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Published by Felicity Carter and Lulie Halstead
Why do we drink what we do? Is it just the taste — or are there other drivers behind what's on the shelf? Drinks data expert Lulie Halstead joins writer and editor Felicity Carter to explore the economic, technological and social turning points that determine what's in the glass.
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Why do cool drinks feel so refreshing? And how did coldness become an essential selling point for drinks? The link between chilled drinks and refreshment is so common today that it feels natural — but it took 2,000 years of innovation to get there. In this entertaining, Freakonomics-style episode, hosts Felicity and Lulie trace how drinks went from being served at room temperature, to being so cold it’s hard to distinguish the flavours. Their story takes in snow-cooled water, a Bostonian entrepreneur who built a global trade empire from pond ice, and an Australian printer who noticed that typeface became cooler after he cleaned it. Along the way they race how Champagne ended up in silver ice buckets and how Coca-Cola’s decision to sell branded $12 coolers to store owners changed the world of drinks forever — and what this means for refreshment in a heating world. 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. Chapters (00:00:04) - A Question of Drinks (00:00:30) - A Question of Drinks (00:01:53) - Cold Drinks (00:03:36) - Why Does a Cold Drink Feel Remarkably Good? (00:06:39) - Wine transport in the 1980s (00:07:49) - Cold Drinks (00:10:05) - Seneca on Cold Drinks (00:14:58) - Cold Drinks in the Habsburg Empire (00:15:58) - The Ice King (00:20:32) - Refrigeration (00:25:34) - How did pasteurization intersect with refrigeration? (00:26:02) - Wine and the changing tastes (00:27:25) - Ranting in the World of Wine... (00:28:12) - Chilled Off: The Science of Wine (00:28:48) - Coca Cola: Cold Drinks (00:34:50) - What is the appeal of Extra Cold? (00:37:28) - Temperature and refreshment (00:41:46) - What do we lose with the ritual in drinking wine? (00:43:28) - A Question of Drinks
How did the spritz take over every pub, bar and supermarket this summer? Is it a fad — or is it the result of clever marketing? While Aperol dates back to 1919, the seeds of its success were planted in 2003, when Campari bought the brand and introduced the aperitivo moment to Germany. But, luckily for them, their bright orange drink coincided with the expanding of Prosecco production. While the timing couldn’t have been more serendipitous, the Aperol spritz became a victim of its own success. Campari hadn’t just built a brand — they’re introduced a whole new drinking occasion to the market, and competitors soon moved in. Today, drinkers can choose between the Aperol spritz, the Hugo, the limoncello spritz, and even the tequila spritz. But how that happened is a highly entertaining story, involving a millionaire enclave in Germany, a bored bar tender in northern Italy, and an Australian winemaker who had a run in with the Australian Taxation Office. 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. Chapters (00:00:04) - A Question of Drinks (00:00:30) - A Question of Drinks (00:02:51) - The Spritz (00:05:05) - Search for Hugo Spritz Up 694% in a Week (00:07:04) - M&S Spritz (00:08:16) - The Rise of the Spritz (00:09:32) - Spritz (00:10:30) - Campari's Aperol and the Prosecco Sp (00:15:43) - The Hugo Spritz (00:17:27) - Saint Germain and the elderflower liqueur (00:18:47) - Aperol Spritz: The (00:24:25) - The Sparklit (00:25:07) - Spritz and the future of alcohol (00:26:36) - Campari's Aperol Spritz: Moderation and Low (00:30:40) - Aperol's 'panic' over packaging (00:34:36) - What Did You Do During Lockdown? (00:35:34) - Family themed nights during the pandemic (00:36:40) - The Australian Tax Office (00:41:07) - Campari vs Bacardi: The Spritz (00:46:43) - Aperol Spritz (00:51:30) - How Germans make their spritz (00:52:36) - The Limoncello Spritz (00:57:09) - Gentian Rudolph on Quality and Drinking (00:59:07) - Aperol and Campari: The (01:00:51) - What occasion should we own as a podcast? (01:01:30) - A Question of Drinks
Felicity has just returned from a conference in Dublin devoted to drinking studies, an academic field that examines alcohol's role in history and culture from angles the wine world rarely considers. This prompts Lulie to reveal the ordeal she suffered at a recent tasting, where the audience had to wait for 42 agonising minutes before tasting a single wine. That's the signal for Lulie and Felicity to start arguing about whether wine is boring. Does one bad presenter indict a whole industry? Is reverence for fine wine earned or performed? And who is the star of a wine tasting — the wine or the consumer? Along the way they cover the Robert Hodgson wine judging experiment, Orley Ashenfelter's rainfall-based vintage predictions and the fury it once provoked, the 1976 Judgment of Paris and what it did and didn't prove about prestige, and a run of case studies from La Vieille Ferme's accidental rebrand as "chicken wine" to Archer Roos and emotion-first advertising. Who is right in the end? And what's your own opinion? There's a lot to unpack. 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. Chapters (00:00:04) - A Question of Drinks (00:00:30) - A Question of Drinks (00:02:12) - How to make wine more interesting (00:03:25) - The 42 Minute Winemaker (00:04:11) - The joy of a wine tasting (00:06:47) - The Bad Presentation (00:10:38) - Richard Rantler on (00:13:16) - The Future of Wine Tasting (00:16:39) - The Problem with Presentations (00:17:34) - Wine as a condiment (00:19:33) - Wine as an Identity (00:22:35) - The New World of Wine (00:23:38) - Luxury and the Veblen Effect (00:26:33) - The Judgment of Paris (00:27:08) - The Judgment of Paris (00:32:38) - The Importance of Respect for Wine (00:35:55) - Do Cheesecake Judges Are Frauds? (00:38:30) - Don't Trust the Experts in Wine (00:42:24) - Bringing more joy, happiness into wine (00:42:53) - The French wine called Chicken Wine (00:45:04) - Vineland (00:46:48) - The Presentation Problem (00:48:39) - Wine Experts and the Question of Treasured Objects (00:53:26) - The role of humor in wine (00:55:07) - Advertising effectiveness and the wine (00:56:33) - Archer Ruse Canned Wine Promo (00:57:09) - Wine Advertising (00:59:05) - How to separate trade communication from consumer communication (01:00:47) - "Build the Wine Round" (01:01:47) - Are We Now Revealing That You're Not Normal? (01:03:08) - Wine Presentations: Better Presentations (01:05:04) - Selling Your Own Wine (01:06:17) - Questions of Drinks
Treasury Wine Estates, one of the world’s biggest wine companies, has announced it is about to cut more than 40 brands from its portfolio, including names with deep roots in history, like Seppelts. Instead, it will concentrate on 10 ‘regional heroes’, and three main brands: Penfolds, DAOU and Matua. In this latest episode, Lulie and Felicity look at what this decision means. Lulie argues the move is overdue and rational, because consumers buy relevance, not heritage, and a company carrying 40 underperforming brands is carrying 40 liabilities it doesn't need. Felicity pushes back, arguing that some of this is cultural vandalism — since wine is more than a branded good. It’s also cultural heritage. It raises a fundamental question: should companies optimise purely for consumers, or do they have a responsibility to history, even when it doesn’t produce commercial results? Lulie and Felicity both have strong opinions and sparks fly as they argue over whether wine is just a business like any other, or an institution with a debt to the past. 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. Chapters (00:00:04) - A Question of Drinks (00:00:30) - A Question of Drinks (00:01:43) - Addice to Wine (00:02:55) - Treasury Wine Estates: The future of Australian wine (00:07:15) - Australia's Biggest Wine Company to Shut Down 10 Brands (00:08:14) - In the Elevator With Wine (00:10:08) - Fosters vs Treasury: The Decisions Made (00:12:26) - Treasury's plan to reduce their wine portfolio by 30 (00:14:37) - Wine and the future (00:16:12) - Treasury's Down Rose Buying (00:17:52) - Robert Foy Criticizes Treasury's Dow Wines Acquisition (00:21:35) - Brexit and the Brand portfolio (00:22:07) - The Glenrothes portfolio review (00:23:51) - Yellow Glen (00:26:20) - Sparkling Red (00:28:00) - Sepulch (00:30:31) - Wolf Blast (00:32:27) - Wolf Blast (00:33:58) - The Wolf Blouse (00:34:42) - The Secret to Marketing Your Wine (00:35:06) - How to Build a Successful Wine Brand (00:35:49) - The story of Wolf Blasse (00:36:59) - Wolf Blast (00:38:23) - Chasing Big Reds in a (00:39:58) - Wolf Blouse Reservation (00:42:23) - Blue Nun (00:45:41) - As for the future of brands, (00:46:58) - Old Fashioned vs Retro: What's The Difference? (00:48:58) - Wolf Blasse: Going Back to the Archive (00:52:05) - Does History Matter in Australian Wine? (00:54:03) - The role of corporations in wine (00:56:02) - 19 crimes (00:56:24) - 19 Crimes Wine For Men (00:59:57) - 19 Crimes: The Wine for Young Men (01:01:25) - Why didn't Tullist Make 19 Crimes?
Global wine consumption fell another 2.7% in 2025 —part of a cumulative 14% drop since 2018. Across the top 20 markets, wine volumes are down more than 20% since 2019. That’s one in five bottles, gone. But Lulie presents the case for why wine remains relevant, from Gen Z participation rates to the cyclical nature of drinks categories, and why she’s genuinely optimistic about the case for wine. And she brings receipts. Gin had a moral panic, a long exile, and a renaissance. RTDs went from wine coolers to alcopops to canned cocktails. Categories don't die — they find new occasions, new formats, and new generations who need something their parents didn't drink. The question for wine isn't whether it has a future. It's whether enough of the industry will ask the right questions before the consolidation wave hits. Lulie and Felicity have got wine in the fridge, and they’re ready to debate. 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. Chapters (00:00:04) - A Question of Drinks (00:00:30) - A Question of Drinks (00:01:17) - Has Wine Become Irrelevant? (00:02:23) - A Question of Drinks (00:02:52) - Mid-range wine (00:03:36) - Has the Winemaker Market become irrelevant? (00:04:07) - A Taste of Wine's History (00:05:51) - The decline in wine sales (00:07:35) - Wine volumes are down 18% (00:09:20) - Wine volumes decline 18% in 2019 (00:12:55) - Wine and the traditional place (00:15:13) - Wine and eating at home (00:16:22) - Wine and the social occasions (00:17:14) - Cheap Wine: The Complexity of Wine (00:19:27) - Wine prices and knowledge of wine (00:22:34) - Heuristics in wine (00:24:36) - Is Wine Being Undermined? (00:27:31) - Wine Question Time: Too Much Wine in the World (00:32:19) - Wine price stability and the future (00:34:38) - Gin's'revival' (00:40:34) - Are Gen Z Drinking More? (00:43:00) - Wine trends 2020: Younger drinkers (00:47:43) - Gen Z and the category (00:48:01) - Will Wine Continue to Decline? (00:51:16) - The future of wine (00:54:04) - Wine: Has it Become Stupid? (00:58:09) - The New Wine of the Future (01:03:01) - A Question of Drinks
Global wine consumption recently hit its lowest point since 1961, the same year most people were filling jerry cans with wine from the local cooperative and serving it for dinner. In this episode, Felicity takes the first half of a two-part debate with Lulie Halstead, making the case that wine's extraordinary 50-year mass-market expansion was a demographic accident. The baby boomers brought prosperity, leisure, food culture and travel — and wine rose with their prosperity. Now the boomers are stepping back, and the impact on the world of wine is enormous. But decline wasn’t inevitable. The success of Prosecco, rosé, and sparkling were sending loud signals that were being ignored. Lulie pushes back throughout with data, marketing logic and genuine optimism — and in a fortnight she gets her turn to make the commercial case for wine's future. Spoiler: she's got a different point of view. 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. Chapters (00:00:04) - A Question of Drinks (00:00:30) - A Question of Drinks, 1961 (00:01:04) - World's wine consumption hits lowest level since 1961 (00:02:05) - Is Wine Becoming Irrelevant? (00:04:05) - Will Wine Decline From 1961? (00:09:16) - Why Did Wine Soar? (00:12:24) - Robert Parker and the prestige of wine (00:16:46) - Wine and the food culture (00:20:44) - The Law of the Sigmoid Curve (00:24:26) - The decline of prestige in wine (00:26:45) - Wine's 'Peak' Moment (00:27:40) - The Good Wine of Yellowtail (00:28:09) - The Chinese wine crisis (00:31:54) - Wine's demographic peak, and the future (00:33:04) - Wine Review: The Marketing to Women Trend (00:36:38) - Inventing Sparkling Wine and Rosé (00:38:59) - Sparkling Wine (00:44:46) - Multiple occasions for wine drinking (00:46:41) - Women and the Aperitivo (00:47:26) - Wine's relationship with food (00:51:28) - The Middle Market and Wine (00:52:29) - The Wine Trade's Wrong Questions (00:53:21) - Winemaking's Place in Tourism (00:54:03) - Wine Prospects 2022 (00:59:34) - Charlie and Felicity (01:00:23) - A Question of Drinks
Lulie and Felicity touched a nerve with their recent debate on storytelling — so they decided to go one step further. Lulie brought along a full-page Sunday Times ad for the Sunday Times Wine Club with all the ingredients of good storytelling — and then they proceeded to tear it apart. They discussed why a lyrical opening about schist and shale is the wrong beginning for a newspaper ad, what WIIFM means, and what a properly structured version of this campaign would look like if someone had put the stakes at the front where they belong. Next up, Lulie analyses the run of recent RTD acquisitions, including the Finnish Long Drink ($325 million to Mark Anthony Brands), BuzzBalls (to Sazerac), Beatbox (to AB InBev), and Monaco Cocktails (to Molson Coors). The strategic implications are that the biggest players in the drinks industry have largely stopped trying to build new brands from scratch and are instead buying proven momentum. They’re buying products that have already solved the hard problems of format, occasion, and distribution. What does this say about big company innovation, and why do RTDs have a structural advantage in convenience-driven markets? And, finally, why are so many people buying drinks in Tetra Pak and sneaking them places? 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.
Felicity and Lulie tear apart the wine industry's most cherished marketing belief: that the thing that will drive more sales and loyalty is better storytelling. Felicity, a guest lecturer in brand storytelling at the University of Cape Town Business School, argues that real storytelling — structured around stakes, reversals, and the narrative templates that have powered human communication since the savanna — is genuinely powerful. Lulie the marketer, armed with Ehrenberg-Bass, the work of Daniel Kahneman and a well-preserved 30-year-old Patagonia fleece, argues that storytelling is not only not a good method for building brand awareness and driving choice, but that it’s actively counterproductive. Along the way there are detours through hunter-gatherer communities in the Philippines, the neurochemistry of charitable giving, Max Schubert making Penfolds Grange in secret while his employers told him to stop, and why the Widow Clicquot's entire legacy works as brand storytelling, even though almost nobody knows the mechanics of how it was assembled. 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.
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: How wine-loving investors failed to see the market opportunity sitting right in front of them. How Archer Roose launched without institutional funding. How and why she partners with celebrity Elizabeth Banks, even though she says that celebrity brands are dead. What beer distributors know about getting cans into hands, that wine distributors need to know. What the wine industry is getting wrong about young people. How Archer Roose opened up completely new markets, from cinemas to stadiums. The issues surrounding cans and how Archer Roose solved them. 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. Authenticity in drinks isn’t one thing but at least three: heritage (history and continuity), origin (place and terroir) and personality (founder or celebrity). Big brands keep winning not because they’re more “authentic” but because they have mental and physical availability plus coherent, consistent stories. Gen Z say they value authenticity, but the data shows they mostly buy convenience, price and coherence — “no bullshit” and repeatable quality beat obscure terroir. You can’t simply declare yourself “fine wine” or “authentic”: status is conferred by others, and when stories clash with facts (see Trump Vodka, Goose Island) drinks punish the gap. Authenticity is really about ethics and trust: fake heritage, fuzzy origin claims or outright fraud don’t just hurt one brand, they poison whole categories. 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.
Why is it red wine that accrues all the prestige? Is this because red wine is better — or for a historic reason? Felicity and Lulie dig into this mystery and discover that red wine’s prestige didn’t come from taste alone, but from logistics, trade, and the infrastructure that developed around red wines — merchants, classifications, and long-distance shipping. Red’s ability to age made it tradable and collectible, creating a system of status and expertise that white wines couldn’t match. We trace this history through Bordeaux’s port advantage, Burgundy’s influence, and Italy’s late pivot from bulk production. Riesling’s boom-and-bust cycle shows how fragile reputations can be when they depend on markets and laws rather than inherent quality. We also look at the technologies that are reshaping the hierarchy. Cool fermentation, stainless steel, sulfur management, screw caps, and cold-chain logistics have given whites new aging potential, just as consumer tastes shift toward freshness and chillable styles. Bourdieu’s sociology explains how prestige is socially constructed and maintained, while colour psychology reveals how strongly hues influence perception — even leading to the oddity of blue wine. Finally, we explore China’s move from gifting reds, where colour symbolised luck, to a growing preference for whites, alongside rosé’s celebrity-driven rise. The conversation ends by asking whether prestige still lies in the glass or mostly in the stories we tell around it. 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.
Natural wine has attracted vitriol, mean-spirited editorials and plenty of controversy. One of our listeners wrote in to ask why all the angst, and the hosts use it as a springboard to map the movement’s rise, backlash, and commercial co-option. Felicity sketches the history from Beaujolais and the “Gang of Four,” through the Parker era reaction, NOMA’s catalytic influence, and the media flashpoints that framed natural wine as an oppositional identity. Lulie and Felicity also define what natural wine is, how it’s produced and the role of additives like sulphur dioxide. And they also discuss consumer perceptions and how consumer psychology can harden snap judgements into prejudice. They then stress-test today’s narratives, from the beginning of the movement to today. Verdict: the movement reshaped wine culture and writing, but its successes and excesses now coexist. Better farming and more experimental styles on one side, muddled claims and unpredictable quality on the other. 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.
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