Few people know the bulk wine market better than Glenn Proctor. Glenn is a partner at Ciatti, a global bulk wine brokerage firm. We bumped into Glenn at the Unified Wine Symposium in Sacramento and convinced him to sit down for an impromptu podcast recording on how the bulk wine market is affecting both growers and wineries – and how some companies are taking advantage of the current low-cost environment to innovate, build relationships, and create new brands.

With help from the wine industry legend, Dr. Mike Veseth, we debate how the US wine industry can overcome recent challenges and return to growth. Mike is an author, academic, lecturer, and editor of the popular blog, The Wine Economist. 

This is the first of three episodes we recorded on-site at the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium and features Rabobank’s Global Strategist Stephen Rannekleiv and Analyst Bourcard Nesin

Wayne Duan and Ben Galvin from Constellation Brands return for the second episode in our two-part series on e-commerce. This time around, we look at the future of e-commerce in the alcohol industry – and how brands can take an active role in shaping what the industry will look like in 2025.

Wayne Duan and Ben Galvin help lead Constellation Brand’s digital strategy. In this episode – the first in a two-part series – Wayne and Ben share their thoughts as we breakdown the biggest trends in alcohol e-commerce and discuss the most urgent challenges the alcohol industry faces in the digital world.

Rabobank’s team of economists says there is an 80% chance of a recession in 2020. For our last episode of 2019, we sat down with our Senior Market Strategist, Christian Lawrence, to talk about the economic outlook for 2020. Then we discuss what a downturn could mean for consumer behavior, investor behavior, and, ultimately, food & beverage companies. 

Recorded: December 10, 2019

This episode features Senior Market Strategist Christian Lawrence, Global Beverage Strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, Senior Analyst Jim Watson, and Analyst Bourcard Nesin.

It’s been a big year for M&A in the beverage alcohol industry. In this episode, we review the most important deals of 2019: the big, the small, and the unexpected. From the surge of craft-beer and spirits acquisitions to blockbuster, billion-dollar deals, we tell you what happened, how it affects your business, and what it means for the future of the industry. Please note: this episode was recorded on Nov. 22nd 2019.

This episode features Rabobank’s global beverage strategist Stephen Rannekleiv, senior analyst Jim Watson, and analyst Bourcard Nesin, the millennial responsible for killing everything that was fun in the 1980s. 

Brooklyn Brewery has just launched their first non-alcoholic beer in the US, called Special Effects, after its resounding success in Europe. Non-alc beer may often be seen as an alternative to traditional beer, but our guest, Brooklyn CEO Eric Ottaway, insists that Special Effects offers incremental sales, bringing “more places, more occasions, and more people” into the beer category. In the US, non-alc beer sales are tiny but growing quickly, and despite large brewers reportedly prioritizing the category, we’ve seen very little innovation in non-alc beer. In this episode, Eric sits down with the RaboResearch team to discuss his company’s surprising push into and refreshing approach to the non-alc category and whether non-alc beer can gain a meaningful foothold with US consumers.

Hard seltzer brands like White Claw and Truly have stormed onto the scene, injecting growth, excitement, and more than a little anxiety into the struggling US beer industry. Light and bubbly, and imminently 'sessionable,' hard seltzer has become a category unto itself. Its viral popularity offers big brewers an opportunity to draw female consumers away from the wine & spirits category – something they’ve struggled to achieve for decades. But, in order to do so, they face an unfamiliar challenge: Can they capture market share from 'big seltzer?'

All around the world, the growth of out-of-home coffee consumption has attracted a wave of investment from coffee players and non-coffee players alike. Coffee companies are facing new competition from all sides. Startups like Luckin’ are using tech and delivery to take new business models from zero to V60 in no time flat. Quick-service restaurants, supermarkets, and convenience stores are using coffee to attract new consumers throughout the day – often at the expense of established players. Since there is no single-origin for the changes in the out-of-home coffee world, we pour over the new businesses, strategies, and technologies that define the future of the industry.

This international episode of the podcast features Rabobank’s global strategist Stephen Rannekleiv and senior analyst Sudip Sinha calling in from Manila, Phillipines, and senior analyst Jim Watson and analyst Bourcard Nesin calling in from New York City.

Kombrewcha, a hard kombucha company, joined the ZX Ventures portfolio in 2016. Kombucha is now a billion-dollar global industry. And while the famously tart, probiotic beverage has naturally occurring alcohol, Kombrewcha (4.4% ABV) was the first brand to take things one step further and introduce hard kombucha to the alcohol space. In this episode, Liz Tomic from ZX Ventures makes an encore performance alongside Kombrewcha CEO, Garret Bredenkamp, to explain how they work together to perfect their product, scale their business, and maintain the entrepreneurial spirit along the way.

This episode also features Liquid Assets mainstays Jim Watson and Bourcard Nesin.