Numlock News: May 22, 2024 • Seltzer, Canada, The Long Drink
By Dave InfanteToday’s guest writer is Dave Infante, who writes the rambunctious and insightful newsletter Fingers all about drinking in America. That’s right, baby: Today’s Numlock News is more of a Numlock Booze! Bud Light JusticeIf we’ve learned anything about the Supreme Court over the past year or two, it’s that our Agéd/Robéd Ones are no strangers to the millennial concept of the side hustle. Clarence Thomas is a talented procurer of RVs, for example. Samuel Alito’s other gig, it turns out, is day-trading. Less than a day after the right-wing rage-farming account libs of TikTok amplified the transphobic backlash against Anheuser-Busch InBev last August, records show that the conservative justice sold between $1,000 to $15,000 of that brewer’s stock and bought stock in its rival, Molson Coors. The move poses ethical questions about Alito’s impartiality on cases involving trans health care. Long DrinkFinland’s beloved gin-based sipper, the long drink, has been a hit with the American drinking public, with The Finnish Long Drink (that’s a brand name) racking up a staggering 91.9 percent increase in year-over-year retail dollar sales through mid-April, per NielsenIQ scan data. That type of growth, in such a crowded and regulated market no less, has caught the eye of a handful of savvy celebrity backers, including Miles Teller, DJ Kygo and Rickie Fowler. Now, HOV himself is getting gin-volved: Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners announced a “significant investment” in the brand last week. Ain’t No Laws…The hard seltzer boom of yesteryear has fizzled into a more sobering reality lately, as most of the big players in the once-hot segment have posted serious losses in both volume and dollars. That includes Truly, Boston Beer Company’s entrant and the longtime No. 2. It does not, in fact, include the segment’s No. 1 brand, though: White Claw is still posting modest growth and now controls over 60 percent of the multibillion-dollar segment in the U.S. Wine GlutYou don’t often hear people complaining about having too much wine, but at a commercial level, it’s actually a big problem for countries that traffic in the stuff. Wine consumption is down globally and storage capacity is maxed out, impelling government interventions to steady already wobbly domestic and export markets. In Navarra, a wine region in northern Spain, the minister of rural development has announced €10 million in funding to try to stanch wine oversupply in the short term. Roughly half of that will be spent to buy wine from vintners to distill for industrial alcohol applications, and the rest will be used to “green-harvest” wine grapes off the vines in the hopes of preventing unneeded fruit from this year’s crop attracting pests and disease that might harm the vineyards long-term. Total WineThe wealthy cofounder of alcohol mega-retailer Total Wine, David Trone, is already a congressman for Maryland, but he’s had designs on the upper chamber ever since the state’s senior senator announced his plans to retire last May. The Democrat spent $62 million of his own money to fund his primary campaign, and many assumed Senator Sauvignon Blanc was a done deal. Not so: A county executive with comparably little name recognition and way less dough whupped the magnate by a double-digit margin in last week’s vote. Luke Goldstein, The American Prospect LCB-Oh NoOne of the biggest alcohol buyers in the world is the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, which, as you may have surmised, is the board that controls Ontario’s liquor trade and the hundreds of retail locations through which it flows in Canada’s most populous province. This powerful authority is none too popular with multinational liquor concerns these days due to the fines it keeps issuing over alleged contract violations regarding pricing. Now, Spirits Canada, a trade group whose constituents collectively sell some 70 percent of Ontario’s booze, is signaling that member firms like Diageo and Pernod Ricard are prepared to pull out of the market entirely if the LCBO keeps treating them like deadbeats in arrears rather than collaborative partners in the trade. Cash for CannabisWith the vice industry all abuzz with the Biden administration’s latest progress toward recasting marijuana to be more like Tylenol with codeine and less like heroin in the eyes of Uncle Sam, one of the biggest players in Canada’s weed business, Tilray Brands, announced plans to sell stock valued at up to $250 million to underwrite new acquisitions. Tilray has become a bit of a meme stock à la GameStop, and it has not let the lack of federal recreational legalization in the United States (which recasting it is not) stop it from getting acquainted with the American substance user, acquiring a bunch of American craft breweries and distilleries in the last few years. Follow Dave’s work here: Thanks to the paid subscribers to Numlock News who make this possible. Subscribers guarantee this stays ad-free, and get a special Sunday edition. Consider becoming a full subscriber today. Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news. Check out the Numlock Book Club and Numlock award season supplement. Previous Sunday subscriber editions: The Internationalists · Video Game Funding · BYD · Disney Channel Original Movie · Talon Mine · Our Moon · Rock Salt · Wind Techs · Yeezys · Armed Forces · Christmas Music · The Golden Screen · New York Hotels · A City on Mars · Personality Change · Graphics · You Are What You Watch ·Comics Data · Extremely Online · Kevin Perjurer · Kia Theft Spree · Right to Repair · Chicken Sandwich WarsSunday Edition Archives: 2022 · 2021 · 2020 · 2019 · 2018You're currently a free subscriber to Numlock News. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. |
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