loved it, and it started appearing in other places like the website, and in the Instagram account of Mr Black’s brand ambassador.

“There’s this alchemy that happens between whoever’s building these assets, and the person who’s executing them and knowing how to use them, and that is really important,” says Dan Cassaro.

GOOD BRANDING FEELS ‘INEVITABLE’

Young Jerks were agency of record for Mr Black for a whole decade, and in that time they tested various brand and label executions. They explored several directions – making it feel more like a Brooklyn coffee brand, for example, or leaning into the codes of old patent medicine.

Ultimately, however, they followed their instincts and chose whichever path felt “inevitable”. “We’ve gone through three or four fully-invested-our-hearts-into new brand and new labels,” says Dan Christofferson. “But such a huge part of a brand is just repetition, and doing the same thing over and over again until it locks in.”

Inevitability. Repetition. They’re not the sexy words agencies often use when talking about branding, but they’re the things that really work. And there’s something compelling about describing the right branding as ‘inevitable’ – it feels right, it feels instinctive, and somehow that was the place it was always going to get to.

GREAT BRANDS DON’T EXPLAIN THEMSELVES

To build a brand like Mr Black, you have to be a bit provocative. You have to trust your brand agency, you have to let them do their thing, and then you have to run with it – as far as you possibly can.

“The best founders have this objectivity, where they can look at their brand - which is so personal – and be able to see it how someone on the outside might see it,” says Dan Cassaro.

“That gives them extra insight. And when you’re able to do that, you give yourself more permission to build a specific type of confidence into the brand including the copy that you’re writing. You wouldn’t believe how many founders are so scared that they feel the need to explain everything, and then a lot of campaigns and even copywriting falls so flat.

“You have to be brave enough to go in there and be like: this is who we are. We’re confident. Maybe a bit funny. Maybe this doesn’t make that much sense, but it’s provocative. And I think you see that again and again in successful brands that people have an emotional connection with.”

With Mr Black, Young Jerks didn’t just design a label or a brand; they built a toolbox to empower the founder for years to come. They proved that confidence and true creative partnership are the most powerful forces for market disruption.

The New Rules is a labor of love by nihilo.agency
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Brewdog seeks a buyer, fizzy red, nostalgia reigns

The big news this month? Brewdog is up for sale. Ten or so years back, they were the beer business, but in recent times there’s been a palpable sense that the brand just isn’t landing anymore. It’s a reminder that even the highest flyers aren’t a sure thing.

The story is moving fast (the latest is that Danish brewer Royal Unibrew is interested in acquiring them, among various others), and there’s a lot of opinions on where things went wrong.

Brewdog themselves say it’s down to a “challenging economic climate”, which may be true, but it’s hard to forget about the various controversies they’ve faced over the years (alleged treatment of staff, the solid gold can scandal, the ‘beer for girls’, the departure of its founder and other senior figures, the Equity for Punks scheme).

Our take: it’s not over for them yet, but they’re going to need a smart buyer and probably a smart brand team to think about what the business actually stands for and how it communicates that to people – as well as how it moves beyond lingering bad feeling. Craft beer brands are now a dime a dozen, and finding distinctiveness of any kind is HARD.

In other news, is sparkling red about to have a moment? At the start of this month we chatted with Pizza Wine founder Liz McDonnell (NEWBIES feature coming soon), who’s building a brand that puts fizzy red into the spotlight (it goes great with pizza). We’ve spoken before about brands not knowing what ritual they’re for, but Pizza Wine knows exactly and specifically, and we love that.

Not long after this we saw that model Ashley Graham had set up a sparkling red wine brand, and then spotted Black Girl Magic Wines were also launching a sweet red frizzante.

If you’re not sipping on a sparkling red, you’re longing for the past. Shirley Temple is the recipe of the moment. Coca-Cola and Pepsi are bringing back classic flavors. Carling is reviving Black Label. Nostalgia’s powerful, and never more so than when it comes to food and drink.

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Here’s your news scroll:

NEW TO THE WORLD

Sentia – which makes “GABA-enhancing spirits” that stimulate neurotransmitters to make you feel relaxed and sociable – has launched a new alcohol-free cider.

Our take: This ‘not alcohol’ and ‘not THC’ category has huge potential, but the fact that it’s currently being dubbed ‘functional drinks’ is very unsexy. Sentia could be onto something, but their branding and messaging needs a lot of work.

Coinciding with the Winter Olympics, Peroni released limited edition, $100 gold bottles with solid gold caps.

Did you know the founders of this very Substack also have their own rum brand, Esther? Here she is, new to the world and ready to take over the white space that is the rum sector.

CH-CH-CH-CHANGES

Spindrift announced that they are now totally non-UPF.

Our take: think about the ongoing tequila additive wars. We’re going to see more brands flexing around being all-natural/UPF-free/additive-free, sugar-free, and using that as a tool to lure people in.

Is ‘whiskey tourism’ faltering? Off the back of Diageo closing a visitor centre at a Scottish distillery, the BBC reports on the waning fortunes of distillery tours. If you ask us, brands need to do more to show up where people are (rather than waiting for them to turn up).

There’s nothing like an animated graph for visualizing changes in drinking habits. Here’s Matt Rice, founder of Thirsty Insights, pointing out the slow-slow-slow-then-suddenly-fast expansion of wine RTDs.

INVESTORS’ CORNER

Willie’s Remedy+ continues to soar, landing $15m in Series A funding to keep growing the brand. Yahoo reports that it’s sold over 400k bottles since its launch less than a year ago, and it’s coming soon to retail shelves. People love THC.

Gallo just bought Four Roses from Kirin, not long after acquiring Whiny Baby. They’re diversifying. Watch this space.

INTERESTING FLAVORS

In previous Happy Hours, we noticed brands branching out into interesting flavors (Absolut Tabasco being the latest example). Now Heineken has added Lime and Nectarine Juniper to its zero beer range.

Our take: smart. There’s a huge number of alc-free beers, and it makes sense to differentiate yourself by injecting some novelty into the space.

Hendrick’s also just ventured into new flavors with orange blossom and cacao gin.

Apparently flavor is a major part of Surfside’s strategy, with its founders telling Forbes it aims for “familiar and popular” tastes that might seem fairly middle-of-the-road, but keep people coming back to them.

HIGH LOW NO

We’ve said it before: there’s always a contrarian. While everyone loses their minds for low-ABV and alcohol-free, some spirits brands are embracing high strength instead.

And then there’s the middle: the new Jack Daniels & Coke RTD is in a bigger can, but at a lower strength to make it “more sessionable”.

People love alcohol-free wine, people hate alcohol-free wine. Yahoo shares insight into the difficulties this particular sector faces – not least some of the condescension from the trad alc/bev industry.

Our take: the truth is, much de-alcoholized wine is mostly not very good, and that’s a liquid problem that branding can’t fix. As Benchmark Drinks’ MD says: “we’ve disappointed the consumer for many years”. Getting past that legacy is going to be tough.

CHANGING CULTURE

Sake is set for major global growth, says Beverage Daily. We’re currently working on a feature about sake’s expansion in Europe and the USA. Running a sake brand? Have opinions? Tell us. We want to talk to you.

SPONSORSHIP TIME

Cuervo is now the official tequila of NASCAR. NASCAR says its fans are 381.1% more likely to have consumed the brand in the past month, and 40.5% more likely to drink it. Definitely some numbers there.

A GLASS OF SPARKLING RED?

Model Ashley Graham is behind new sparkling red wine brand: Lucci Lambrusco.

THE FUN BIT

Reuters had a story about wine being aged under the sea by Chilean winemakers. According to one sommelier: “the tannins feel smoother, softer, the body feels more elegant”.

AdWeek has an interesting perspective on how brands won drinkers over to light beer. In short: no-one cared until the marketers got involved.

Why do some bartenders insist on importing ice from Japan? A short, but fascinating, answer here. The TLDR: it’s all about the craft and the experience.

Our take: there’s something compelling about the ‘accessories’ that come with drinking (for example Hoste Cocktail’s atomizers) and the potential for these to live as brands of their very own.

“Drinks founders don’t seem to wait around asking if they’re allowed to exist.” The ‘delusion’ of drinks founders is admirable and very necessary, says this Substack from Beholder.

The You, Me & CPG podcast says drinks brands need to loosen up. Have some fun. Be less serious.

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For years, the beverage industry operated on a playbook that prioritized rapid expansion and high-level storytelling, often at the expense of commercial viability. But as the market matures, the expectations from investors have shifted toward a more tactical realism.

To understand what it takes to actually move the needle today, I sat down with Emile Ward (an investor and operator who successfully navigated an exit with Gin Foundry). His perspective is rooted in the transition from selling others’ brands to investing in the next wave of leaders.

The message is clear: if you want to attract an acquirer, you have to stop chasing the “Casamigos exit” and start obsessing over actual business metrics (what a concept).

The Trap of the Generic Exit

One of the most common mistakes founders make is populating their pitch decks with the same pool of “logical” acquirers (think Diageo or Pernod Ricard) without considering if they actually fit the portfolio. Emile notes that this often signals a lack of market depth.

"They (naive founders) tend to put the same pool of acquirers as their potential exit. It’s always Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi… and it’s just not realistic. It doesn’t show that you know the market well enough."

Instead of aiming for the giants immediately, look at the layers beneath. We are seeing a rise in medium-sized brands, distributors, and cross-category movers taking center stage. For example, the acquisition of Alani Nu by Celsius, Whiny Baby by Gallo, or Lalo Tequila by Tito’s proves that target audience alignment can be more valuable than category tradition. A realistic exit strategy requires networking with the players who actually need your specific community or distribution plug-and-play.

Why Velocity is the Only Truth

For years, many founders focus on the “vanity metric” of total doors. Or appearances (we sponsored this party! we hired this person for content!). They want to be everywhere at once, hoping that sheer presence equals success. Today’s investors see right through this.

Listen carefully: The core indicator of your brand’s health is not how many accounts you have, it is how quickly those accounts are reordering. High velocity in a few key accounts is infinitely more valuable than a single dusty bottle sitting on a shelf in a thousand stores. If you cannot prove repeat purchase and increasing order rates over time, you do not have a brand (you have a one-time trial).

The New Investor Checklist

When you are looking to scale in this environment, these are the strategic shifts you need to internalize:

• The Omnichannel Necessity: While D2C is vital for community building and testing limited editions, beverage is won in distribution—the on-trade and off-premise. Emile has deep D2C experience, and shares below when it makes sense for a brand to focus on D2C.

• Leveraging Editorial Depth: Emile’s success with Gin Foundry was rooted in its dual nature as both a highly-trafficked editorial platform and a direct-to-consumer marketplace with hundreds of SKUs. This provided the “weight” needed to enter the market with authority.

• Margin Discipline: The days of burning cash for top-line growth are over. Investors want to see a clear plan for reducing COGS and maintaining tight control over gross margins as you scale.

• Hiring Above Yourself: Successful founders identify where they are weak and hire people who outsmart them in those areas. Humility in leadership is often the deciding factor in whether a brand can survive the transition from founder-led to a scaled operation.

Categories to Watch

Beyond the crowded non-alc and functional water spaces, there are pockets of opportunity where cultural intelligence is being applied to “unsexy” categories:

1. Healthy Condiments: Salad dressings and pantry staples that treat food as a lifestyle signal.

2. The “Better-for-You” Indulgence: Probiotic or protein-enriched treats that bridge the gap between wellness and hedonism.

3. The Wine Rebrand: Wine has the history and the lower ABV that a new generation craves, but the branding and formats (cans, boxes) are still catching up to the culture.

Building a System, Not Just a Story

The goal is not to tell the most beautiful story, it is to build a commercial system that works. The story should back that up, not the other way around. Investors are not buying your “vision” (they are buying your proof of adoption).

As Emile reminded us, "It’s easy to sell something once, but it’s really hard to sell something twice."

The brands that earn a permanent spot in a consumer’s routine are the ones that stop being a trend and become a staple.

The New Rules is a labor of love by nihilo.agency

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Like a lot of good stories, IESSI starts with family. Founder Nicolas Maiarelli grew up in Udine, in northeastern Italy, drinking aperitivo and learning how to make amaro alongside his Nonna. In 2023, that family recipe evolved into IESSI: an alcohol-free aperitif made using bitter orange, ginger, rhubarb, gentian and chilli pepper.

That’s a powerful list of ingredients and indeed, IESSI is a powerful drink: flavorful, bitter, and defiantly not a lesser version of its alcoholic forebears.

Bitter is here to stay

The interest in bitter flavors isn’t a resurgence — they’ve been around for centuries — but bitter is certainly having a moment. That’s very noticeable in the alcohol-free space. Or, at least, in the more successful alcohol-free brands.

“When it comes to alcohol-free gin or alcohol-free whatever, you lack the strength, length and depth in the flavors,” says Romain Llobet, who joined as Partner and Strategic Director at IESSI after 23 years in the food and bev business.

“When it comes to bitter it’s fantastic, because you’re happy, you have flavors, you don’t feel like you should have drunk something else. I think in alcohol-free right now, if there’s no flavor, people are abandoning the idea.”

For IESSI, flavor is a story. There’s an “arc” to the drink, as Nicolas says: a beginning, a middle and an end. That requires complexity, and bitterness delivers that instantly.

“You can finish a drink and feel satiated,” he says. “Whereas if the flavor’s too light, you risk entering the realm of a soft drink.”

People don’t want to be preached to

That complex, bitter flavor is one part of the IESSI brand. The other is how it presents itself in a sector that often pushes its product as an “alternative” to alcohol, or a “better choice”. Frequently, the messaging feels preachy. IESSI is anything but.

“First of all, we’re not a wellness brand,” says Nicolas. “We don’t talk about sobriety. We’re not in the business of telling you what you should and shouldn’t drink. We’re about making sure that, in those moments that you don’t want to drink or drink a lower ABV, that you have an exceptional and out of the ordinary experience ... we never talk about sobriety. We never impose this idea that drinking is bad. For us, IESSI is a brand built around being inclusive in those social moments.”

Let’s talk about the branding

That deep ruby liquid. The bright orange label. Those sloping glass shoulders. It’s clear that IESSI’s branding and packaging has been designed with a lot of love. Nicolas says that, from the get-go, he wanted it to live “in the realm of premium spirits”, taking reference points from beautiful bottles of bitters, mezcals, rums and gins, rather than sodas.

IESSI needed to be both new and timeless — something that feels like an instant classic, but that won’t seem dated in two years’ time. And Nicolas was clear: absolutely no lazy nostalgia or clichéd Italian visual references. “It’s not an easy brief,” he admits.

He brought in Florent Gomez Siso, founder of studio AD-REM, who saw the liquid and instantly knew the Pantone reference he wanted to use for the label. (By the way, that exact colour of the liquid is very important. Nicolas says they experienced some variation in the earlier batches due to normal variations in natural fruit juice, and now use a natural carrot concentrate to get a more uniform, rich red).

“We wanted to create a brand that feels contemporary, but the other thing I wanted was to be bold,” he says. “The fact that the label is wrap-around with big bold text and the colour really stands out — when you see a bottle on a backbar, that’s all you see.

“We want to own who we are. Just because it’s an alcohol-free product, doesn’t mean we have to be meek and slink to the back of a shelf.”

IESSI’s strategy: win over the bars first

When Nicolas first launched the brand, he’d pack his backpack full of bottles and walk it round to bars in Paris. His ambition is for people to discover IESSI in the absolute best restaurants, wine and cocktail bars. “If it’s on the menu and you trust the sommelier, the chef, the bartender, even if you’ve never heard of the brand you know it’s been ‘vetted’, for lack of a better term,” he explains.

Today, that’s how they land most customers. Nicolas says they get a huge number of people trying it in a restaurant and ordering it online, and for them that’s the best feeling, and the perfect story.

“You know there’s the expression: it took me 10 years to be an overnight success,” he says. “I hope that we follow the same trajectory with iessi. We’ll plug away, 10 years, restaurant by restaurant, bartender by bartender, and then we’ll reach critical mass.”

Alc-free’s reckoning is coming

Alcohol-free brands are going to live and die on flavor. You can’t rely on being a mixer or a secondary ingredient — your base-level product has to be exceptional.

And Nicolas has a harsh diagnosis for anyone in the alc-free sector that isn’t hitting that mark:

“Half the products on the market today don’t deserve to be on the market in five or 10 years’ time.”

NEW RULES FROM IESSI

Flavor is everything
Complex, multi-layered tastes are mandatory for any alc-free brand.

Branding is extremely seductive
Don’t underestimate the power of colour, type and form.

Win over the bars, and everyone else follows
Your on-premise relationships are the driving force for brand discovery in the wider world

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There’s some truth to this, of course. But I’ve had this nagging feeling that to demonize alcohol completely, to announce that we as the “evolved generation” are “moving on” from this evolutionary hiccup, seems narrow minded. There must be a bigger story here, I’ve been thinking, alcohol and humanity are too closely entwined to simplify our entire relationship to alcohol to “toxin.”

And then I read the incredible book Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization by Edward Slingerland.

I Highly recommend this book to everyone - those who love to drink, those who are 100% sober, and everything in between.

So I was elated when Edward Slingerland, author and Professor of Early Chinese Philosophy, agreed to speak to me for this very newsletter. Edward has a unique vantage point: he truly looks at a glass of wine or a neat pour of spirits through a 13,000-year lens. His work suggests that alcohol isn’t an evolutionary mistake, but a cultural technology that actually made the human project possible.

We sat down to talk about the prefrontal cortex, the Southern way of drinking, and why a THC gummy is a terrible social tool (please forgive me, THC people).

The paradox of spontaneity

Edward’s journey into the history of booze started with ancient Chinese philosophy, specifically the concept of spontaneity. Spontaneity is a paradox. You cannot consciously try to relax, because the part of the brain you use to try, the prefrontal cortex (PFC), is the exact part that needs to shut down for you to be present.

The PFC is the center of our adult selves. It’s responsible for delayed gratification, staying on task, and spreadsheets. But it’s also the center of our inhibitions. To get around this, humans developed a chemical short circuit. Edward explains that “the wine goes in and turns down our prefrontal cortex for us. So it avoids this paradox of activating the part of the brain you’re trying to shut down.”

Alcohol downregulates the PFC, returning us to a child-like state of lateral thinking where we can connect ideas that don’t seem related and, more importantly, trust the people sitting across from us.

Ever become friends with someone when drinking that you normally don’t talk to? I sure have. That’s the magic. It takes down the barriers.

The sandbox of the mind

One of Edward’s most compelling points is about the adult brain being the enemy of innovation. Children are naturally creative because their PFC isn’t fully developed yet; they can see a cardboard box and truly believe it’s a spaceship. If I tell my 5-year-old that her breakfast is “kitty food” she’ll be much more likely to eat it (while meowing). As adults, our PFC “knows” it’s just a box or a bowl of oatmeal.

By temporarily handicapping the PFC, alcohol allows us to return to a state of cognitive flexibility. For a founder or a creator, a drink isn’t an escape from work; it’s a tool to bypass the internal critic that kills new ideas.

This allows the brain to play in a sandbox that the adult PFC usually keeps locked. Because humans are an “intensely tool-dependent, technology-dependent species,” we are “completely dependent on creativity for our success.”

The dishonesty premium and social trust

The current wellness movement often frames drinking as unevolved. Edward argues that by focusing solely on the physical cost, we are ignoring the catastrophic cost of the alternative: loneliness and a lack of social trust.

Lying is a very PFC heavy function. It takes a lot of cognitive energy to maintain a deception. When we drink together, we are essentially cognitively disarming. Edward describes the act of sharing a drink as a high stakes social signal: “If we sit down and have a couple beers, I’ve taken my PFC out and put it on the table and said, ‘I’m cognitively disarmed. I’m going to have trouble lying to you.’”

It’s the modern version of shaking hands to show you aren’t holding a weapon; you’re showing the other person that you are currently incapable of complex manipulation. This disarming is what allowed humans to move from small tribes to massive, innovative civilizations. It creates a state where trust can move faster than it ever could in a purely sober, guarded environment.

Respecting the potency of the liquid

For most of history, humans were limited by natural fermentation, which usually caps out around 2 or 3 percent ABV. Edward points out that the arrival of distillation changed the landscape. It created a super concentrated, high potency version of ethanol that requires a higher degree of care.

The shift today isn’t about running away from spirits. It is about bringing back the ritual that these stronger liquids demand. Because spirits are so much more potent than the weak beer of our ancestors, they can’t be treated casually. Edward warns that “it’s in such a concentrated form that I think you should really think about it as a different type of drug and treat it that way.”

The danger is really the loss of the social mandate and pacing. We’ve moved from the public square to the private home. When we take a concentrated substance and use it in isolation, we lose the brakes provided by the group.

The Southern vs. Northern model

Edward draws a sharp distinction between how different cultures handle the beast of alcohol.

The Northern Model: Alcohol is a separate event. You go to a bar specifically to get drunk. It’s often about escape or blowing off steam.

The Southern Model: Alcohol is a background character. It is integrated into the table, consumed in moderation, and almost always paired with food and mixed generational groups.

In Italy, historically, they drank the most per capita, but they had some of the lowest alcoholism rates in the world. In the Southern model, visible drunkenness is a source of social shame. Edward argues that “adopting something like the Southern drinking culture is probably protective” against the risks of alcohol use disorder. It’s a more sophisticated way of engaging with the liquid, treating the drink as a catalyst for conversation rather than the destination itself.

Why the green wave will never replace the bar

With the rise of legal cannabis, many predict the end of the spirits industry. Edward is skeptical. From a cultural evolutionary standpoint, cannabis lost the battle to ethanol thousands of years ago for a reason: it’s a bad social drug.

Cannabis lasts too long, it’s difficult to dose, and it often makes people paranoid or inside their own heads rather than socially bonded. “Cannabis will never replace alcohol for this reason,” Edward says.

Alcohol won because it is predictable, its effects are short lived, and it consistently makes people want to talk to each other.

Reclaiming the connection

As we look toward 2026, the brands that win won’t be the ones selling wasted nights or pure optimization. They will be the ones that help us reclaim the Southern model of connection. That help people connect with the real tangible benefits of alcohol.

Alcohol, when treated with the care its potency deserves, serves as a catalyst for our social lives. It’s a tool that helps us put down our phones, turn off our internal spreadsheets, and actually see the people in front of us.

The takeaway for founders: Don’t sell the liquid; sell the container. And alcohol isn’t going anywhere. It’s too much a part of who we are.

THE NEW RULE:

The goal isn’t to defend drinking at all costs; it’s to defend the social life it makes possible. If your brand doesn’t help build the table, you’re just selling a commodity. If it does, you may be selling a lifeline.

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“Fermentation has always fascinated me,” says JIN JIN founder Sohn Supradya Aursudkij. “There’s something almost magical about the way it transforms simple ingredients into something layered, textured and alive with flavor.”

Let’s stop. What does that description remind you of? Maybe a fine wine? An aged whiskey? A craft beer?

The criticism of alcohol-free or non-alc options is often the same: they lack depth, they lack complexity, and they lack nuance. But JIN JIN has all those things in spades. As Sohn says, it has “a gentle complexity you simply can’t fake”.

“Alcohol sets a certain expectation around flavor: depth and a sense of indulgence,” she adds. “Many alcohol-free drinks don’t naturally offer that but fermentation does.”

Clear brand, clear story

Sohn set up JIN JIN in 2019 originally launching it as a personal project. The brand is deeply embedded in her own life – named after her mum, and inspired by her dad who first introduced her to fermented enzyme cordial (a traditional drink in East Asia). JIN JIN’s recipe is inspired by that experience, as well as Sohn’s research into centuries-old Asian methods of fermentation.

Fermented cordials are still relatively new to the West, and therein lies the brand’s power and its challenge. “When a drink doesn’t fit neatly into an existing category, people don’t know what to expect,” says Sohn.

How do you overcome that? It’s all the tried-and-test ways: stronger branding (JIN JIN rebranded in 2025), clearer messaging, more education, and helping people understand how to experience the drink (with sparkling water, in a non-alc cocktail, or as a daily ritual). As she says: “We learned quickly that storytelling is everything.”

And Sohn has seen “fascinating and often quite beautiful” responses to the JIN JIN experience. People have compared it to everything from ‘good’ Coca-Cola to balsamic, prune or plum drinks, as well as soy sauce. “What I love most is that people connect it to their own memories. That’s when you know a flavor has real soul.”

Our take? Being a bit divisive when it comes to flavor can be a good thing. Just think about Sylva (featured in our 2026 report). Or Mother Root. Or Laphroig.

How JIN JIN grows

The brand is on the menu at assorted wine bars and dining spots, as well as London department store Fortnum & Mason, but for now they’re focused mostly on direct-to-consumer. Sohn says their research shows people need to discover the drink from the brand first to really understand it.

Notably, JIN JIN is one of a wave of brands translating Asian flavors and traditions over to Europe and the US. “From soju to kombucha to regional drinks and ferments, they all have deep histories and beautiful craftsmanship behind them and people appreciate that now more than ever,” says Sohn.

“There used to be outdated perceptions about Asian products not meeting certain standards, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. There are so many premium, carefully made foods and drinks coming from Asia. People today care about authenticity and story, and Asian flavors offer both.”

Finally, in New Rules tradition, we asked Sohn:

What’s the brutal truth you’ve learned about building a bev/alc brand?

It looks glamorous from the outside, but it’s hard graft and endless resilience. Everything takes longer than you expect. Every detail matters. And you have to fall in love with the process, not just the product.

Also... no matter how good your drink is, without strong branding and clear communication, people won’t know why they should care.

With hindsight, Is there anything you’d do differently

I’d tell founders to invest in brand clarity earlier. It’s not about fancy design; it’s about communicating who you are and why you exist. As a founder, you know your product inside out but the world doesn’t. And when you try to say everything at once, you end up saying nothing clearly.

---

THE NEW RULE:

If you’re operating in a new category, forget how great your product is for a second. Communicate with absolute clarity first and foremost, and then let your exceptional liquid do the talking.

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We are truly in non-alc’s growth era. It’s hard to believe, but ten years ago it was just barely a category. Ordering something ‘non-alc’ meant forcing down a substandard zero beer or maybe a juice, and enduring a side of social condescension.

It’s not just that there weren’t that many non-alcoholic brands, it’s that people’s attitudes were entirely different. Ten years ago, Dry January wasn’t even a thing. Now every single person you’re friends with knows about it, and half of them have probably done it.

“In 2020, the average American consumer didn’t know about alcohol alternatives beyond O’Doul’s,” says Victoria Watter, founder of media brand Dry Atlas and Spirited Away – a booze-free bottle shop in NYC, recently acquired by ex-Campari Group Global Marketing Director Nicholas Pelis.

“Consumers may not have had an opinion before. Now, they’re forming them.”

Dry Atlas is evidence of this huge surge in enthusiasm, with Victoria saying they’re tracking 1,500+ alcohol alternatives and adding at least 50 more (!) to their database weekly. And when we spoke to The Zero Proof founder Sean Goldsmith, he told us distributors right now are getting more enquiries from non-alc brands than traditional alc companies. This is a crowded category.

It’s a huge shift. But it’s a shift we should be wary of. Sure, the non-alc space might have huge potential for growth, but that doesn’t make it easy. And sure, more people than ever are curious about it (Victoria says 50% of Spirited Away’s footfall comes from interested newbies), but brands shoudn’t assume that will make it straightforward.

And importantly, brands should be very wary of the current ‘no-one is drinking’ narrative.

After a lot of credulous press coverage insisting that young people aren’t drinking, that Americans aren’t drinking, that drinking as we know it is over…. we’ve come to the other side. Bev/alc founders, as well as journalists and commentators, are popping their heads over the parapet to say that, actually, young people are drinking. And that maybe one Gallup poll from one year shouldn’t be taken as a truth for eternity.

As someone who spends her days immersed in that non-alc space, we asked Victoria: how true is the not-drinking narrative?

“People aren’t necessarily becoming abstainers,” she says. “They’re becoming more intentional about what they consume.

“The growth is in ‘sometimes drinkers’ who want better options for the occasions they don’t consume alcohol. Per Nielsen, 92% of alcohol alternatives buyers also buy products containing alcohol, so it’s more about moderation than anything else.”

That chimes with conversations we’re having at The New Rules. For example, Botivo founder Imme Ermgassen told us that their product isn’t anti-alcohol, it’s a partner to alcohol:

“It is not against alcohol, it is with alcohol, it is alongside it. It sits very much in its own space.”

People are mixing non-alc options into cocktails. Theyre having non-alc drinks in between alcoholic drinks. There’s so much room here, but… you can’t get complacent, and you can’t make assumptions.

As someone who spends her days talking to alcohol-free brands, profiling them, and following people’s in-person reactions to non-alc options, we asked Victoria:

What will it take for non-alc brands to NOT f*** this up?

According to her, these are the mistakes it’s making:

1)The quality of the liquid

It’s so obvious, but according to Victoria many non-alc brands are still missing the mark. If this reminds you of all those meat-free brands that looked great but tasted awful, then yes it does.

2)Brand positioning

Companies are being way too broad in their targeting of consumes and drinking occasion. “Too many brands lead with vague lifestyle language instead of speaking to a specific consumer and making the drinking occasion crystal clear,” she says.

3)Lazy language

Language is really important. Early on, says Victoria, a lot of non-alc brands leant on old codes – using ‘gin’ and ‘whisky’ out of necessity, to help consumers orient themselves in a novel category. However that tactic is looking like it might be dead in the water (the EU recently ruled that non-alcoholic liquids cannot be called gin. You’ve got to assume that whiskey, tequila, wine and all the rest could be next).

Victoria says that today’s most successful non-alc brands are selling themselves with novel formulas, and product names that live outside of alcohol.

4)Distribution, distribution, distirbution

While demand is moving beyond Dry January, founders are worried about distribution. Victoria says retail buyers still misunderstand the category and brands are burning cash trying to scale too fast.

“Getting on the shelves is only half the battle,” she says. “Then you have to worry about sell-through.”

With that in mind, the best brands aren’t trying to seduce the entire US market at once, says Victoria. They start small and focused in a limited area, via independent retailers.

In summary:

If you’re a non-alc brand and you think being part of a buzzy sector is enough, you’re in trouble.

Ask yourself: is my liquid exceptional? Is it enough? do I know who my consumer is? What occasion do I fit into? Where’s my place? Being able to answer all of those things clearly, and confidently, is what’s going to be the difference btween building a non-alc brand that people love and come back to, and a buzzy novelty that people buy once and never think about again.

“When a product earns a permanent spot in someone’s routine, it stops being a trend and becomes a staple,” says Victoria. “The long-term winners are building for that.”

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When we started sending these, we wanted them to be a quick scroll for our readers. Today we unveil Happy Hour 2.0, which has all the same speed-scroll news, but with a modest extra helping of analysis from The New Rules editorial team:

Dry/damp/dank, Frankenstein drinks, Asian spirits

What else could we talk about this month than Dry January? And this year, there’s a sense that people (and brands) maybe aren’t quite so committed.

Increasingly, non-alc brands are positioning themselves not as die-hard alternatives, but something to be enjoyed alongside and in between alcohol. Maybe Damp January, or even Dank January (hello THC bev brands), is the future.

Another major and ongoing theme for 2026 is drinks, but with extras. We’re talking protein, mushrooms, magnesium, vitamins, caffeine, nootropics, adaptogens…. Brands are stuffing their drinks with add-ons.

However these drinks face real challenges, one of which is: what occasion/moment/ritual/celebration are these brands for exactly? The other is, as Fabric founder Thomas Eddleston points out, that many of these extra ingredients are present in such tiny amounts, they’re likely to make no difference anyway.

Still, it’s a hypey category. And we think that means an influx of Frankenstein-esque, sports-adjacent, good-for-you bev/alc is coming.

We’re talking alcohol that looks like powerade; protein-, fiber-, antioxidant-, and electrolyte-rich drinks that are designed to support muscle and gut health; and an Asian non-alc beer designed for thirsty, sweaty athletes.

Lastly, it’s looking like 2026 is going to see a lot of Asian bev brands make moves on the American and European market.

Now, onto the news scroll:

NO BOOZE, NO PROBLEMS

I think a lot of people are over celebrity brands, but we couldn’t not mention that ELTON JOHN now has a non-alc wine brand. It feels like the branding could have been a little more exuberant.

USA Today claims the Shirley Temple as the cocktail of 2026. Why? It’s fun. It’s colourful. It’s alc-free. (Olipop and Poppi have already released Shirley Temple versions).

You can now get a non-alc Modelo. In Límon y sal. This seems smart, given the popularity of Corona’s Sunbrew Citrus Cerveza. (And if you scroll down, you’ll see bartenders predict citrus could be especially popular this year).

Non-alc brand Wilderton has closed for business. Co-founder Brad Whiting says they “made some big bets on scaling and consumers valuing a ridiculously expensive production process/facility…”.

Alcohol-free beer brand Loah has been bought by UK soft drinks business Cawston Press.

WHO WON DRY JANUARY?

Recess isn’t anti-Dry January, exactly, but its new year ad campaign celebrated balance over abstinence.

Seedlip is very pro-Dry January, bringing onboard Real Housewife Dorinda Medley and an emergency bartender to emphasise that it’s great in cocktails.

And then there’s sparking water brand Dash, which teamed up with Perello olives on an alc-free dirty martini kit. They also launched an encouraging ‘don’t let Dry Jan get you down’-style OOH campaign in the UK.

Aussie non-alc beer brand Heaps Normal has opened a hybrid bar/wellness space in a warehouse in Sydney.

The TNR take: this seems smart. There’s Heaps Normal non-alc options being served alongside alcohol, recognising that people aren’t necessarily all-in on not-drinking. There’s a rumour they’ll be adding a sauna to the space, which we love….

AFTER DRY JANUARY COMES…

Full proof February? Sazerac Rye is really embracing strength, with its new 100 Proof and Full Proof. Gotta love a contrarian.

The ‘convertible’ cocktail – have it with booze or without, as you like.

An absolute lake of spirits stockpiles, according to one alc/bev industry commentator.

And an ongoing conversation about additives in our drinks. It’s happening for tequila. Now The Spirits Business says it’s coming for rum too.

Subscribe now

THE MARKETING TEAMS HAVE BEEN BUSY

Sarah Jessica Parker is Tanqueray’s new global brand ambassador, and leads a campaign that’s all about saying no to things (???????). The tagline ‘there’s an N and an O in every ICON’ adds to the confusion.

Budweiser is celebrating its 150 years with some collectible, limited edition heritage cans.

Tuborg also has a new brand identity to amplify its “energy and modernity” according to Carlsberg Group.

Dos Equis has revived The Most Interesting Man in the World.

The TNR take: Didn’t Tuborg do a brand refresh in 2017? And 2022? Do young people know or care about The Most Interesting Man? Why are these heritage beer brands so hooked on looking backwards?

INVEST INVEST INVEST

THC drinks can surely only get bigger. Just Drinks reports that Jeng has taken on investment from Quench Ventures.

ABInbev is pouring a cool $30m into its Jacksonville, Florida brewery, to boost production of Michelob Ultra.

Alc-free beer brand Brulo just raised £1m.

ADD IN SOME EXTRA

Protein Milk (yuck) is now on the menu at Dunkin’. The product’s a bit outside of the world we usually cover, but it’s a sign that the ‘bev-with-extras’ mentality is absolutely everywhere.

ALL CHANGE PLEASE

Heineken’s CEO has now left, and they’re looking for his replacement.

The world’s oldest monastic brewery, in Germany, has been sold (to a brewing company).

Diageo’s new Guinness Open Gate Brewery in London is proving very popular. However it’s also just closed a distillery visitor centre in Scotland. A sign of changing times for how consumers experience alcohol brands?

THE YEAR OF WEIRD FLAVORS?

Vinepair asked bartenders what’s going to be in our drinks this year. And their answers were... a little weird. Seaweed. Savory dairy. Fermented citrus. There’s a real element of novelty and potency here, as well as unexpectedness.

NEW LAUNCHES

From K-Pop to RTDs, this Korean superstar just launched his Peaceminusone Highball in the US – and it comes in two flavors. Foodbeast reports it was an instant, sell-out phenomenon in South Korea, selling 880k cans in three days.

Also landing in the US from Asia – Zeitaku Shibori: an RTD vodka and sparkling soda from Asahi.

Noot is now available in the US. It’s emphasising its blend of nootropics.

Well hello there, TABASCO vodka.

Beyond Meat is now… a bev brand as well (?) as it launches a new protein drink. No, it doesn’t make sense to us either.

Speaking of new launches, drink Esther – a new rum from the founders of The New Rules. And PS, stay tuned for a soon-to-be-published deep dive on how we built the brand.

Say hi to Banagua: banana water.

Low-alc wine, in cans, from Butter Wines.

Sapporo Breweries have dreamt up a non-alc beer beverage for thirsty gym-goers – designed to be enjoyed post-workout.

We’ve seen skincare and ready meals tailored to GLP-1 users, and now Langers Juice has unveiled a GLP-1 ‘support beverage’. Smart.

LEND US YOUR EARS

The New Rules team did our first podcast appearance this month, popping up on an episode of The Business of Drinks to talk about brand-building, and our new report on brand building in the bev/alc world.

LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE PUB

America is welcoming a wave of new Irish pubs, but they’re a little different to what you might expect, reports Punch.

Meanwhile in the UK, an influx of ‘tiny’ pubs are proving popular.

AFFORDABLE WINE, LONELY PEOPLE

Semafor reports that wine sales are down (so are prices) and that’s hard for vintners because grape harvests come in every year whether you want them or not. But is it because people are drinking less, or are we all just less social?

It’s a different story for Gratsi – featured in our 2026 report – who are named America’s fastest-growing boxed wine brand.

The TNR take: wine brands can’t rely on all the old stories and visual codes that used to work, and Gratsi is proof of that.

AND BRIEFLY, A SPRITZ EXPLAINER

A quick refresher on what is and isn’t spritz from IESSI co-founder Romain Llobet.

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First, let’s deal with the controversial part: wine branding is boring – and it’s overcomplicated

If Gratsi has any lesson to teach, it’s that wine companies need to work a lot harder, and do a lot less. Long-established brands are losing consumers because they’re speaking a language people don’t understand, and don’t particularly care about. Flavors and characteristics are appealing, yes, but most people aren’t interested in this as a selling point.

“They don’t care about spices, or subtle aromas,” says Gratsi Marketing Director Achilleas Petris, “they just want to drink something that’s easy and that they like, and if it’s good enough for them they keep buying it.”

Wine brands are also overwhelming people with options. People want an experience, and they don’t want to have to think too much about it. Gratsi’s philosophy is one of a simple life well-lived. The brand offers people easy options: white, red, rosé. If you’re keen, you can buy a bundle, or add on some pasta, or a glass. But whatever it is, it has to be straightforward.

As Achilleas says: “If you want to make something that appeals to most people, you should speak a simpler language. You shouldn’t overcomplicate it and paralyze people with too many options. Just give them something great.”

What does Gratsi do differently?

Well, they sell you on the convenience first and then they bring you into a brand world that’s a genuine delight to inhabit.

There’s no snooty messaging and no old-fashioned tasting notes. That’s been replaced with evocative storytelling and content, generously shared and beautifully told. It’s premium, version 2.0. Now, let’s talk about how that came into existence…

A wine brand born from the Mediterranean lifestyle

Gratsi’s origin story will be relatable to anyone that’s been on vacation in Europe. Let’s set the scene: you’re in Greece (or maybe Italy), you’re at a local tavern, they bring you the five-Euro house wine and it’s some of the best you’ve ever tasted. This was the feeling Gratsi founder Stephen Vlahos wanted to capture: simple, easy, enjoyable. And he didn’t just want to do that by selling wine — he wanted to create an all-encompassing experience.

“There’s this whole mentality of enjoying wine without thinking too much,” says Achilleas. “Wine is one part of it. He wanted to amplify the lifestyle of the Mediterranean. He wanted to bring this idea of people enjoying great quality wine, without spending too much money — and without all the additives and sugars — home to the States.”

Enter the box

When it comes to wine, anything that arrives in a box has historically been seen as inferior. Boxed wine isn’t for true connoisseurs — it’s for students, or drinkers that don’t “get” wine, or people that don’t want to spend too much.

On the other hand, a box is an incredibly practical way of storing and transporting it. One three-liter bag can hold four bottles’ worth of wine. That wine can be better quality because the brand isn’t having to pay for glass or extra weight while shipping. And that wine can be marketed more effectively because there’s more budget left over for it.

Gratsi has definitely had to find its place on the axis of quality versus convenience. Achilleas says that, in the early days of the business, they encountered plenty of latent snobbery around boxed wine. It wasn’t an easy object to sell as “premium”.

The answer? To get “logical”. He says that the brand started tuning their ad messaging to focus on convenience – luring people in with a practical message, and then keeping them there with everything else the brand does so well.

“At tastings we were telling people about the unique selling points — the freshness, how much wine is inside the box. They’d try a glass and say, ‘that’s really good, it’s half the price of what I usually pay’. The whole idea of premium comes after that, once we can keep them and educate them on what makes us different.”

Being premium means giving more than you get

Gratsi began life as an ecommerce brand — although it’s now stocked in 1,600 shops across four states — and it’s maintained that way of thinking. They prioritize creating best-of-the-best content, and they liberally share that with their customers.

There’s Gratsi’s Slow Dinner Club blog, which is an online treasure trove of recipes, travel writing and Mediterranean culture. There’s also their newsletters, which feature playlists, book recommendations and short films — such as Gratsi’s recent ‘One Week in Tuscany’ mini-doc, which played out over 23 minutes and introduced Nonna Laura and her Tuscan farm.

The bar for this content has been set high, according to Achilleas, who says the strategy is to only ever send out the kind of thing they would love to receive themselves. That means lots of storytelling, with sales and offer messaging kept to a minimum.

“We give more to the customer than we ask in return,” he explains.

It’s the whole experience

Achilleas says that Gratsi’s “premiumness” is 30% what’s in the box, and 70% everything else the brand does. We’ve already spoken about their content, but they also prioritize great customer service, ensuring people can speak to another human, and not AI, if they need to resolve an issue. And subscribers to Gratsi’s wine boxes can expect “surprising and delightful gifts” to turn up in their mailbox, as an extra part of the experience.

Those gifts have to meet as high a bar as Gratsi’s content. According to Achilleas: “Everything we produce — the wine, the design, the product, the gifts, the merch, the customer service — we want to do in a way that we love first as a team. If we don’t love it as a team, we don’t give it to the customer.

“The product has to be great, but the product is not enough to make a premium brand. You have to surround it with everything else around it to keep it there.”

NEW RULES FROM GRATSI

You don’t need to kill people with choice
Simple decisions are easy decisions.

But killing them with kindness is a strategy
Courting your customer is absolutely the way to go.

Premium brands give, and they give generously
Content, merch, extras, it all adds up.

If you don’t love it, your customer won’t
Set a high bar for yourself and the people you serve.

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The New Rules is a labor of love by nihilo.agency

Support us by:
- Subscribing
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- Hiring us
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Download the Full Report

A quick welcome to all of our new subscribers – we love seeing so many newbies. Let’s get acquainted: we’re a Substack dedicated to brand building in the bev/alc space, and we share:

>Founder and expert interviews (like this one, with The Zero Proof founder Sean Goldsmith)
> Newbies spotlights of brand new brands (like this profile of ‘forbidden spirit’ SAG)
> Features that dive deep into the trends shaping beverage today (like, say, the age of potency or the era of GLP-1s)
> Our very own hot takes 🔥 (like this piece exploring what non-alc can learn from meat-free’s demise)

The Madre Mezcal story

Madre Mezcal has grown through the creative community that recognizes itself in the work: designers, musicians, hospitality people, artists. The result is a mezcal that carries a clear point of view, and feels rooted in the cultural lives of the people who built and love it.

Community-first looks like this

“We captured the imagination of the graphic design community on day one,” says Madre Mezcal co-founder Chris Stephenson, who partnered with the brand agency Land to create Madre’s iconic identity. Looking at the tequila brand’s label and visual expression, that’s not surprising.

What may be surprising is the way that same creative community has catalyzed the business’s growth. Madre Mezcal didn’t need an influencer strategy – they were speaking to a built-in network from the get-go.

Ready-made connections

That community has been a huge driving force for the business. Madre knows that when they open in a new market, they’re tapping into a global creative network that’s “psychographically connected”, and primed to love the brand.

As Chris Stephenson says: “We were not spirits people at all. The way we approached the brand came from the creative worlds we lived in.” The result is a mezcal that carries a clear point of view, and that feels rooted in the cultural lives of the people who built it.”

The Madre world

The identity of Madre feels cohesive because it grew from a real cultural ecosystem. Chris describes the founding team as “this little culture agency on day one.” Their combined backgrounds created a shared vocabulary that naturally translated into the brand’s tone, visuals, and community.

The illustrations and label system are central to that expression. They carry a handmade, folkloric quality that feels both contemporary and connected to Oaxaca. They’re the visual language that anchors Madre and signals its point of view wherever the bottle appears.

Scaling the brand

Madre is now moving into national chains and larger commercial spaces, including Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Pavilions, and international markets. Costco is testing the brand in California and New Mexico. “My goal is to make it the number one brand without losing the identity,” he says.

Of those partners, Costco surprised him. “Costco has the highest disposable income consumer in America,” he says, adding that Madre performs well there because the product, price, and identity align with how that customer shops. Walmart represents a different challenge. It requires education and patience because, as Chris puts it, “You have to ask whether the Walmart consumer is yet a mezcal consumer.”

There’s still a mezcal story to be told

Tequila (actually a type of Mezcal) is massive and getting louder. Mezcal is growing, but it’s still early for most consumers. That gap creates space for a brand like Madre to define how people first meet the category.

Chris puts it simply: “There is a mezcal story to be told that still hasn’t been told.” Madre’s advantage is its clarity. It’s rooted in natural production, cultural authenticity, and a creative identity that already resonates.

As Chris says, “Everything we do is about being natural. In a world that is becoming increasingly artificial, a return to natural and authentic is real.”

Madre doesn’t need to change. It needs to keep presenting mezcal in a way people can understand and connect with.

NEW RULES FROM MADRE MEZCAL

Identity needs a real origin
It can’t be reverse engineered, or post-rationalized.

Community builds strong early momentum
Building a network of likeminded people can power you onwards.

Scaling works when your brand stays intact
You can go into Costco. And Trader Joe’s. But you need to know who you are.

Authenticity is more valuable as the market gets noisier
It’s an overused word. That doesn’t make it any less powerful.

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The New Rules is a labor of love by nihilo.agency

Support us by:
- Subscribing
- Sharing
- Hiring us
- Inviting us to speak at your conference or event on branding/bev/alc/fun

The 2026 beverage landscape is moving faster than the old playbooks can keep up. From the rise of “social utility” drinks to a new era of “intentional imperfection” in craft spirits, the barrier between niche and mainstream has dissolved. This isn’t just a trend report; it’s a manual for building cultural relevance when the traditional rules no longer apply.

To map this shift, we’ve interviewed an extensive roster of founders, platform innovators, and industry experts to distill the strategies actually moving product today. Welcome to The New Rules of Brand Building in Beverage & Alcohol.

Download the Full Report

Featuring interviews and analysis with:

• Madre Mezcal

• Olujo Tequila

• The Pathfinder

• Industry experts

• More!