Innholdsfortegnelse for April 1-15, 2017 i Shanken's Impact Newsletter

CAPTAIN MORGAN IS BEING EXTENDED WITH A NEW SHOT-FRIENDLY, COCO- nut-flavored offering called LocoNut. The newcomer is billed as a summer-inspired chilled shot option that blends Caribbean rum and spices with natural flavors in-cluding real coconut liqueur. LocoNut, which is 40-proof and retails at about $15 a 750-ml., is packaged in a round-shaped bottle reminiscent of a coconut. The packaging also boasts a “scratch-and-sniff” aspect: when scratched, it gives off a sweet coconut aroma. Diageo says the launch of LocoNut stemmed from positive response to another shot-focused Captain Morgan extension, Cannon Blast, which is blend of rum, Caribbean citrus and chipotle and jalepeño pepper and has a cannonball-shaped bottle that glows in black light. Last fall, the company also featured a limited Jack-O’Blast pumpkin spiced offering with similar packaging. Overall,…

PROXIMO SPIRITS IS SHAKING UP ITS U.S. DISTRIBUTOR PROFILE, LINKING WITH Republic National Distributing Co. (RNDC) in six markets where it has previ-ously been partnered with Breakthru Beverage. The markets include Florida, Col-orado, Maryland, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Additionally, Proximo will transition its business in Pennsylvania and Delaware to Southern Glazer’s from Breakthru. For RNDC, the deal marks a key pickup, bringing the Jose Cuervo family of brands into its fold in the affected states, along with Bushmills Irish whiskey, The Kraken rum, Boodles gin, Stranahan’s and Tin Cup American whiskies and Three Olives vodka, among others.…

INDUSTRY VETERAN JOHN Esposito has joined craft producer Real McCoy Spirits as chairman. Es-posito brings 40 years of experience in the drinks business to Real McCoy, which markets 3-, 5- and 12-year aged rums under its namesake brand and distributes to 12 states. Most recently, Esposito was CEO of Utah’s High West Distillery, which was recently acquired by Con-stellation Brands. He has also served as president, Stoli Group USA; CEO, Bacardi North America; and president and CEO of Moët Hennessy USA dur-ing his illustrious career. • Breakthru Beverage Group has announced changes in its United Divi-sion, dedicated to Diageo and Moët Hennessy. Matt Wind has been named vice president, business devel-opment for United Divi-sion Diageo. Wind was previously senior vice pres-ident, sales and marketing, at Breakthru Illinois. Meanwhile, Cristian Yanez,…

IT’S BEEN A DYNAMIC PERIOD ACROSS THE DRINKS industry’s distributor tier, with the creation of Southern Glazer’s and Breakthru Beverage shifting the wholesale consolidation trend into high gear. Both Southern Glazer’s and Breakthru have largely completed their integrations and are now focused on leveraging their increased scale to deliver added value to their existing suppliers—and draw new partners to their respective networks. But while these two behemoths look to increase their share of the national wholesale market, our exclusive ranking of the top U.S. spirits and wine wholesalers shows that fellow heavy-weights like RNDC and Young’s are also in growth mode. All of the above are pro-jecting solid progress for 2017. Meanwhile, change is afoot at one of the world’s biggest spirits suppliers. Bacardi Ltd. has unveiled a succession plan…

U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE ALLYNE ROSS has dismissed Empire Merchants’ law-suit against fellow wholesaler Breakthru Beverage. The lawsuit, which sent shockwaves through the drinks indus-try, alleged that Breakthru subsidiary Reliable Churchill conspired with re-tailers to illegally ship alcohol from Maryland to New York, depriving Em-pire of sales and harming its business in the process. Empire claimed it might have lost as much as $100 million due to the alleged smuggling scheme. According to Empire’s complaint, Maryland retailers aligned with Reliable Churchill illicitly shipped liquor to New York retailers (where liquor taxes are some five times as high as Mary-land’s) to sell in New York. The com-plaint states that New York retailers would purchase the liquor in large cash sums—as much as $20,000 at a time—and that the Maryland retailers would then…

• BUSHMILLS IRISH WHISKEY HAS extended with Bushmills Red Bush. A blend of triple-distilled Irish single malt and Irish grain whiskey, Red Bush is matured in first-fill Bourbon casks. The 40%-abv offering, retail priced at around $23 a 750-ml., joins the brand’s Original, Black Bush, Sin-gle Malt 10-year-old, Single Malt 16-year-old and Single Malt 21-year-old expressions. Casa Cuervo ac-quired Bushmills from Diageo in late 2014. According to Impact Data-bank, Bushmills sells more than 200,000 cases in the U.S. market. • BARON PHILIPPE DE ROTHSCHILD SA has revamped its Mouton Cadet brand, with changes including a “rounder, smoother” wine style and a new look. Bearing a modernized logo and color-coded capsules across its Red, White, Rosé and Sauvignon Blanc bottlings, the new Mouton Ca-det is debuting with the 2015 vin-tage, whose…

BACARDI LTD. HAS APPOINTED A 20-year company veteran, Mahesh Mad-havan, as its new CEO. Madhavan, who was most recently Ba-cardi’s regional president of Asia, Middle East and Af-rica, will take over from cur-rent CEO Mike Dolan on April 1, 2018. In the interim, the 54-year-old Madhavan will transition to a new role as Bacardi’s regional president of Europe, effective imme-diately. He’ll be based in Ge-neva until becoming CEO, and then move to Bacardi corporate headquarters in Bermuda. During his two decades at Bacardi, Madhavan has served as managing di-rector of markets including India, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as the regions of South Asia and South-east Asia. In addition to his current regional role, he’s also been a member of Bacardi’s Global Leadership Team since 2014. “Our board of…

AFTER A DIFFICULT PERIOD IN WHICH it’s been under siege from new competi-tors in its core on-premise shot occa-sion, Jägermeister is going back on the offensive this spring with a new $15 million above-the-line campaign and packaging update aimed at reclaiming its former position as the top liqueur brand in the U.S. market. In 2015, Germany’s Mast–Jägermeis-ter SE acquired longtime U.S. importer Sidney Frank Importing Co., which had built the brand into an on-premise juggernaut, reaching a high of nearly 2.9 million cases in 2008. Since then, Jägermeister has seen its U.S. volume erode, slipping 4.6% to 1.7 million cases in 2016, according to Impact Da-tabank. Now led by veteran drinks ex-ecutive Jeff Popkin as CEO, Sidney Frank Importing has been renamed Mast–Jägermeister U.S. On May 1, the brand will…

DONALD J. “BUDDY” ROMANO, who with his late brother Michael helped build Illinois-based Romano Bros. into a top wine and spirits wholesaler, has died at the age of 88. Buddy served in the U.S. military and subsequently played football at Notre Dame before joining the family busi-ness. Romano Bros. eventually be-came one of the top distributors na-tionwide for E.&J. Gallo. When the company was acquired by Southern Wine & Spirits (now Southern Glaz-er’s) in 2002, it had annual revenues of $500 million.…