Faccia Brutto makes bitter liqueurs that honour their Italian roots while keeping the modern American palate in mind. It’s a brand that’s grown slowly, honestly and with a lot of discipline – thanks to founder Patrick Miller’s background as a chef.

And it’s not just the exceptional taste; Patrick has created one of those brands where the story, the liquid and the visual world feel truly inseparable.

Here’s how:

A chef’s approach to flavor and structure

Patrick Miller came to spirits through kitchens, and that background shapes how he thinks about amaro. “I think about balance,” he says. “If there’s too much fat or acid or salt in a dish, people know instantly.” When he looked at what existed in the domestic category, things felt off-kilter, either too sweet or too bitter.

His intention from day one was to make products that are supremely well balanced. He respects Italian tradition but doesn’t treat it as a fixed formula — for example, legacy Italian brands use a lot of sugar, but Patrick says he’s made a conscious decision to use a more “appropriate” amount. He also adds salt because it brings flavors out.

These adjustments give Faccia Brutto a flavor profile that feels both rooted and modern. It respects where amaro comes from while creating something more aligned with how Americans actually drink.

A brand world built on imperfection

Faccia Brutto’s visual identity carries the same energy as the liquid. It’s confident without being polished, humorous without being silly, and intentionally imperfect. The name itself came to Patrick suddenly. Faccia Brutta means ugly face, which he loved, but he went further. He intentionally mismatched the grammar.

He laughed when he told us: “I’ve received a lot of emails and phone calls asking why the name is incorrect, but it felt right.” That slight tension is the brand. It’s meant to feel human and slightly off in a way that draws you in.

The design came from Garrett Elizabeth Office, a small husband and wife studio that Patrick worked with when they first broke out on their own. He wanted the typography to feel throwback without being nostalgic, and the designers built a system that feels old-world but filtered through a very American voice.

And then there’s the drinking man. Patrick asked the designers to “put Charles Bukowski on the label in some fashion,” which is how the illustration landed on that beautifully imperfect figure. “I found him extremely funny and grotesquely ugly,” Patrick says. “His whole persona really is the brand.” It is not a reference for reference’s sake. It signals honesty, grit, humor, and a refusal to smooth anything over.

Nothing in the Faccia Brutto world feels like it was tested or sanitized. It feels lived-in. That energy is essential to why bartenders and consumers connect with it so deeply.

Building without shortcuts

Patrick’s approach to growth stands apart in today’s industry. There’s no burn rate. No pressure to scale at all costs. And no need to constantly chase new capital.

“I raised money once,” he says. “$150k. Whatever cash comes in is the cash we use.”

This grounds the brand’s most important rule: “We do not do the pay-to-play model. I would rather save that money for payroll.” This is unusual for the category and extremely intentional. If Faccia Brutto shows up on a menu, it’s because someone believes in the product. That authenticity creates a different kind of loyalty, and it sets the brand up for resilience rather than volatility.

Navigating a changing distributor landscape

The distributor landscape is becoming more consolidated and cost-driven. Many brands feel pressure to overspend in order to stay relevant. Faccia Brutto took the opposite path. It built demand first, often one bartender or one retailer at a time.

Launching in March 2020 shaped its trajectory. With bars closed, retail became the entry point. “The only place people could see our stuff was on shelves,” Patrick says. That retail momentum later informed how the brand moved into restaurants.

Today the brand sits at a 50/50 split between retail and on premise, which is rare and speaks to how well the identity performs in both environments.

The bottle stands out on a backbar. The typography carries from across a room. The Bukowski figure is recognizable without being literal. The world-building does real work in a way that very few brands truly achieve. Bartenders see it, pick it up, and want to talk about it.

A brand that grows thoughtfully

Faccia Brutto runs with a small, focused team. Patrick and one teammate make the liquid. Another manages accounts. Another leads communications and collaborations. Their community approach is thoughtful rather than performative. Every January they host a dog adoption event at the distillery. It is small, warm, and very on-brand. As Patrick says: “It is more of a community than just a product.”

This is a company that knows what it is trying to build, why it matters, and what it refuses to compromise on. That kind of clarity shows up everywhere.

NEW RULES FROM FACCIA BRUTTO

Build from real demand
“I raised money once. Whatever cash comes in is the cash we use.”

Let imperfection speak
The wrong grammar, the disheveled figure, the lived-in world. It all signals honesty.

Honor tradition without copying it
Italian roots, American palate, modern execution.

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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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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.

For more on brand-building in the bev/alc sector, subscribe.

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“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 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥.

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

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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!

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

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

And support our work by:

- Subscribing

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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.

“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

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

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

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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.

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

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

Rum really needs a rethink

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

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

You have to frame tradition

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

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

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

Education is part of the job

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

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

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

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

Functional vs. emotional

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

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

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

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

Differentiation is everything

Alejandro says spirits brand founders can fall into two traps.

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

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

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

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

NEW RULES FROM CANDELA MAMAJUANA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HOW THE STORY STARTED

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

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

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

SOMETIMES THE SOLUTION IS SIMPLE

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

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

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

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

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

ARCANE VISUALS

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

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

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

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

GOOD BRANDING FEELS ‘INEVITABLE’

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

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

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

GREAT BRANDS DON’T EXPLAIN THEMSELVES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Trap of the Generic Exit

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

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

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

Why Velocity is the Only Truth

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

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

The New Investor Checklist

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

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

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

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

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

Categories to Watch

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

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

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

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

Building a System, Not Just a Story

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bitter is here to stay

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

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

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

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

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

People don’t want to be preached to

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

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

Let’s talk about the branding

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

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

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

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

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

IESSI’s strategy: win over the bars first

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

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

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

Alc-free’s reckoning is coming

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

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

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

NEW RULES FROM IESSI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The paradox of spontaneity

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

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

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

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

The sandbox of the mind

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

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

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

The dishonesty premium and social trust

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

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

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

Respecting the potency of the liquid

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

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

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

The Southern vs. Northern model

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

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

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

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

Why the green wave will never replace the bar

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

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

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

Reclaiming the connection

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

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

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

THE NEW RULE:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1)The quality of the liquid

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

2)Brand positioning

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

3)Lazy language

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

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

4)Distribution, distribution, distirbution

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

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

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

In summary:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What does Gratsi do differently?

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

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

A wine brand born from the Mediterranean lifestyle

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

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

Enter the box

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

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

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

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

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

Being premium means giving more than you get

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

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

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

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

It’s the whole experience

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

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

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

NEW RULES FROM GRATSI

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

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

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

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

Subscribe now

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

Support us by:
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