In April, Breakthru Beverage Group announced an expansion of its Canadian business, establishing a new sales and marketing division. The new division will allow suppliers to partner with Breakthru as a broker to serve their needs across the Canadian provinces. The company has had a Canadian presence since it...
CK Mondavi recently unveiled a redesigned label and packaging for its wine portfolio. The brand has officially been renamed "CK Mondavi and Family" in a nod to four generations of family winemaking. The redesign also includes a modern label that showcases the hand-crafted nature of the wine, as well...
Warehousing is a critical component of beverage alcohol wholesaling, and there’s a host of unique challenges when warehousing beverage products.
To better understand these challenges, and how warehouses are improving their systems with efficiencies and new technologies, I recently spoke with Patrick Kerns, General Manager of retail for Exel, a...
Lila Wines was introduced by Latitude Beverage Company last spring, quickly gaining national distribution. Over the past year, the company made major changes to the brand to improve overall quality, including moving production and canning to Europe within close proximity to its source wineries.
The company also just launched Lila...
Even consumers who are conscious about how their purchasing decisions impact the environment are often lost when it comes to choosing eco-friendly wines. The differences among sustainable, organic and biodynamic wine classifications aren’t always clearly stated, or understood. But increased education (both of the trade and consumers) can help...
Stoli Vodka is launching Stoli Crushed, a line of two flavored vodkas made with real fruit juice – pineapple and ruby red grapefruit. At 30% ABV, the vodkas are made with Stoli’s gluten-free base, which launched last year, and blended with real fruit juices. I recently spoke to Stoli’s...
While beverage wholesalers aren’t known for their technical prowess as an industry, there are a number of technology platforms available to distributors who want better insights into their business. Nashville-based Lipman Brothers is the largest wine and spirits wholesaler in Tennessee, which recently began allowing wine sales in grocery...
In a male-dominated industry, Tito's VP of Brand Marketing Nicole Portwood has made a name for herself. She's worked in spirits marketing for more than 15 years, on brands like Jack Daniel's, Grey Goose and Bombay Sapphire before coming to Fifth Generation in Austin, Texas. I recently spoke to...
With hundreds of new product introductions hitting the market each year, how can members of the trade make sense of which products to stock, which to drop and which to watch? This year’s list of 136 Growth Brands in wine and spirits are a good place to start (wine...
Editor's Note: The Growth Brands Awards are presented by the Beverage Information & Insights Group, a research firm owned by the same parent company as Beverage Wholesaler. This story originally ran in our sister publication, Beverage Dynamics. The Growth brands have been presented for more than 20 years to...