Non-alcoholic drinks are the industry's favourite growth story right now, but Felicity and Lulie begin by asking the question nobody in the trade wants to answer: is this actually a health movement, or is it simply the drinks industry colonising new occasions? The data tells a more complicated story than the headlines suggest. Much of the category's growth is coming not from drinkers cutting back but from people upgrading what they reach for when they would previously have had a soft drink — which raises the uncomfortable possibility that the no-alc boom is less about sobriety and more about margin expansion.

To put the current moment in context, the conversation travels back through some unexpected history — prohibition-era soda fountains, and a little-known 75-year ban on agave spirits in Mexico — to show that the tension between alcohol, abstinence, and commerce is nothing new, and that category disruptions of this kind tend to follow recognisable patterns. From there, Felicity and Lulie break down the state of play inside the no-alc segment itself: why non-alcoholic beer has genuinely cracked the brief and earned its place on the shelf, why non-alcoholic spirits are still working out what they are and who they are for, and why alcohol-free wine faces a structural problem that no amount of clever winemaking has yet resolved.

Meet Your Hosts:

Lulie Halstead founded and led international consumer research and strategy consultancy Wine Intelligence, and led it to a successful PE exit. Today she is a renowned global beverage alcohol and wine sector specialist, focused on consumer behaviour, strategy, retail and hospitality. An accomplished keynote speaker, she has spoken at more than 70 international events over the past 20 years.

Felicity Carter is an award-winning wine and drinks journalist, editor and content strategist. She led Meininger’s Wine Business International to become the world’s most must-read wine trade magazine, and was founding Executive Editor of The Drop/Pix, which the Wall Street Journal named one of the most trusted sources of wine information. A regular keynote speaker, she was named a 2024 Industry Leader by WineBusiness Monthly. Her Drinks Insider podcast won the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Award for Audio.

Lulie and Felicity are back to talking about the drinks news! And the news is big. Diageo's new CEO Sir Dave Lewis (also known as “Drastic Dave”) has delivered his first major investor presentation, outlining many of the problems facing Diageo, including a portfolio overweighted at the expensive end of a market. Felicity and Lulie dig into what Lewis's blunt assessment reveals about the state of premiumisation as a strategy — and whether the industry's dominant narrative of the past decade has been quietly masking structural decline.

But not every brand is struggling. Beatbox, the brightly coloured Texan party punch that sells for around $5 a carton, has just passed $300 million in annual US retail sales — and it got there by ignoring almost every convention the drinks industry holds dear.

Add to that Jägermeister's quietly impressive 2025, built on a fruit extension that has sold five million bottles in under a year, and a picture emerges of a market fracturing along price and purpose lines. The episode also touches on resealable Tetra Paks, drink spiking, the unit-of-alcohol economics that explain why cheap drinks are winning, and why someone in Belize is mixing whisky with local rum and calling it Risky.

Meet Your Hosts:

Lulie Halstead founded and led international consumer research and strategy consultancy Wine Intelligence, and led it to a successful PE exit. Today she is a renowned global beverage alcohol and wine sector specialist, focused on consumer behaviour, strategy, retail and hospitality. An accomplished keynote speaker, she has spoken at more than 70 international events over the past 20 years.

Felicity Carter is an award-winning wine and drinks journalist, editor and content strategist. She led Meininger’s Wine Business International to become the world’s most must-read wine trade magazine, and was founding Executive Editor of The Drop/Pix, which the Wall Street Journal named one of the most trusted sources of wine information. A regular keynote speaker, she was named a 2024 Industry Leader by WineBusiness Monthly. Her Drinks Insider podcast won the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Award for Audio.

A/Prof Justin Cohen from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute takes wine marketing myths apart, one by one. He talks about why mental availability wins out over awareness, how to prioritise category entry points, and why the law of double jeopardy means small brands should stop chasing “loyalty” and start recruiting light and occasional buyers. Cohen maps the mechanics of growth across wine and beyond, from media choices to where your brand physically shows up, and explains why reach beats narrow targeting when you’re trying to get from zero to one purchase.

We also get into distinctiveness versus differentiation, portfolio cohesion, and the duplication-of-purchase reality that your customers are also someone else’s customers. Cohen shows how to design tastings that encode the brand not just the occasion, how to defend against retailer private labels with consistent distinctive assets, and how to adapt when affluent Boomers age out and younger buyers refuse waiting lists.

Meet Your Hosts:

Lulie Halstead founded and led international consumer research and strategy consultancy Wine Intelligence, and led it to a successful PE exit. Today she is a renowned global beverage alcohol and wine sector specialist, focused on consumer behaviour, strategy, retail and hospitality. An accomplished keynote speaker, she has spoken at more than 70 international events over the past 20 years.

Felicity Carter is an award-winning wine and drinks journalist, editor and content strategist. She led Meininger’s Wine Business International to become the world’s most must-read wine trade magazine, and was founding Executive Editor of The Drop/Pix, which the Wall Street Journal named one of the most trusted sources of wine information. A regular keynote speaker, she was named a 2024 Industry Leader by WineBusiness Monthly. Her Drinks Insider podcast won the 67 Pall Mall Global Wine Communicator Award for Audio.