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.

Lulie Halstead is on sabbatical. While she's away, she's chosen her favourite episodes from Drinks Insider to feature on A Question of Drinks and she explains why she's so impressed by them.

Her first pick is an interview with Marian Leitner-Waldman, founder of Archer Roose canned wines, which she says is a masterclass of brand building.

Entrepreneur and co-founder Marian Leitner-Waldman has single handedly overcome all the problems facing the wine industry. Archer Roose has a thriving audience of young consumers, who can’t get enough of high-quality wine in cans and bagnums, which appear in more than 6,000 outlets.

The reason that sales are up 35% year-on-year? The brand is built on a combination of high-quality wine, total transparency, and plenty of data.

In this episode, Marian talks about:

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.

Are people leaving alcohol behind, or are they simply drinking less and less often?

In this episode of A Question of Drinks, Felicity Carter and Lulie Halstead dig into the data behind moderation. Drawing on IWSR, Gallup, Barclays, WHO and FT reporting, they unpack three forces reshaping consumption:

First, health and identity. Moderation is normalising. Abstinence peaks are flattening. Smartwatches, sleep data and calorie awareness are influencing behaviour — but not driving mass teetotalism.

Second, economics. Younger consumers are not morally superior — they are financially constrained. Alcohol remains a discretionary spend. Fewer nights out and tighter wallets are doing much of the heavy lifting behind declining volumes.

Third, chemistry. GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic may suppress desire itself, potentially altering drinking behaviour at a biological level. Cannabis, by contrast, appears largely additive rather than a substitute.

The conclusion? People have not stopped drinking. They are recalibrating.

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.

In this year-end episode, Felicity Carter and Lulie Halstead dissect the business stories that defined drinks in 205. From panic-driven mega-acquisitions and brutal brand sell-offs to the collapse of premiumisation as a default growth strategy, they trace how falling volumes, exhausted consumers, and shifting cultural norms forced the global alcohol industry into survival mode. If it earned enough per litre, it stayed. If it didn’t, it was dumped — sometimes at speed.

The conversation ranges across spirits, beer, wine, and no-and-low, covering Diageo’s boardroom bloodbath, tequila’s overstretched boom, wine’s consolidation into mega-entities, and why celebrities are now backing zero-alcohol brands instead of party drinks. Along the way, Felicity and Lulie unpack the rise of celebrity “authenticity,” Michelin’s controversial move into winery ratings, Liquid Death’s spectacular UK misfire, and what you need to do to get a drink in some parts of India.

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.

Does it matter where your favourite drink comes from or who makes it?

Using the tangled origin story of the Tequila Sunrise, the secretive monks behind Chartreuse, and the very manufactured “Irishness” of Baileys, Lulie and Felicity ask whether the truth still matters… or whether it’s all about who has the best story. 

Listener Adele from Australia sets the core question: younger drinkers say they want authenticity, but it’s the big, well-distributed brands that keep growing. Felicity and Lulie pull apart what “authentic” actually means for regulators, for brand owners, and for Gen Z with limited budgets and offer a simple framework: heritage, origin, and founder or personality

There are frameworks, fierce debates and a lot of discussion of the merits of Baileys. Plus, your personal tour of Lulie’s Christmas tree. It’s an episode that will challenge what you believe about stories, status, and what’s really in your glass.

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.

Wine is the original luxury product, so why are there so few memorable wine brands?

In this episode, Felicity and Lulie dig into wine’s historic allergy to the word “brand” – even as wineries are being told their life’s work isn’t worth what they thought, because nobody remembers their labels. Drawing on IWSR data, they look at how few wine brands normal drinkers can actually recall, why most wineries sit at the bottom of the brand pyramid, and what Ehrenberg-Bass really means when it says brands grow through availability, not vague “loyalty”. Along the way, they pit wine against gin and beer, unpack why Champagne wins the memory game, and explain why fine wine secretly uses every trick in the marketer’s book while pretending it’s all just terroir and tradition.

From there they rewind the clock: Bordeaux négociants, aristocrats who thought money was vulgar, the rise of spirits brands like Gordon’s and Hennessy, the invention of glass bottles, appellations as proto-brands, and how varietal labelling became the default. It explains why wine itself is memorable, but individual wines are not.

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.

Is wine innovative or stuck in the past? When listener Patrick asks why nothing seems to have changed in wine over 30 years, Lulie and Felicity turn this seemingly simple question into a full-blown courtroom drama. Lulie takes the prosecution, arguing that slapping fruit flavors into wine and calling it "innovation" is just New Product Development dressed up in fancy LinkedIn copy. Felicity fights back, insisting wine is quietly revolutionary, from screw cap technology to temperature-controlled logistics, but hides its innovations behind a veil of tradition. Spoiler: they both have receipts, and neither backs down easily.

From Pierre Bourdieu's theories on symbolic capital to the surprising Australian origin story of the Limoncello spritz, this episode unpacks why wine pretends nothing ever changes even as everything does. Along the way, discover why can liners might be the most underrated innovation in drinks, why invented traditions matter more than you think, and what Lulie's Gen Z goddaughters really think about canned wine. Plus: heated debates about Yellow Tail, New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, and whether innovation counts if nobody buys it. Bring your own wig and gavel, because this one gets lively.

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 put out a plea on social media — “Tell us what’s in your drinks cabinet” — and discovered a whole world of crimes against taste. 

Sweet, creamy liqueurs dominated the offerings (Baileys, Advocat, and even a banana liqueur with holiday PTSD), alongside objects of pride like single malt and bourbon that get opened but never finished. There was plenty of Sherry, Muscat and half-dead whites lurking in the name of “cooking” while the global curios proved that even the most discerning consumer can get suckered by duty free. 

Researcher Lulie revealed the five drivers of the drinks cabinets, from the endowment effect and sunk-cost fallacy to identity signalling, magical thinking about future selves and sacralisation. Along the way we got into the Baileys origin story, why Advocat is basically alcoholic custard with 140g sugar/litre, and a simple cocktail framework that rescues strays without requiring a degree in bartending. It’s confession, anthropology, and behavioural science in one tidy purge.

You’ll never look at crème de menthe the same way again.

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.