If your beer, soda or RTD doesn’t have electrolytes, protein, adaptogens, mushroom powder, colostrum or any other hypey ingredient in it, are you really even alive?

We’ve said it time and again at The New Rules, but it’s truly the era of drinks but ✨extra✨. And things are, arguably, being taken too far. We’ve put so much protein in stuff that there is, reportedly, a global whey protein shortage. We’ve raved so much about matcha that the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is paying tea growers to transition to matcha production.

Why can’t things just be simple? Why are so many brands being built around a hype cycle?

The innovation hook

To understand why the bev sector is so enchanted with trends, we spoke with Leah Keggi: a brand strategist and marketer with a good decade of bev industry experience. She started out in craft beer at a business that was later acquired by a major brewery, weathered the mania of the 2010s, and then moved over to work in wine and spirits. And along the way she became very familiar with how the drinks industry ties itself in knots over ‘innovation’.

She told us: If it feels like there’s more hypey ingredient focus than ever before that’s because the barrier to entry is lower, the trend cycle is faster, and news spreads more quickly. On top of that, new brands lacking loyalty often feel they need the ‘edge’ of being a bit weird to get attention.

“For a lot of brands looking to start,” she explains, “the growth model is backwards: innovation-first to prove your value to consumers, then reversion to tradition. Look at the Ollipop refresh – they’re pulling back on the overt label call-outs now that they’re established, and leaning into the trust they’ve earned.”

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Innovation ≠ acquisition

The problem is that add-ons can feel like a shortcut to success. They might feel like you’re tapping into a movement – and for a period, you are. But things change fast. And in reality, says Leah, chasing those often-fleeting moments can stop a brand from leaning into an audience and providing value. The trend feels like a solution, but it’s really a distraction. And while lots of young brands think the focus on innovation will pin down an acquisition, we’ve got news.

“People think they’re going to have a Poppi story,” says Leah. “I’ve seen this a lot in whiskey, because people think they’ll just bottle it. And actually, you have to do so much work to be attractive. People want to get acquired, so they give it a two-year run and they stop. That’s not enough time.”

The ‘what’s new’ trap

The trap, according to her, is asking: what’s new? The second trap is assuming that what’s new is what’s going to sell. People hope that innovation is going to help them leapfrog across categories or into consumers’ hearts, and while newness can be appealing, it’s much harder to be new.

“When the shelves were all one brand, you could slot in a new item and it was interesting, so people chose it,” Leah told us. “Now the shelves are packed. But people keep asking ‘what’s new?’ instead of ‘how are we talking about this?’ We’re chasing trends, and we’re asking questions that aren’t what the consumer is looking for.”

It’s understandable. The lure of the trend is powerful. It sings its siren call and brands follow. This is particularly risky for younger companies, says Leah, because often they’ve barely started bedding in with consumers, and then they start following weirdness.

Star Wars is cowboys in space

So how to do it? How do bev brands stay relevant without falling victim to a trend that eventually falters?

Leah says the trick is to take the familiar, and twist it ever so. Star Wars is cowboys in space. Absolut’s tabasco vodka is vodka, but spicy. There’s a hint of novelty; a touch of the unexpected but within a framework that’s still familiar. And it helps to pick things that have a reasonable lifespan.

Stores of the Wild West are classics for a reason. Spicy flavors have been loved forever, for a reason. They might feel fairly novel to the beverage category, and they might be in a moment of interest, but they’ve also got roots and they’ve got legs. And, importantly, it’s a good taste experience, wrapped in exceptional branding.

Take smaller steps

Brands need to think about innovation, yes, but they need to consider what form that comes in. Rather than launching a new addition that no-one wants, work on your brand.

“You can innovate your packaging, you can innovate to a new audience with the same products through marketing. Innovate your brand message or what your brands stands for. You don’t have to innovate product to sell more product. Tide isn’t making hand soap, they’re just making new types of detergent.”

And, perhaps, brands need to take smaller jumps. If you’re an alcohol-free beer and you release a limited edition nectarine version for the summer, that makes sense. The novelty could bring in some new interest, which could bring in new fans of your core brand. BUT, if you hear that everyone at Expo West is talking about tallow, and you’re now wondering how you can release a buzzy beef tallow beer, really ask yourself: why?

Ingredients aren’t competitive

Finally – and we cant emphasize this enough - you cannot compete on ingredients. Unless you’ve sourced something so rare and unusual that only you know where it grows or lives, it’s a dead-end.

”You need to build everything around the ingredients,” says Leah. “If everyone is using mushroom powders, what makes you special? You need to compete on your brand and your messaging to stick around for the long haul, because anyone can access ingredients – unless you’re like David, and you buy up the supplier.”

I think the beer sector is a perfect example of this. In essence, every major beer brand uses the same ingredient list. None of them are telling consumers, ‘wow, we’re made with hops’. Instead, they compete on brand. And beer brands are some of the most tribal and successful examples of branding you can think of.

So put down the beef tallow. Forget about protein, or adaptogens, or mushroom powders in such minuscule amounts that they make no difference anyway. None of that is marketing strategy. Don’t chase the ingredients or the trends, chase the people instead.

As Leah says: “CPG needs to stop trying to be the best in the room with other CPG brands. Start thinking about how you’re the best thing for the community or the room you want to be in. There is a lot of untapped potential in a lot of places.”

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Cheers.

If there’s one part of the bev/alc world that is crying out for newness, it’s wine.

Luckily for you, we’ve spotted a brand that is truly doing something quite different and quite clever: Pizza Wine. It’s a canned, sparkling red wine that’s made expressly for pizza night. Their philosophy is simple: “Drink it cold, bring it anywhere, and don’t overthink it.”

As a product, it’s a brilliant niche. But what’s so compelling is that last bit: don’t overthink it.

“We could spend hours explaining why this pizza and wine pairing works – how the structure perfectly balances the acidity in the tomatoes and cheese - but that’s not our vibe,” reads their website.

It’s wonderfully unpretentious. It’s easy for people to understand. It requires very little cognitive lift. It’s playful. It’s fast. It’s witty.

And it’s run by founders that know exactly what they’re doing.

From bar to brand

Pizza Wine is founded by people that are deeply versed in wine and food: chef Rob Andreozzi and Liz McDonnell – who also co-founded Providence’s now-shuttered Fortnight Wine Bar.

When Fortnight opened, it was one of the earliest natural wine bars on the East Coast, and at the time few locals knew what natural wine was. Fortnight’s way of encouraging people to take the leap was by always having a $6 glass of wine, vetted by bartenders, on the menu as a gateway option.

And it worked; people would come into Fortnight as beer drinkers and leave as wine fans. “That path from curiosity to being passionate is what drove us at the bar, and is what drives us at Pizza Wine,” says Liz.

Sparkling reds

Running the bar taught Liz a lot about how to bring people into wine. It also taught her that sparkling red has a lot of potential.

“It was easy to say yes to, it was novel, and that was refreshing in a world where they were coming out of stuffy wine culture. People were obsessed with it.”

It was only on tap at Fortnight for 12 months but for years after people would ask for it. And when Liz started thinking about her next project she realised: here was the niche.

“We know that it has a long history and tradition in Italy of being drunk with pizza. Go to any pizza shop in Italy and your house wine is a sparkling red, so it just makes sense to folks who are familiar with that culture. But here, it was still pretty new.”

Quick side note here: The reason it’s such a good pairing is because sparkling red is high acid and medium tannin, and the bubbles help break up fat in a way that still wines don’t.

Easy to get, easy to sell

Pizza Wine feels like one of those ideas that’s so obvious, you wonder why no-one’s done it before. As Liz points out: pizza is the favourite food.

“In the US, there was a survey that says 33 million people would choose pizza as their last meal on earth, which I completely believe. And it makes sense for us to be in that space if we want to make this wine as accessible as possible.”

The messaging and attitude is doing a lot of that work, but so is the brand. It’s bright, it’s straight-talking, and it looks great behind the register at pizza restaurants (and burger places too). There’s no snobbery here – no sense that you might be ordering the wrong thing, or asking the wrong questions.

“That’s why I’m so excited about Pizza Wine,” says Liz. “I love wine. I love the industry. But it was hard to break into. And it is really stuffy and judgemental.”

She says the data also tells a hard story. People are drinking and buying less wine, and the wine industry is feeling the creeping tendrils of worry.

For Liz this is deeply sad – as she points out wine is natural, it supports farmers and it’s responsive to the environment. But historically, it’s gone overboard with some of the messaging - leaving people feeling overwhelmed, or excluded. That’s a problem Pizza Wine is dedicated to fixing.

“People just want to know that it’s high quality, it’s made well and it’s not going to fuck up the environment. Just drink it with pizza. That’s our goal.”

Lastly, in New Rules tradition, we asked Liz:

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

“I thought I had a brand that would sell itself and no brand is going to sell itself. That was surprising to me because it’s simple and it tells you exactly what it is and does. But you still have to get out there, and you still have to tell your story and ask people to support you. And then, maybe, it’ll sell itself.”

With hindsight, is there anything you’d do differently?

“I spent a lot of time in the brand-building stage, perseverating over documents. I did my full competitive analysis and I wrote multiple decks and I think I wasted a lot of time. I could have done that in a few weeks, and then spent the other five months talking to potential buyers and doing tastings. As a first time founder, that process was important, but in hindsight I wouldn’t do it again. I’d blow through it, feel 80% confident in what I was putting down on paper and then go out and hit the streets with it.”

THE NEW RULE

Simple brands aren’t stupid brands. People are overwhelmed by messaging and choice, and the easier you can make it for them to choose you, the more likely they are to do so.

The New Rules is a labor of love by nihilo.agency. Need design support for your brand? Reach out! hi@nihilo.agency

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Welcome to Happy Hour, our quick-scroll guide to the news and views of the bev/alc sector. Subscribe below for the next one.

Humans are creatures of habit - we pick up the same brands, we follow the same routines, and some of the world’s biggest businesses have been built around that truth.

HOWEVER.

People also love novelty. There will forever be a promising little space for a brand to pop up and say, ‘hey, look at me, I’m like that thing you’ve been buying forever but different.’ In the food and bev space, people are even more susceptible, because the promise of a new flavor, or the flash of a new bit of branding on a shelf, can be hard to resist.

We’re seeing bev brands tap into this magpie-like impulse in a few ways: flavor, format, brand. Welcome to the nexus of novelty:

1)Flavor
Spiciness has been a super-trend of the last 12 months. You’ve got Absolut’s tabasco vodka. You’ve got Cointreau Spicy. You’ve got the Orange Blossom and Cacao edition from Hendrick’s. And even Stoli’s new ginger beer is formulated with a hint of chilli. People want potent, interesting, new flavors.

2)Format
The rise of the RTD speaks for itself, but already there’s signs of bev brands thinking about what comes after the standard tin. Companies are investing in ready-to-go shot pouches, tins with sachets attached, and see-through packaging. As more and more companies move toward canned offerings, there’ll inevitably be more slants on the format, to reclaim some of that novelty.

3)Brand
It’s the original differentiator – the way to tap into people’s search for newness You only need to look at our catalog of young bev brands to see how all of them are using it to steal people’s attention’s away from other, more familiar drinks options. The best bit about brand is that it’s both hook and line - get people’s attention once, become familiar, and use brand to keep them coming back for more of what they love.

Now, for the news:

COCKTAIL LAND

Are complex cocktails out? Delish says bartenders are bored of all the garnishes and novelty for novelty’s sake, and are going back minimal ingredient, simple cocktails.

Guys, canned cocktails are such a big deal that The Atlantic has written about them and wow, that’s a headline.

Canned cocktail brand Moth has a new brand platform celebrating “taste, togetherness and the unexpected”.

Moët Hennessy is getting into the ready-to-serve biz, with a line-up of bottled cognac cocktails aimed at Gen Z.

Our take: we like that this feels so refined. While lots of other brands are trying to get that ‘hello there fellow kids’ zany energy, MH has adopted branding that feels dignified without being boring.

Jose Cuervo tequila cocktails, now IN A CAN.

ZERO BOOZE

Arkay is launching an alcohol-free whiskey under its Beyond Spirits line.

Our take: the language and the branding is all over the place with this one. The whiskey world tends to skew premium, and if you want even a little alcohol-free slice of that you need branding that can compete.

To complicate things further, Arkay announced new brand messaging this month, saying, “We don’t sell alcohol-free spirits, we sell happiness.” Read that, then take another look at their NA whiskey packaging.

Suntory continues to expand into the US and Europe, launching Nivo House in a small number of states in America.

Beyond Meat continues to baffle as it pushes ahead with it’s all-trend-everything new drink, which has an ingredients list that feels like a checkbox of every single hyped ingredient (except beef tallow).

BEER TIME

We spotted Cobra founder Karan Bilimoria musing in the brand’s origin story, over on LinkedIn. What’s interesting here isn’t his emphasis on determination, but the way he spotted a very defined moment and ritual (sitting down to a curry), and made something specifically for that.

Can anything stop Bero? Their latest release is a series of alcohol-free shandies with fruit flavors that are, apparently, inspired by Zendaya herself.

Our take: These guys are smart. A novel product for them, but an old classic for everyone else, and with flavors that are just the right blend of familiar and trendy.

Anyone for an apple beer from Keystone Light?

THE MONEY BIT

Whiskey brand Uncle Nearest has had turbulent times, but looks like it’s found a buyer – and they’re pledging to honour the brand’s cultural significance.

RTD aqua fresca brand Bawi just closed a $6m investment.

We noticed quite a few whiskey brands on The Spirits Business’s list of the fastest-growing spirits of 2025.

THE FORMAT PLAY

This RTD is going all-in with its novelty play, serving low-cal fruity vodka cocktails with an attached sachet that includes caffeine and other functional add-ons.

Our take: Fun, but will anyone buy this a second time?

Heineken partners with Heinz for a six-pack of beer that…. also has some ketchup attached.

We’ve seen a lot of people talking about this one: Svedka’s canned vodka water, in a see-through can.

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BRANDING & MARKETING DOING ITS THING

818 Tequila has launched a Best Summer Ever campaign - focusing heavily on fun times, big sweepstakes, and nothing really being too serious.

We’re a little late to the party on this, but quite fond of this extra-long beer pack, made by Long Trail Brewing Co. It’s charming (although there’s always a bit of suspicion around whether these kinds of stunts are actually sold, or just farmed out to the press).

Coors Light also decided to get stretchy, with an 18-inch ‘Tallerboy’ canister that fits three cans inside it so you don’t miss any World Cup action by having to run to the fridge. It’s currently ‘sold out’ on their website.

We side-eyed Asahi a little bit for this brand refresh of Twisted Shotz.

Our take: this ticks a few boxes: pre-gaming, naive ‘who gives a shit’ branding, that BuzzBallz-esque bonkersness. But does it feel like they’ve shoehorned a bit too much in here? Is it a little derivative?

Vodka brand Tito’s unveils its first UK campaign, and it’s going for confident, no-nonsense messaging.

Lagunitas has a new look.

Madonna is now the face of Absolut.

BOOKMARK AND READ LATER

Fellow Substacker Camille Moore has written a great analysis of Grey Goose (acquired by Bacardi in 2004 for $$) and how it’s an essential case study for what brand actually does. As she says: “Bacardi was not buying production capacity, supply chain, or recipe IP. They were buying a frosted bottle, a French origin story, and a perception they could not have built themselves in twice the time.”

Ok, we all know about celebrity beverage. But, bear with us, what about the ultimate celebrity beverage – an endorsement from Jesus himself? The Guardian investigates a budding new bev category: Christian energy drinks.

India has a plenty of wild-growing agave plants. The BBC asks whether it might, eventually, be a rival for Mexico.

Finally, we’re blessing you with not one but TWO new reports about the bev sector:

1)Snaxshot’s State of Beverage

2)Coefficient Capital’s Consumer Trends Alcohol 2026 Report, which asks: is alcohol really the new tobacco?

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

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In the agency world, the ultimate asset is usually a beautiful render—getting to that perfect final case study, putting your finest work on the Dieline, and securing the press hits. Most people don't expect their branding agency to do end-to-end execution, including liquid strategy.

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But Mike Perry, owner of the Brooklyn-based beverage branding agency Tavern, wants his clients to know that Tavern does exactly that. As he points out, “no one knows the deep strategy that goes into it. No one knows the liquid strategy, which is what we work on with a lot of our major clients.”

For years, Tavern has operated deep in the trenches of the beverage-alcohol sector for global conglomerates like Beam Suntory and E. & J. Gallo.

Yet, when you’re an agency servicing massive corporate clients, it’s hard to show early-stage founders and venture capitalists that you actually understand the gritty, end-to-end reality of launching a brand from scratch.

So, Perry decided Tavern would write its own brief.

They set out to build a physical product to prove they could handle the entire roadmap—from liquid formulation to distributor pitches. What started as a clever marketing exercise, however, quickly spiraled into something much bigger. They built a product and brand so compelling they had no choice but to go all-in.

The Proof of Concept: Handling the End-to-End Roadmap

To prove to clients and skeptical VCs that Tavern wasn’t just a design shop, Perry wanted a single, highly tactical case study that demonstrated a deep understanding of the entire beverage lifecycle.

As Mike puts it:

“One thing we’re trying to achieve with this is to show that we’re deep experts in this category. We’ve demonstrated that understanding in the past, but this time we’re doing it through a single brand that can act as a case study. It’s not just about liquid strategy and product development, it’s also about getting a brand onto shelves and understanding how to pitch it to distributors.

Tavern didn’t want to just mock up a concept; they handled the logistical heavy lifting. They mapped out a lean distribution framework, proving to early-stage founders that you don’t need massive, wasteful budgets to make an impact:

“You don’t need huge billboards. I think a lot of companies will come in and try to sell you a bunch of stuff you don’t actually need. When you’re a super early-stage brand, what you need is highly tactical, highly effective, strategic work and outputs that can have an immediate impact.”

History Doesn’t Repeat Itself but It’s Rhyming Pretty Hard

Mike didn’t want to just make a random RTD. He built off his understanding of how trends are resurfacing in different forms. I found this interesting:

The Pivot: When a Case Study Rules Too Hard to Ignore

The vehicle for this masterclass in brand building was Hyper Blast, an upcoming 12% ABV RTD inspired by late-2000s alcoholic energy drink culture. Tavern designed a massive, rich brand world around 80s and 90s jet ski culture, mapping out an entire universe of physical, ancillary products like riding grips and fuel jerry cans to show how far a single creative concept could expand.

Originally, the plan was simple, lean, and highly risk-averse: soft-launch the brand, create a killer case study, bootstrap it minimally, and maybe eventually offload the intellectual property to a major client.

Mike openly admits the plan was to “offload it as a PDF more or less.” But then they put the brand into the wild—and the market responded with absolute chaos.

The market reaction was so overwhelmingly positive, and the structural fit between millennial nostalgia and Gen Z’s love for high-octane RTDs was so perfect, that the agency realized they were sitting on a goldmine.

Mike describes the exact moment the strategy shifted:

“It started as the former. We’re like this f***ing rules. It’s so perfect. There is such a perfect time to enter the market with a product like this that it’s like we’d be fools not to just go full blast on it.”

Tavern quickly pivoted from a temporary design experiment to a fully invested beverage startup. They scrambled to build an investor deck, walked away from the bootstrap-and-sell model, and are now moving aggressively toward a summer launch.

Balancing the Agency and the Startup Burn

Going all-in on a liquid brand while running a 12-person agency is a logistical tightrope walk. To make it work without letting client work slip, Perry reallocated Tavern’s internal “design practice” hours—the time the team normally spends experimenting with new mediums and software—entirely to the execution of Hyper Blast asset builds, influencer kits, and campus launch materials.

It’s an exhausting pace, but Perry views the startup burn as an investment that feeds back into the agency’s primary mission. In his words:

“All of this should be in service of making everyone on the team, designer, strategist, even account people better at what they’re doing for our client work. So it serves us, but it also serves the client in the long term.”

And perhaps the secret ingredient to why Hyper Blast is generating so much organic momentum is that Tavern isn’t choked by the typical founder anxiety. Because they have a thriving agency backing them, they can afford to take massive creative risks.

As Mike bluntly puts it:

“Hyper Blast could be gone tomorrow, and that’s fine. Honestly, I think that’s part of why it might work. I’m not so f***ing precious about it in the way a lot of startup founders tend to be.”

By successfully taking Hyper Blast from an internal agency brief to a living, breathing retail product, Tavern didn’t just build a case study to show clients they could handle end-to-end strategy—they actually went out and proved it.

THE NEW RULE

The best way to prove you can do something is to go out and build it yourself. Stop waiting for a client brief to validate your team’s deepest strategic capabilities. Create your own incubator, run the hard yards from formulation to retail shelves, and don’t be afraid if your proof-of-concept takes on a life of its own. True expertise isn’t practiced on a slide deck—it’s proven in the market.

I wanted to share the following video because Mike is really talking about BRAND BUILDING in bev/alc in a super clear way.

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

Need support for your brand? We do:

- Design
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- Interviews
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And support our work by:

- Subscribing
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Cheers.

“It is forbidden. No new rules.” ~ Tad Dorda, founder, Chopin Vodka

At The New Rules, we obviously are into the new rules. Tell us what you’re doing that’s different. Show us how you did what no one said you could do. We’re always looking for the ways the industry is evolving, and the people and brands that are moving it forward.

But when I sat down with Tad Dorda and his daughter Alexandra Dorda-Marcu – the founding family behind Chopin Vodka – I was aptly challenged in my approach. This industry (myself included) is obsessed with the “pivot,” the “secret sauce,” and Chopin’s strategy is the opposite of that: a radical commitment to the permanent.

For thirty years, the Dordas have played by a singular, ancient rule: make vodka the “good way, the original way.” They are not planning to change that.

The strategy: the war on neutrality

Chopin’s central mission has been a decades-long war against the very word “neutral.” Legally and culturally, vodka has been defined as a spirit without distinct character, the spirit you can mix with anything and not taste.

Tad Dorda views this as the industry’s greatest misrepresentation.

“If it’s a neutral spirit, there’s nothing to talk about,” he explains. “But vodka is not a chemical product. It has terroir. It has a place where it grew, people who planted it, and who distilled it.”

By producing single-ingredient vodkas (potato, rye, and wheat) side-by-side, Chopin forces a conversation that most of their competitors would rather avoid. They are betting on the liquid’s character in a category that has spent a century trying to erase it.

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The radical simplification: scaling the “slow way”

Perhaps the most contrarian move in Chopin’s 130-year history (that’s how old their distillery is!): is their refusal to scale at the expense of season. While most brands chase growth by ensuring 365-day production cycles, Chopin is beholden to the harvest.

Their signature potato vodka is distilled only when the ingredients are fresh during a tight three-month window from September to November. While they could store potatoes in refrigerated warehouses to produce year-round and juice their margins, they flatly refuse.

“Don’t rush it,” Tad warns. “Don’t try to make much more of it very fast because you will have to sacrifice quality. If we change something, we’ll only mess it up.”

Intuitive identity: from Podlaskie to Vera Wang

Truth be told, Chopin looks like a lot of other vodkas on the shelf today. But there’s a reason for that: they invented the look.

Alexandra explains that the frosted wine bottle with the clear window, now a category standard, is a design originally patented by Chopin and created by the factory workers at their distillery in Podlaskie, Poland, in the early 90s.

Instead of hiring a high-priced London or NYC branding agency to define their “vibe,” the Dordas rely on intuition.

This authenticity is what led to their recent collaboration with Vera Wang. It wasn’t a “normal corporate arrangement” engineered by agents; it was a lunch between two people who shared a passion for craftsmanship. Vera designed a bottle – and personally selected the liquid inside – for a brand she had already been drinking for twenty years.

Simplicity as the final achievement

As we wrapped up, Tad returned to a sentiment often attributed to Frédéric Chopin himself: “Simplicity is the final achievement.”

In a sea of 4,000 SKUs and endless gimmicks, Chopin is happy to remain “small and tiny” (I asked them to define “tiny” but did not receive a conclusive answer). They aren’t chasing the next generation of drinkers with a rebrand; they are waiting for that generation to realize that the cleanest, most honest distillation in the world doesn’t need to change to stay relevant.

Kaboom.

The (NOT) New Rules:

1. Standing still can be a disruption. In an industry obsessed with the “new,” a radical commitment to the original process creates a distinct brand whitespace. If everyone is pivoting, staying exactly where you are makes you the landmark.

2. The liquid must tell the story. “If it only sells when you’re demoing it and telling the story, you’ve failed,” is a common industry mantra. Chopin takes this further: the liquid should be so distinctive (like their creamy potato profile) that once a consumer tastes it, they can never go back to “neutral.”

3. Simplicity is a virtue, not a lack of effort. Refusing to add SKUs or rebranding etc. isn’t about doing less; it’s about protecting the “final achievement” of a perfect product.

Last week The New Rules invaded Brooklyn for BCB!

If you caught up with us at Industry City or swapped notes with the team, thank you for making it an incredible week. If you are still nursing the general industry fatigue that comes with navigating today’s volatile landscape, read on because we have some notes for you.

For the first half of the year, the beverage industry has been speed-skating through what feels like a massive, unpredictable curve.

We are navigating a multi-layered reality characterized by distributor inventory corrections, a historic wave of strategic M&A (Molson Coors buying Atomic Brands, Gallo snapping up Four Roses, the list goes on), and a fundamental evolution in how people actually consume liquid.

To get a real, unfiltered pulse check on how independent brands are handling this mid-year shift, I caught up with three distinct The New Rules alums during BCB week to talk about market velocity, Gen Z realities, and where the momentum is shifting for the second half of 2026.

1. Mother’s Milk: The Convergence of “Turning Up” and Functional Wellness

When we last checked in with Jen Roman-Matito and Kristie Kish for our “Newbies” series, they were building out their vision for a coconut-water-forward, anti-hangover canned cocktail. Halfway through 2026, they find themselves sitting exactly at the intersection of the two most explosive trends in modern beverage.

Jen: “Two things that I’ve seen that are really positive for the business is: one, canned cocktails are the fastest-growing category in alcohol - period. Secondary, in the non-alc space, functional beverages are through the roof in every way, shape, or form.”

For Mother’s Milk, navigating this landscape means scaling up with aggressive, deliberate liquid choices. They are bringing two new spirits to market via a tequila and a rum SKU. Currently anchoring the Northeast territory, the brand is mapping its next big move southward, targeting Florida as its next anchor state for late 2026.

2. Wild Mannered: Shifting Toward Sessionability and RTS Economy

For Michael and Perry, the childhood best friends behind the premium soju brand Wild Mannered, the first half of 2026 has been a period of macro-stabilization. Emerging from what they call the “COVID hangover period,” they are watching consumer trends solidify around lower ABV, clean ingredients, and sessionability.

Michael: “We’re all shifting a little bit more towards lower ABV, sessionable, high-quality ingredients—things that are easier to drink, but also a little bit of a different riff on traditional spirits.”

While industry analysts obsess over whether Gen Z is drinking like previous generations, Wild Mannered has found their core traction by positioning their 13% ABV liquid against traditional, heavy RTD incumbents. Looking toward the remainder of the year, Michael points out that the real category breakout to watch isn’t another single-serve can, but the evolution of Ready-to-Serve (RTS) multi-serve glass formats, driven by macro giants entering the fray and a consumer desire for shared, economical social experiences.

3. Little Saints: The Death of “All-or-Nothing” Sobriety

We included Little Saints in our first-annual New Rules of Brand Building in Bev/Alc report, tracking their rapid growth. After a Shark Tank appearance that generated $2 million in a single month on her website, founder Megan Klein has watched the brand settle into steady retail momentum across Sprouts and Whole Foods. Her internal consumer data reveals a massive behavioral shift in how people view the non-alc category in 2026.

Megan: “In 2025, non-alc still felt pretty new to most people, and people were thinking about non-alc like very ‘all or nothing.’ They were either going out drinking or they were like not drinking. The 2026 survey was totally different. People are not counting the days they don’t drink anymore.”

Instead of rigid sobriety rules, consumers are fluidly blending categories within the exact same night out, swapping between standard pours and premium non-alc cocktails. This data aligns with Megan’s production strategy. While their premium bottled non-alcoholic spirits carry a strong dollar value, volume velocity is overwhelmingly driven by packaging format, with 90% of their unit volume moving through cans.

The Takeaway: Stop Looking at the Hinges

As the industry navigates the final stretches of this mid-year shift, it is incredibly easy to get bogged down in the hyper-calculated metrics of distributor contraction or macro consolidation.

But as these three brands show, market validation does not come from waiting for 100% certainty or begging a legacy system for permission. Velocity belongs to the founders who look past the noise of the test, focus entirely on the raw truth of consumer connection, and simply burn the boats to move forward.

Let’s go 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥.

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The New Rules is proud to be the official media partner for the ultimate BCB kickoff party. We are taking over Jolene Sound Room for a Daiquiri Time Out hosted by 2025 Daiq-Off winner Katie Sips, featuring specialty cocktails fueled by Ten To One Rum, Mike’s Hot Honey, and Mothers Milk, alongside live music by Snips and a live stream of the Knicks game playing throughout the night.

The details:

• Monday, June 8th, from 7:00 PM – 11:00 PM

• Jolene Sound Room (353 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn)

• RSVP!

For the first half of the year, the beverage industry has been nursing a massive, post-COVID inventory headache. Distributors are bogged down, consolidation is rampant, and the rumor mill has been insisting that Gen Z has abandoned drinking altogether.

But according to Brian Rosen, Chairman of Investbev, a firm managing nearly a billion dollars of capital for the industry, we aren’t looking at a permanent decline. We’re looking at a much-needed market correction.

To get an accurate pulse check on the industry ahead of Bar Convent Brooklyn (BCB), I sat down with Brian.

His take? The macroeconomic headwinds are finally turning into tailwinds, but only for the founders who understand what the modern consumer actually wants to put in their glass (or can).

The message is clear: Stop blaming the market, stop building vanity brands for an audience of one, and start looking at where the actual liquid velocity is moving.

The Myth of the Teetotaling Gen Z

One of the loudest narratives in beverage right now is that the younger demographic has permanently walked away from alcohol. Brian’s response to that?

“I’m going to give you a beverage specific word. It’s pronounced b*******.”

The narrative was born from a perfect storm of bad timing. The cohort that should have been turning 21, doing frat party keg stands, and learning how to talk to sommeliers was instead stuck in their parents’ basements during the height of the pandemic. It wasn’t a structural shift in human desire; it was a three-year developmental stunting.

Now? They are officially back. Data is showing that Gen Z is currently the demographic hitting on-premise accounts the heaviest, and they are the most open to experimentation and retail recommendations. The drinking population hasn’t shrunk; the curve just artificially dipped from a pandemic high and is now correcting right back onto its linear, pre-COVID upward trajectory.

The Inventory Hangover vs. The M&A Reignition

While consumers are back at the bar, the middle tier is still feeling the pain. Distributors are currently saddled with a massive inventory hangover due to brand liquidations and retail consolidation. If you want a distributor or retailer to care about you in this climate, your product has to be undeniably compelling.

The good news? The major conglomerates like Diageo, Constellation, Pernod Ricard, and LVMH have officially reignited their M&A pipelines after a completely stagnant couple of years. Brian pulled no punches about why these corporate giants are hunting for acquisitions:

“They do not know how to create brands, period, end of story. They need to acquire brands.”

The capital is moving heavily toward alternative categories. Ready-to-Drink (RTD) cocktails have officially overtaken vodka as the drink of choice, a shift that just hit the wires. Born out of the home-mixology movement during lockdowns, the format is now dominating because it solves a massive margin and labor problem for rising weight-staff wages on-premise.

At the same time, all eyes are on the upcoming federal regulatory shifts this November for cannabis beverages, with Investbev portfolio brands like Cann and Willie’s seeing explosive growth ahead of the ruling.

We are also seeing a massive orbital effect in non-alc, with industry leaders like Athletic Brewing factually expected by Brian to cross the M&A finish line soon (interestingly, Brian also flagged RTD brand Carbliss as a prime contender for an acquisition exit soon. He noted you can always tell a brand is prepping for a sale when their social media shifts away from lifestyle and starts obsessing over team, profit, and revenue to pump up valuation).

What to Expect at BCB This Year

Brian shared his blueprint for how independent founders should navigate the BCB floor and look at the market right now.

First, you have to cure your “Executive Chef Syndrome.” The number one mistake independent founders make is creating a brand they personally love, resulting in an audience of exactly one person. You cannot build a business on a hyper-niche liquid that fills a gap nobody else cares about. Build for market reality, not your own palate.

Second, realize that trade shows are not for discovery. Brian has notoriously zero patience for the traditional trade show circuit:

“I have never liked trade shows. I think there’s no ROI. I think it’s b*******... BCB is not where you invent the relationship. It’s where you close the deal.”

Finally, remember that the consumer holds the product remote. The era of big suppliers forcing a brand down the throat of the market through sheer distribution muscle is dead. Thanks to low-cost digital media, the consumer now creates brands through pure demand. If they want it enough, their cultural collective desire will force the market to supply it.

“At the end of the day, you still have to make a good product. You have to make a good liquid that appeals to more people than it doesn’t. That’s how brands work.”

That’s all, folks. See you there!

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Liminal beers, hoppy hops, green monsters

We’ve written about this before, but are drinks getting to be a bit much? There’s something joyful about the simplicity of just having a beer, or just having a soda.

Iin contrast to this, we’re noticing a lot of early stage bev brands bundling their liquids with extras. For example: ARMRA, a new colostrum soda.

Of course it’s not just the newbies. Legacy brands are also pushing outside of their lane, with Heineken launching Outdoor Brewing – an alc-free beer with electrolytes and Vitamin C. Its tag line is ‘crafted for after’, which feels quite pleasing. However it still seems to float in a strange, liminal space. Are they replacing energy drinks? Sports drinks? Are they for the pub? The bar? The hike? Your front room?

It’s a question we’ve asked time and again: what occasion do these drinks belong to? Do we want to mix our supplements and our drinks? Are we blurring enjoyment and wellness? Is this a good thing? And do these brands have the ability to truly go long-term, once we’re past the horizon of the buzzy trend moment?

Speaking of trends… we know and love hops for their alchemical role in beer, but what about elsewhere? There’s signs that hoppy non-beer drinks are on the move, with HPWTR being acquired by Constellation Brands and Fabric launching their zero non-alc hop water. Of course there’s also Tamworth Garden White Mountain Gin - made with three kinds of hops.

Finally, a message for brands: find your own theme. If you see another, distinctive brand that’s doing very well, it’s natural to feel the stirrings of envy.

You, as a founder or marketer or CEO wouldn’t be human if you didn’t look at another business and think: yes, they’re onto something, why didn’t I think of that? But the reason that brand is doing well is because it’s doing its own thing. The world already has one BuzzBallz and it doesn’t need any more (we’re looking at you, Global Brands, for buying Quadz and you, Boston Beer Co with your Lytt electric coolers).

WE BRING YOU BEER NEWS

-Molson Coors is bringing back value beer brand Keystone Ice - which was discontinued in 2021. Reports suggest it’s a move to broaden its offering.

-Alc-free beer brand Days has been acquired by Sunrise Beverages – a house of fellow beer brands including Efes and Gipsy Hill. Days founder Mike Gammell says they’d always planned to find a partner to help the business scale, and that this collab should bring the brand to “more consumers, more occasions and more places than ever before”.

-ABInbev CEO Michel Doukeris is all smiles on CNBC, talking about rising beer sales and lightly hinting that they might be considering making a protein beer.

-In the NA beer space, Crazy Mountain co-founder Rande Gerber thinks he’s cracked the secret to building a zero-beer company: great distribution, great liquid, and a willingness to tap into people’s rituals without lecturing them.

Speaking of celebrity-founded beer brands…. Bero’s VP of Marketing says that celebrity doesn’t guarantee success, in an interview going into some of her thought’s behind Bero’s brand-building.

OPINIONS PLEASE

-Why is the spirits industry so obsessed with the short term? Why aren’t more marketers thinking about building their brand over the next 30 years, rather than the next three? Zak Oganian, CEO of Origen X, shares thoughts with The Spirits Business.

A HAND FOR THE LEGACY BRANDS

-Absolut’s Tabasco edition really got people excited. The global Vice President of Marketing for Absolut, Malibu and Kahlua (what a job) says they’re pinning their hopes on tabasco vodka for the next three years, and adds that most vodka brands aren’t exciting enough (we paraphrase).

Our take: coming up on The New Rules, we speak with a true legacy vodka brand who also believes the category runs the risk of fading into nothingness.

-The world’s best tequila? Herradura Reposado, according to the 2026 London Spirits Competition. Forbes has more on the story, but it’s worth pointing out that this tequila was launched back in the 70s and was the world’s first commercially available reposado.

-Sazerac continues to snap up brands. The latest? Canned cocktail brand SIPMARGS.

-Say goodbye and goodnight to Schlitz. Its last batch was just brewed.

EVER-SHRINKING BOOZE

-Go into any hip liquor store or bottle shop and you’ll spot them: tiny little tins of cocktails that are pocket-sized but rocket-fuelled. So it makes sense that Diageo is getting in on it, with their own mini RTDs. Can’t help but wish they’d made the packaging a little more exciting.

-Diageo hs also released an RTD version of its Ritual Zero Proof.

Our take: Nice, but why does the packaging look so… pharmaceutical?

-Some brands do tins. ARKAY is doing Tetrapaks.

ALCOHOL FREE, BUT HAPPY

-Margarita-lovers rejoice: Giffard NA triple sec is coming to the UK. Note the part where they talk about how this is made using a traditional shrub technique. There’s growing new appreciation for trad methods of working with bitter flavors and fermentation.

BRANDS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN

-Heineken has invented ‘The Clinker’ - a band that goes around your beer can, and lets fellow drinkers know whether you have shared interests.

Our take: One the one hand, this feels fun and novel. On the other, weirdly complicated?

-Who wouldn’t want a gigantic bottle of tequila. Sazerac’s ‘Extra Grande’ edition of Tromba is fun and novel AND, allegedly, greener.

-Angostura now does sugar syrups, and they sound DELICIOUS.

-Brewdog founder James Watt is back, and hes…. launching another beer brand? It’s called Second Best.

STORIES FROM THE REAL WORLD

-Forget the marketing and the branding. What are people actually drinking? Substacker Kate Daykin asked 61 people what their go-to drink is at a fancy bar, and at a dive bar - and the answers are interesting.

-Speak of the devil and he shall appear. Name a trend and it shall manifest. It happened for Quiet Quitting. The Great Resignation. Girl Dinner. Now it seems to be happening for the ‘Boy Martini’.

-Did you know, the first nude poster printed in Japan, in 1922, was actually a Suntory advert for its Akadama Port Wine? Town & Country has a nice piece about the storied history of the brand.

-If you enjoyed reading about Suntory, how about making a coffee and reading about another successful bev brand, but one at a very different stage? Vinepair has the story behind St Agrestis, which sold its Phony Negroni to The Wine Group earlier this year.

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In the crowded landscape of modern tequila, where premiumization has shifted the focus from hype to producer-led craftsmanship, building something that truly stands out is a feat. So many brands start with a formula and look for a story. Sofía Paloma Juárez did the opposite.

She spent nine years building CASA J. It is a project rooted in heritage, meticulous R&D, and the simple desire to bottle a memory. It’s also beautiful.

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The road to tequila

The story of CASA J begins in Jalisco, Mexico. “I wanted to bottle a memory,” says Juárez, who nine years ago reconnected with her dad, a native of the region.

“That memory was driving over the rolling hills of Jalisco for the first time with my father... it was a sweetness in the air that I had never smelt in my life with this fiery, ashy, smoky natural earth and wood.”

Coming from a high-level background in luxury brand building, including stints at Veuve Clicquot and Belvedere, Juárez understood that a great story is not enough. You need the liquid to back it up. She spent years visiting distilleries and building relationships with maestros tequileros before ever going to market.

Something that struck me about this interview with Sofia is just how clearly she has articulated her story. Its tight. I mean, really tight.

The ensemble innovation: old world meets new

While the tequila industry is flooded, CASA J is carving out a niche as an ensemble – a term traditionally used in the world of mezcal to refer to different agave species being distilled together.

CASA J uses an ensemble of traditional and ancestral production techniques. This is a rare technical achievement in the tequila space, utilizing a blend of 93% traditional production and 7% ancestral methods.

• The ancestral soul: The 7% ancestral portion is the brand’s soul, cooked in stone and adobe ovens over wood fire, hand-macerated in hollowed tree trunks, and distilled in copper stills over direct flame.

• The traditional foundation: The 93% traditional portion provides balance, using stone brick ovens, roller mill maceration, and stainless steel distillation with copper coils.

“It’s a marriage of both old world and new world,” Juárez explains. “We wanted to bridge the old, be inspired by the historic, but be a contemporary brand that would be lasting and future-proof.”

A vessel with purpose

Juárez knew that in a crowded spirits market, the bottle needed to be as intentional as the liquid. She wanted a design that bridged historic Mexican architecture with a contemporary, contemporary aesthetic.

To realize this, she partnered with John Gilsenan of IWANT Design, whose work for other female-helmed brands like Wölfer Estate Vineyards and H&H Talea Beer had already earned her admiration.

The resulting ceramic vessel reflects a deeper mission: empowering Mexican artisans. Juárez spent years identifying a ceramic factory in Pachuca, Hidalgo, that shared her values, specifically one that empowers working mothers with flexible schedules and provides full-time roles for individuals with disabilities.

Every bottle is handcrafted by these artisans using natural raw materials, turning the packaging into a tangible commitment to the community behind the brand.

The case for ultra-premium

CASA J enters the market at an SRP of $129, a price point that positions it firmly in the luxury category. In an era where consumers are trading up for products with authentic connections to heritage and additive-free status, Juárez is betting on the intelligent, educated consumer.

Currently, the brand is available throughout New York State and via their website, where they ship to over 40 US states. Despite being in the early stages of distribution, the brand has already caught the attention of experts. Without paying for a single placement, CASA J has secured incredible organic press, including a 92-point score from the Tequila Report and recognition from Agave Matchmaker and Taste Tequila as one of the best spirits of 2026.

“Consumers are now becoming highly intelligent on this spirit,” she says. “It is not something that brands should hide, their production method, but rather be very frank to the consumer about.”

By focusing on the “additive-free” movement and the superior quality of her ensemble production, Juárez is justifying that premium price not through marketing gloss, but through transparency and integrity.

Her thesis is that when you have a story that is authentic paired with a high-quality product, aligned consumers will gravitate towards it.

What’s working?

CASA J just launched. Already, sales are split 50/50 between on-premise and retail, with a strong focus on face-to-face connection. Juárez is a regular at her own tastings, meeting the skeptics who have been “ruined by tequila” in their past and proving that the spirit can be a refined, high-integrity experience.

For the next five years, the focus is simple: keep the integrity high, continue crafting with the maestros, and collaborate with the chefs and mixologists who are shaping the future of the category.

There’s a patience in Sofia’s approach I found incredibly refreshing. With trends constantly shifting, and the spirits market in serious flux, I see a lot of “rush to market” and “rush to prove” and “rush rush rush” all around. Sofia isn’t bending to that. She’s taking her time to do it right.

In New Rules tradition we asked:

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

“It is not as simple as doing business here in the United States for many reasons. I had many agreements that fell through and distilleries that changed their process. You have to be incredibly patient. But if you have that high level of integrity and you really take the time to build authentic relationships, it pays off.”

Is there anything you would do differently or tell other founders to do differently?

“I would tell them to trust the process of discovery. I spent nine years doing R&D and community building. It might have felt like a long time, but it ensured that when we launched in early 2026, we were not just another brand. We were a product with a soul.”

THE NEW RULE

Innovation is not always about creating something brand new. Sometimes, it’s about having the patience to honor an old-world tradition, finding the right partners who share your values, and refusing to cut corners just to get to market faster.

If alcohol has to stand up to any major competitor in the coming years, it’s going to be THC. It’s increasingly legalized around the world (although the looming federal ban in the USA is going to be interesting), it’s increasingly socially accepted, and brands are absolutely ready to tap into that.

Field Trip is one of those. They describe themselves as “a new American spirit”, delivering 3mg of THC per pour, and with messaging that emphasizes gentle, steady connection. Or, as they put it, “feeling good, not gone”.

“We were seeking a drink that offered a little lift in social situations, enhanced our creative thinking, and generally elevated our everyday moments without any of the negative effects of alcohol,” the brand’s Head of Social Content Sam Livingston tells us. “The 3mg dosage keeps things light and manageable, and we liked the idea of a citrus-y, botanical flavor that took the place of gin or tequila in cocktails”.

Field Trip is new. Really new.

We spoke with Sam just months after Field Trip was set up, so we really caught them in the earliest stages of building the business.

However, although the brand itself is newborn it’s benefited from a lot of different experience feeding into it. The team comes from across creative fields – art direction, product development, photo, video, social media, web development – and all of those skills are shaping Field Trip, including its admirably minimal branding.

With a product like this, there are some obvious design directions they could have gone in, and it’s notable that they haven’t. Sam says that’s a reaction to other THC brands that “try to do too much”, either by adopting obnoxious graphics, going kitsch, or hiding behind clinical visuals.

“We think restraint is a form of respect for the consumer that says, ‘we trust you to get it’,” she explains. “When you strip a product down to only what’s essential, what remains has to be true.

“We wanted Field Trip to feel dignified enough to be quiet. The shape, the weight, the way it sits on a table or bar cart: all of that is doing the work. If those things are right, you don’t need to shout.”

Explanation is part of the challenge

It’s not just about avoiding stereotypes, it’s also a messaging job. People know what alcohol is and what it does, but for many, THC is a different beast. There’s hesitation, there’s lack of understanding, and those are feelings Field Trip is at pains to combat.

Sam says they’re doing this with repetitive, and gently insistent language that’s used time and time again to reassure people that Field Trip is a low-dose option that offers a gentle, controllable high. It’s also interesting to note that the brand is being centred around socialising and being creative.

“It allows you to maintain an enjoyable experience socially,” says Sam, “to work on creative projects at home, lounge at the park, and so on, without, say, the effects of an intense edible or several cocktails or glasses of wine.

“That also hopefully comes across in our imagery: we’re sharing craft drink and dessert recipes, and any portraits we post consist of people peacefully spending time together or working on something creative.”

How the brand grows

Field Trip’s launch and growth strategy is, for now, focused on paid and organic social content that aims to show what’s possible via recipes for citrusy drinks, gummies and desserts that people can make at home. Their website and Insta has directions for classic cocktails like Negronis and Palomas as well as Gimlet jello shots.

Events are also an important part of the strategy. Sam says their focus is on popping up in Los Angeles and New York and giving people firsthand experience of Field Trip. Watching them encounter the brand has also given them invaluable product insight. They’d always intended it to be an alcohol replacement – a stand-in for gin or tequila in a cocktail – but Sam says they’ve realised people are equally happy to drink it on its own, over ice.

And although this brand is still fresh, they’ve already learned plenty about building in this space. We asked Sam to reflect on these early days:

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

“Regulations are constantly changing, so we’ve been working on alternate products in the event that we’re unable to sell our current product going forward. We’re incredibly excited about what we’ve got on the way, but it takes a lot of effort and experimentation to stay a few steps ahead in this specific industry.”

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

“We think of FIeld Trip as a point of view: how people deserve to feel in their everyday lives. The best companies know that when building a brand, what you’re really creating is a relationship with the consumer. The object (or liquid, in our case) is just the contact point. Build the brand like it’s the product – not a label on the product, not a story wrapped around the product, but the product itself. When a brand is working well, it’s not a visual identity, it’s a consistent point of view that will allow people to trust wherever you take them next.”

THE NEW RULE

Branding can be loud and exuberant, but it doesn’t have to be. Understanding what you want to say and communicating it quietly, confidently and consistently is a totally valid way to connect with people – especially if you’re building in a space that’s less familiar.

The New Rules is a labor of love by nihilo.agency. Need design support for your brand? Reach out! hi@nihilo.agency

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“We don’t want you to drink this in a leather chair. We don’t want you to drink this in a saloon exclusively. Take it and do whatever you want with it. Pour it over ice cream. It’s meant to be fun and meant to be empowering.” ~Charlie Rodman

“The bourbon aisle is a sea of brown liquid, sepia labels, and stories of dead white guys who may have nothing to do with the product on the shelf.” ~Charlie Rodman

For some, this is very appealing. For others, it is not.

In many ways, the bourbon category has an intimidating “culture of connoisseurship.” Between the gatekeeping of mash bills and the reverence for specific spring water sources, many potential consumers feel excluded - and frankly, uninterested.

No Sleep Beverage – an alcohol beverage investment and consulting platform in the United States that acquires, supports, and grows emerging, culture-focused alcohol brands – is betting on a new brand that they recently acquired: Nine Banded Whiskey.

Charlie Rodman, CMO of No Sleep, describes this brand as the “gateway to bourbon, not the gatekeeper.”

Having shifted from minority investor to full owner of Nine Banded Whiskey, No Sleep is bringing to fruition the vision for the brand with an updated positioning and visual identity they built with the brand’s founders.

I sat down with Charlie, (for the second time! See our first interview here: How No Sleep Beverage is building transcendent brands), to discuss how they are repositioning Nine Banded.

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The strategy: rolling up the “iconic”

For No Sleep, the acquisition of Nine Banded was a foundational move in a broader roll up strategy. By taking majority positions in brands that address a distinct brand whitespace in the category., No Sleep can focus on the heavy lifting of professionalization.

Charlie explains that brand is a significant differentiator because it offers a shortcut to pull marketing. In a sea of 4,000 SKUs, most founders over invest in the liquid while under investing in the commercial system.

“We like to think of consumers as rational actors. It’s b*******,” Charlie says. “If you can do the things that help you stand out and win in the four seconds that someone evaluates the shelf when they’re shopping for something new, that’s the easiest chance you have to convert the sale”.

The No Sleep strategy is to identify brands with transcendent potential and then use shared infrastructure to scale them. By saturating local markets (what No Sleep calls “deepen before you broaden”), they create a proof of adoption that is far more valuable to a future acquirer than a wide but shallow national presence.

The move to a single SKU: radical simplification

Perhaps the most contrarian move in this rebuild is the decision to move Nine Banded toward a single SKU model. While most bourbon brands chase growth by lining the shelf with endless variations and details about origin and method and barrels and yada yada, No Sleep is simplifying.

The logic is rooted in consumer psychology and the accessible price point. Most consumers shopping at this level are not whiskey nerds; they’re looking for a versatile, reliable spirit that fits their lifestyle.

By focusing on one flagship product, No Sleep eliminates the paradox of choice. This single SKU is designed to be the ultimate Swiss Army knife of bourbon. This simplification does not just help the consumer; it streamlines the entire supply chain and allows the brand to win the shelf instantly.

The rebrand: from utility to good, plain fun

Truth be told: I’ve been wanting to talk about this rebrand since I first spoke to Charlie about it last July. But I could not. I had to stay silent. I was entrusted with this, and by God, I kept my word.

Well, folks, the time has come.

The bottle’s visual identity, developed with Quaker City Mercantile (QCM) (see our interview with QCM founder Steve Grasse who is amazingly hilarious + spot on), sits at the intentional intersection of a wanted poster and a concert poster.

It swaps traditional bourbon browns for a color palette inspired by the saturated tones of a Texas sunset.

Liquid Authenticity: From MGP to Texas

A critical component of this rebuild is the transition of the liquid itself. In its previous iteration, the brand was MGP-sourced (a bulk supplier out of Indiana). While MGP produces quality spirits, it lacked a unique connection to the brand’s roots.

With a new repositioning focused on inviting drinkers to “show up as their true selves,” it was vital that the brand representing Austin did the same. As a result, No Sleep is committing to sourcing Nine Banded whiskey exclusively from within Texas.

By moving away from a generic spirit and embracing a locally produced liquid, Nine Banded better aligns its values with its promise to consumers. This transition allows the brand to remain authentic while maintaining an accessible price point.

Cha-ching!

The New Rules:

1. Fun leads to engagement; fear leads to avoidance.

Bourbon has become gatekept by expertise, turning a purchase into an intimidating exam. The insight for Nine Banded was to remove those barriers. Internally, the rally cry is “all for fun, fun for all,” emphasizing the individual’s choice over the industry’s rules.

2. Tension creates intrigue.

By taking things that should not work together (like a whiskey bottle and a concert ticket) and binding them through a cohesive vision, you create cool. “Tension creates intrigue, but it’s so hard to deliver authentically because you’re deliberately taking things that should not work together and you need some element that binds them or it’s just going to come across as forced.” ~CR

3. If it only sells when you demo it, you’ve failed.

A transcendent brand must connect by itself.

“If it only sells when you’re demoing it and telling the story, you’re already failing as a brand. You need it to be able to tell the story and connect by itself.” ~CR

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Every month we watch what’s going on in the bev/alc industry, and then we serve our subscribers a perfectly mixed dose of news and views from the sector: who’s releasing what, what’s on founders’ mind, big rebrands, campaigns and announcements, where the money is going.

We call it Happy Hour, and we’re happy you’re here to enjoy it with us.

Pre-gamers, ‘better’ booze, kids drinks for adults

Pre-gaming, pre-drinking, pre-loading, getting ready… whatever you want to call it, it’s not a new ritual. HOWEVER, it is having a moment in the sun.

The WSJ recently reported on this, saying that drinks are now so expensive that people are going back to their college era and drinking beforehand. You can see signs of this in some recent moves: Global Brands just bought Quadz – portable, high ABV, colorful in a way that’s very reminiscent of another buzzy brand – and Pernod Ricard has launched a pink Malibu that’s being marketed for the ‘getting ready’ moment.

In a completely different direction, there’s a movement to embed a sense of self-care into the bev space. You’ve got Vodkade, a sports drink-feeling brand that’s just launched a sugar-free line; Future Chateau, a wine brand that sells low ABV, low calorie wine marketed to give you less next-day regrets; and Lucky Saint launching an electrolyte lager.

There’s also the continuing fascination with weird, hybrid booze that is both bad for you and good for you - eg, it’ll get you tipsy, but it’ll also give you electrolytes or nootropics or adaptogens. Esquire’s story on protein cocktails (yes, really) conveys some of the strangeness of it all.

If wellness isn’t your thing, there’s always nostalgia. We’re spotting brands that are building in the ‘kids drinks but for adults’ space, including Popsicle-flavored hard malts, Mirth sparkling fruit juice, and even Monster Energy’s new brand FLRT which, on purpose or not, looks like a teen magazine.

Now, time for your quick-scroll news:

WINE IS FINE

We’ve shared a few stories this year about the state of wine: in short, it’s difficult right now. Semafor reports that China is importing less wine, some producers are holding a lot of excess inventory, and young Chinese people don’t find wine especially compelling.

Bringing in a slightly fresher perspective, there’s Nice – who have a new and very not snobby new brand by Earthling Studio.

Young people love Bordeaux, it seems - perhaps down to pricing, and perhaps down to producers going on a courting spree.

THE CREATIVE STUFF

Creative studio Stranger and Stranger have revamped Martini’s vermouth line. The textured glass, in particular, is quite lovely.

Allora plans to open their own bar in a lemon grove in Italy’s Procida. The design sounds considered, conscientious and intensely on-brand.

Well done to How&How for their work with THC soda and gummies brand Out of Office. The writing is fun, so is the brand, and if you’re a TNR subscriber you’ll know we believe alc/bev brands really need to loosen up.

NO ALCOHOL FOR US PLEASE

Constellation Brands now owns sparkling water brand Hopwtr.

Our take: Mixed feelings about this. Hops as a flavoring are criminally underrated (seriously, try making kombucha-flavoured with citra hops), and Hopwtr is onto something here. On the other hand, they’re throwing a lot at the situation: adaptogens, nootropics, tea... Somewhere in there the message might get lost.

Coors now comes in a 0.0% version

The Wine Group now owns Phony Negroni.

Our take: some of the best NA options are the bitter-flavored bevs (Iessi and Ghia being obvious ones). We predict more moves like this into the bitter end of the flavor spectrum.

It’s barely been five minutes since George Clooney launched his alc-free beer brand Crazy Mountain, and already it’s chugging down investment.

FLAVOR ADVENTURES

People really do love novelty flavors. Does matcha or hibiscus belong with beer? Ceremony says yes.

How about olive distilled vodka from Ammos? (served from an excellently goaty bottle).

Or lemon Madri?

Or, coming in hot in the weird brand crossover category, pickle beer from PBR and Grillo’s?

COLLABS

Saint James Tea just announced a crossover with Tarte Cosmetics, and it makes an awful lot of sense.

Our take: Brand collabs are certainly nothing new, and in the last decade they’ve struck an increasingly fevered attitude, as companies outdo one another to come up with the most bizarre brand combos. That said, bev brands x beauty brands feels right somehow.

EVERYTHING IN A TIN

You can now get your Aperol spritz in a can.

Jam Shed now serves red wine in a can, mixed with cola.

TO BOOKMARK FOR LATER

“So much of human creativity, sex and culture has for centuries been marinated in alcohol. What’s going to happen if that stops?” So writes Henry Jefferys, in a piece that sings the praises of wine.

818 Tequila look like they’re having a lot of fun building their brand. Their ECD shares thoughts on how they’re thinking about world-building with People Brands and Things. (TLDR: they spend a lot of time on the small details, and that’s what makes it work).

Cocktail bars in South East Asia are doing some interesting things – writing in-depth stories about their serves, putting homemade ferments on the shelves and fully embracing local culture. More on that here.

The NY Times dives straight into the BuzzBallz mania.

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We’re about to say something controversial: ‘beautiful’ branding isn’t everything. Perfectly matched typefaces, lofty slogans and slick visuals aren’t always the answer.

As evidence of that, there’s a whole world of bev/alc brands making bank with some of the most chaotic, mismatched, un-honed and unfiltered design you can imagine. (BTW, that doesn’t mean it’s not strategic… but more on that later).

While these brands are raising money, winning over young people and changing the sector, there’s a stable of stalwart old bev/alc brands convinced that doing things the way they always have is the answer.

The same old language, the same old selling points, the same old labels. You only have to look at recent rebrands of some of the biggest names in spirits and beer to wonder if they’ve forgotten how to have fun.

Alcohol brands need to loosen up

People drink for a lot of different reasons. Maybe they want to spend time with friends, or mark an occasion, or come back down after a day sent from hell itself. But for most of us, it’s very simple: we want to enjoy ourselves.

Most consumers don’t want to be told: this beer is going to do you good, or this RTD comes with a moral message you can get behind, or this bottle of spirits was made by blind monks in a 500-year-old distillery. For the most part, they don’t care that your crest dates back to the 1920s, or that your slogan conveys some vague but aspirational message that, really, could mean anything.

They want to see something that catches their eye and makes them think to themselves: yes, I’ll enjoy this, I’ll buy it.

It’s a simple relationship, so why do so many drinks brands make it so complicated? In the alc space, the message frequently leans into the blandly smug, while in the NA space it’s often moralising. As Botivo founder Imme Ermgassen recently commented in a post about how playfulness is “achingly missing” from the category:

“Shouldn’t we all be having a little more FUN with non alc?”

As a response, they’ve just partnered with lingerie brand Coco de Mer on a special, aphrodisiac edition.

When Heineken shares a press release about its ‘ultimate’ alc-free beer – no calories, no alcohol, no sugar, you have to ask, what’s the appeal here? What’s the point of this intensely joyless liquid?

When companies make cocktails that have negligible amounts of adaptogens, and build their brand around those apparent benefits, who is that for? When is it for? How much mileage does that trend have?

Why is it that when Elton John, the master of ostentation, released a NA wine it looked like this? How did Tanqueray manage to hire someone as charismatic as Sarah Jessica Parker, and still make this campaign so bland?

Why do so many drinks brands take it so seriously?

Meet the chaos brands

I want to preface this by saying that I’ve written a lot about branding. As the former deputy editor of a well-known design magazine in the UK, I spent years of my life sifting through press releases from agencies and studios. And I’m fully bought into the power of branding; I’m as susceptible to a beautiful label or a clever tagline as anyone else.

But branding comes in many forms. And right now, the bev/alc brands that are winning are the ones that are cleverly chaotic. They’re ‘unpolished’, unfiltered, experimental. They embrace being unserious. And by doing so they appeal to young people still figuring out what they want to drink – and hence susceptible to what stands out on the shelf – as well as older consumers seeking novelty.

Look at Cueva Nueva, who we recently interviewed. Founder Phi Peinado told us:

With Cueva Nueva, we wanted to build the brand we felt should exist, but didn’t. At the end of the day, it’s booze. It doesn’t need to take itself so seriously. We want to have fun and invite other people to have fun with us.

Consider BuzzBallz. This brand is absolutely everywhere, beloved by seemingly everyone, and I think it’s fair to describe their branding as gloriously unpretentious. What about Surfside, named by Forbes as the fastest growing alcohol brand in America, and reported to be selling nine cases a minute across 50 US states in 2025? Look at the cans: rainbow stripes, a lemon sun, and a wave script font that sticks two fingers up at the cult of Swiss Modernism.

Or how about The Original Pickle Shot. Beautifully unserious. Or Whiny Baby, just acquired by Gallo and, visually speaking, a world away the usual staid wine branding. What about Uncle Arnie’s (shown above)? They just raised $7.5m.

I think one of the reasons 818 Tequila is doing so well is because it isn’t scared to actually have fun - eg by making a mini version that clips onto people’s bags. Can you imagine other big name whiskey or tequila brands doing the same?

And if you want to talk about actual heritage brands enjoying themselves - look at how many people are talking about Smirnoff’s tabasco vodka. Why? Because it’s novel, it’s maybe a little bit silly and it’s fun.

Playful doesn’t mean un-strategic

It’s easy to be a snob about branding – and there will always be a place for high-level, super sophisticated, deeply refined visual identities and advertising and general creative execution (for example, Veuve’s perfectly executed partnership with Jacquemus, or this beautiful Penfolds packaging).

But getting that right is hard. It requires a lot of effort, a lot of consideration, and if you veer even a millimetre off that path you become boring and preachy.

Being carefree and loose and experimental with your brand requires an equal amount of effort, and a deep understanding of who you are and what you’re about. Some people might look at the aesthetic of some of the brands we’ve mentioned and assume they’re two years away from hiring a big-name agency and making it all feel a bit more ‘sophisticated’. But I hope they don’t.

Alcohol brands desperately need to loosen up. Consumers want fun. They’re drawn to brands that are fun. And often that isn’t about beautiful branding – it’s about having a point of view, and a willingness to be less rigid, less scripted, less precious.

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Cheers.

“It’s definitely striking,” says Jeffery Fowler, CEO of Olujo. He’s talking, obviously, about the incredible sculptural ceramic that holds the brand’s blue agave tequila. Brand strategy can be a lot of things: storytelling, messaging, positioning, visuals... for Olujo, brand strategy is the bottle.

“Whether it’s just standing alone or whether it’s actually standing amidst other bottles behind the bar, it really does stand out,” says Jeffery. “This is obviously, of course, very, very intentional.”

How do you stand out in an extremely competitive, saturated tequila market?

Simple: you do the exact opposite of what every other brand is doing with their packaging. Instead of glass you choose ceramic; instead of the traditional shape, you commission something completely unexpected; and instead of selling people a bottle that they throw away once it’s empty, you create an object that becomes a keepsake.

A “future heirloom,” as Jeffery describes it.

Something sculptural, something otherworldly

The brief for Olujo’s bottle was singular: “something sculptural, something otherworldly.” The brand needed an object that was steeped in high craft, to reflect the artisanal nature of the tequila (and its premium price tag).

And that story of craft goes all the way down. First, the bottle is designed by Ivan Venkov, a sculptor and designer who’s worked with a long list of premium brands.

Then, it’s made by Anfora, a partner in Mexico that has a century-long heritage of producing ceramics. And finally, its grainy, tactile texture is replicated on the surface of every single business card Olujo team members hand out.

“It’s something of beauty, and something that’s deeply connected to the earth,” says Jeffery.

The pursuit of craft

The bottle is Olujo’s calling card. It’s the symbol that signifies: we’re a brand that really cares about how things are made. Some tequila brands lean into lineage or family heritage as their selling point. For Olujo, the focus has always been one thing: craft. Everything about the brand has to come back to that, whether it’s the cultivation and harvesting — focusing on the most mature, high quality agave — through to the way the agave is cooked. And craft isn’t easy.

“It’s pursuing each stage of the value chain and really trying not to cut corners, not to find a cheaper or more efficient way of doing it,” says Jeffery.

Being dedicated to craft, when you’re a bev/alc brand, doesn’t just mean the bottle and the liquid, of course. It’s how you show up in the wider world. Olujo is also forging connections with the world of “beautiful objects” — for example, hosting a dinner at Art Basel Miami, and inviting artists, gallerists and curators that all value craft.

Price can be a strategy

Olujo is working at a much higher price point than most other tequila brands – $500 for a bottle, as opposed to the $30 to $100 range. According to Jeffery, this was a conscious decision to tap into a part of the market that’s a little less busy, and a little less competitive.

“I think maybe in that space it can be easier to defend and lay claim to why you’re there, and what it is about your product that helps it stand out,” he explains.

That high price point is also part of the story. People scanning a menu are going to find their eyes snagging on the dollar sign. They might splash out on that. Or they might ask the bartender or server to tell them a bit more of the story. As Jeffery says: “If that can create the opportunity for them to learn about us and understand who we are and what we do... then hopefully we earn ourselves a new customer through the process.”

Do less, do more

It’s not just the high price tag or the beautiful packaging that sets Olujo apart. The brand has remained purposefully aloof; it’s not available everywhere, and that’s by design. They initially launched in just two states, and are currently only available in the US. They’ve over-emphasized on-premise, because the bottle needs to be seen “in the wild”. “We want to build this brand in an experiential way,” says Jeffery.

It’s also not all over social media. They haven’t put any paid social behind the business, and are relying solely on organic for the time being. That doesn’t mean they don’t have a strategy, however — Olujo posts a note of acknowledgement for every single partner that puts the bottle behind their bar. It’s a very simple expression of gratitude, but it has the magical knock-on effect of getting other restaurants in town interested.

“The easiest thing in the world to do within social media is to try and shortcut it,” says Jeffery. “It’s to spend a bunch of money on advertising to try and target the right audiences and the right people. That can work. But it can also be very inefficient, especially too early on in a brand when you haven’t established your foothold.”

Olujo is a tequila brand that’s beautiful, that’s expensive, that’s exclusive and that revels in all of those things. It’s a reminder that the best brands are unapologetically single-minded about what they’re doing.

NEW RULES FROM OLUJO

Packaging can be a strategy
Don’t underestimate the seductive power of a beautiful bottle – it still works.

Find your angle and laser in on it
If craft is the thing you do best, make everything about that. Be joyfully single-minded.

Be a contrarian
If everyone is going low-, no- and affordable, swing the other way.

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“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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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.

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

Need design support for your brand? Reach out! hi@nihilo.agency

And support our work by:
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Cheers.