To finish out the year, Adam, Joanna, and Zach discuss some of the most important trends and happenings from 2022, including the continued growth of the spirits category, struggles for online DTC businesses, and lots more.
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Adam Teeter: From VinePair’s New York City headquarters, I’m Adam Teeter.
Joanna Sciarrino: I’m Joanna Sciarrino.
Zach Geballe: In Seattle, Washington, I’m Zach Geballe.
A: This is the “VinePair Podcast.” Happy holidays and– we’re not really near the new year yet, we’re still a week away, but happy holidays. Everyone had a good weekend. I can’t believe we’re doing it like a Monday pod– This is how much we love the people, that we’re-
J: We’re so committed.
A: –devoted to a pod during the week when no one really does anything. Maybe you’re not even listening to this one. We’ll see. Fly right under the radar.
Z: No, no, no, I have to interject here for a second because I think this is a misnomer. At least from all of my experience, there’s this belief in the media that no one consumes content between Christmas and New Year’s. I think that’s a total lie. I have nothing to do but consume content during this week.
J: That’s a good point.
Z: I don’t [crosstalk] to do, I don’t have anywhere to go. This idea that like, oh, just everyone tunes out, it’s like I desperately need something to do, to listen to, to read, especially at like 3 in the morning when I’m trying to get my daughter to go back to sleep. I beseech all of the millions of people listening to this who make other podcasts that I love, please don’t go dark for the entire second half of December. It fucking sucks.
J: That’s a good point.
Z: We’re here for you people listening to this at all hours of the day and night, who knows where you might be.
A: I know. I have a quick question for you guys before we get into what we drank. How do both of you feel about caviar? Are you caviar people?
J: Yes, 100% caviar person.
A: Me too. I’m looking for a caviar sponsor.
Z: God. All right.
J: You’re ridiculous.
A: If anyone is listening to this and might–
J: Russ & Daughters has a really nice caviar selection.
A: They do. Russ & Daughters, New York’s original. [laughs]
Z: I’m a big fan of fish eggs in all forms, it doesn’t have to be caviar. Give me some salmon roe, give me some–. My only thing is I have developed a seafood allergy maybe, and I’m unclear if that extends to fish eggs. Haven’t really gone down that road yet. I am theoretically a caviar enjoyer, but–
J: Only one way to find out.
Z: Caviar sponsor if you’d like to– I will absolve you of any blame if I go into anaphylactic shock from consuming your product. It’s not your fault.
A: You know what else I’m doing on New Year’s Eve? I bought these Myrkl pills. M-Y-R-K-L. We’ll see if they come in time. It’s like this all the rage in Great Britain for the last year and Europe, I guess developed in Sweden by some medical company that’s been researching for years. Apparently, it causes your–
J: Explain what these are, they sound weird when you say Myrkl pills, please.
A: I’m going to take them and just see what happens. I’m curious.
J: It’s for a hangover, everyone.
A: Yes.
Z: To make sure you have a really wild New Year’s Eve.
J: Yes. [laughs]
A: I’m going to give them to some other people, too.
Z: Okay, cool. Just dose your friends. Sounds great.
A: If they come in time. Basically, what it’s supposed to do is it’s basically probiotic, but they apparently say they’ve researched this for– They have a lot of medical studies they’ve done. I had one of my friends who’s a doctor read the study. He was like, “Yes, this is actually a legit peer-reviewed study.” The claim is that there’s these probiotic strains that they’ve cultured and created that you take this probiotic an hour before you start to drink and the bacteria from the probiotic processes the alcohol in your intestines before it can reach your liver. It keeps your blood alcohol level not high and also prevents your liver from releasing so many toxins from processing the alcohol. You apparently don’t get as inebriated but also don’t feel bad the next day. Now again, it’s within reason. You read their medical studies, it’s a difference of not feeling great after four or five drinks as opposed to like you’re not going to feel great after 10 regardless. I’m curious if just on a regular night you could take this and then have the normal dinner of like coursed wines or whatever and not feel as crummy the next day potentially. I’m curious. I will report back.
Z: Yes, please. If this works, Myrkl pill, sponsor the podcast, send me some. Nothing would make me feel like I’m living in the future more than the ability to take a pill to alleviate a hangover or in some way obviate it. Cars don’t fly yet, I don’t have a jetpack, but if I could take a pill and then drink like three glasses of wine and not feel like shit the next day, that would be close to the future for me.
A: There was this whole article recently in The Times where they were talking about how they anticipate that the hangover remedy market is going to grow in the next 5 to 6 years by like 14% to 20%. It all surrounds this idea of hacking your life. That movement continues to be very, very big in the world of health and tech. I have a bar that replaces this meal, I have a drink that replaces these things I’m supposed to get naturally, and I’ll take a pill so I can have alcohol but not have the effects, like all of this movement. There’s all this development and a Myrkl’s just like the first one to come out recently, but there’s going to be more and more of these kinds of products that hit the market, which is so interesting.
J: Yes. I think this is fascinating.
A: Yes.
Z: [crosstalk] Maybe a podcast at some point.
J: Yes.
A: Yes. What are you drinking, Zach? It’s like it is the holidays now. I’m sure you’ve been opening some good stuff. What’s going on?
Z: I have, yes. Not that Kaitlin and I are stingy with the bottles of wine or the good bottles throughout the year, but certainly the last little bit we’ve had good cause to open a few nice bottles. I think probably the highlight for me lately was a 2011 Pinot Noir from Beckham Estate down in the Willamette Valley, a producer I’ve really enjoyed for a long time. They’re in the Chehalem Mountains specifically, and it’s just like 2011 was such a great– It’s one of these funny things about wine where the perception of a vintage in a region at the time that the wine is first being released and first being reviewed by all the people who review it and how it evolves over time. Those things unfortunately are not always well aligned. In 2011, both in Oregon and Washington was a very cold vintage, and the wines at the time were generally not considered to be exceptional because of that. They tended to be less bold and fruit forward at release. They tend to be sometimes a little bit, let’s be polite and call them subtle. Some might call them thin, and yet the well-made ones, which there certainly were and many others that I’ve had, have aged really beautifully. You get a complexity and delicacy in Pinot Noir that is sometimes hard to find in America, frankly, but from these cooler vintages, not just in Oregon, but I think you see the same thing in some of the really cool sites on the Sonoma Coast in California, et cetera. It’s just beautiful wine. It was really delicious. I made some roast chicken and mushrooms and green beans and stuff to go with it the other night. Yes, that was the standout for me over the last little bit, but coming up, got my birthday, got some special bottles lined up, but you’ll have to stay tuned to the next Monday’s episode for that one. How about you, Joanna?
J: Yes. This past weekend we had some friends over. We made Vespers, not sure why Evan decided he wanted to do that. It was a drink that was new to them, so that was good. Then I made some White Ladies on Sunday night, which is a drink I haven’t made before, but I was inspired as always by the “Cocktail College” podcast. This was one that our Emily Arseneau did that episode with Tim. I made that, but what I really want to make is the Boulevardier with the spec from-
A: Yes, it sounds amazing.
J: -Amanda Gunderson, with the green Chartreuse added at the end. That sounds so good. Those are the drinks that I made this past weekend.
A: Nice.
J: What about you, Adam?
A: I’ve gotten a chance to have some tasty things. I went to this new restaurant in New York called The Wesley recently. The somm there actually has been a fan of VinePair for a very long time. He actually came to some of our early events when he was just a server, and then worked his way up and worked at Llama Inn and Llama San, and now is the beverage director. His name’s Gabriel, and he makes some really awesome cocktails and has a really cool wine list that features lots of local stuff. The goal is to really have New York and the surrounding East Coast area wines, as well as wines made by women and owned by women. The restaurant is a vegetable-forward restaurant, so it’s not vegetarian. There are meat dishes, but the idea is the vegetables take center stage. I had a really delicious Coquito actually, because he’s Puerto Rican, and so it was delicious.
J: I haven’t had a lot of Coquito in my life.
A: Honestly, it’s better than an eggnog. It just is. It was like the most delicious rum milkshake I’ve ever had.
J: That sounds good.
A: I had that and then he poured a really fun sparkling wine from the Hudson Valley, which I had never heard of before. Should have taken a picture of and didn’t, but that was fun and then just some other really cool cocktails. I think it’s going to be a spot that gets a lot more attention. It’s only been open for a few weeks, actually. I think it’ll get a lot more attention in the new year because it’s really cool. It’s in the West Village in a really great location, so they’ll be fine.
J: Nice.
A: Yes, but that’s probably the most memorable thing I drank this week.
Z: Excellent.
A: Anyways, all right, team, so year in review. First of all, my year was great, but thanks for asking guys. [laughs]
J: I think it was a good year.
A: It was a good year. I think it was a good year for VinePair, it was a good year in just I think the world of beverage. Some really fun stuff happened but wanted to take this time as we do every year to chat about some of the biggest things that happened in the world of beverage this year. I think the biggest thing that’s closest to what we’ve most recently talked about is obviously the– I don’t want to say the death of DTC, but the beginning– the wolves in sheep’s clothing revealing themselves. The idea that these were houses of cards, whatever analogies you want to use. That a lot of these more premium mediocre brands that raised lots of money and tons of press over the last five or six years – Though VinePair has always been dubious of all of them, just want to be clear about all that. We have the receipts. – started to fold this year, thinking about Wink, House, others. I think there’s going to be more of that in 2023.
J: Do you think that trend happened across categories or only in the drink space?
A: Look, there’s always direct-to-consumer brands going out of business in fashion, luggage, et cetera, but these were the faces of it. These were the ones that got all of the real press, whereas Warby Parker is still not still doing okay.
J: Casper.
A: Everlane’s doing fine ever, and Casper’s doing fine.
J: Away.
A: Away is doing just fine. There are others in their category that are not, but I think this was a problem in two facets. One was all of those categories, even if their numbers may not make a lot of sense, who knows, they’re still clearly able to raise capital. Both of them were really great examples of the fact that the businesses weren’t really sound in the first place, and then the ability to raise money evaporated because of that. The category didn’t seem that interesting anymore to investors.
J: I think it was just that they were slow to pivot in a way that the other categories didn’t necessarily need to.
A: I think it is very true actually for food startups, too. Investors want scale fast and they want big exits, and they want national fast. That’s really hard in alcohol. You have to get permits in every single state. You can’t really go into every single state. The shipping is very expensive, and in a lot of food as well. Especially when we’re talking about perishable foods, that’s also very difficult, and that’s why investors love software. That’s why investors love suitcases and new underwear startups, things that are light and easy to ship, they can go in flexible packaging that is dirt cheap to put in the mail. That’s why they don’t really love these areas. I think whenever trends like this happen in the broader startup world, alcohol always tries to adapt to them and say, “Oh, we can do it too.” I think we’re starting to see much more of an honest conversation in alcohol as a whole saying, we are very different. This is a very different industry and maybe we can’t do what all these other industries can do because of the legal barriers, because of the kind of product that it is, the weight, all of it, and this was true.
Z: One other piece of this is that every couple of years or so, you get this section of the– I guess it’s the trade that’s like, “People like drinking, people use the internet. What if we combine the internet and drinking?” The problem is it doesn’t work. It has not been made to work, no one has figured it out. For some of the same reasons, obviously, these DTC brands are heavily online whether they’re advertising platforms or just the way you interact with the company in the first place. I think the biggest problem that we’ve seen really is that, whether it’s because of the legal structure here in the U.S., I also think it’s because of the incredible lobbying power of the wholesale industry that really is at best, let’s say, agnostic to these efforts and largely antagonistic towards them. Sometimes fairly, sometimes not, you just can’t say like, “Oh, let’s develop an internet-based solution for wine, beer, spirits, et cetera, that mimics a solution in another category.” They’re not transferable. Adam, you mentioned food, and I think there’s some truth to that.
Any perishable good is going to really struggle. Look at Amazon. Even Amazon has not really gotten into this space, even though you think they would be natural, they’re enormous. They have the infrastructure, and they certainly aren’t dumb. They understand the incredible amount of money in the domestic beverage alcohol industry, but for a variety of reasons, they’re just not doing it because it’s hard. It doesn’t scale well. It’s legally cumbersome. Again, you have a lot of entrenched power structures that are very heavily invested in the current model. This was a year that not just the companies you mentioned, but a few others, bit the dust in the face of this reality and it’s weird to me to watch people not learn the lesson, which is, you can’t just combine internet plus wine or whatever, and here comes the profit machine. It just doesn’t work that way.
A: Yes.
J: I think also Covid gave people the false opportunity there, too.
Z: Maybe, yes.
J: Yes.
A: Yes. I think it did. I think because everyone thought that all this stuff would stick. I think what stuck was that people did embrace cocktails and are making more cocktails at home. I think what did stick is that people embraced premiumization and buying nicer wines for home, nicer spirits for home. What did stick was people’s interest in drinks and drinking. What didn’t stick was buying these things online. They went back to being like, “You know what? It’s actually better when I go to a shop that’s close to me and buy it on my way home or buy things when I need them,” than like, “I’m going to do a huge order.” I know that there are still wine shops I talk to that are doing a decent amount of online sales or delivery sales, but no one seems to be crushing it like they were during Covid because people don’t need to shop that way anymore. The added cost to shop that way for a lot of people is annoying. A lot of the wine shops and things like that have minimum order quantity, minimum order values, and shipping costs and things like that, which consumers don’t want to pay when they’re like, “Look, there’s a really great wine shop a mile away from my house that I can drive to or three blocks away that I can walk to. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m not going to pay all these added fees.”
J: Right. If I can’t get your product there, then, oh well.
A: Oh well. What else?
Z: Okay. I have one that I want to talk about because I think it’s related to this last piece of what we were just talking about, which is on-premise sales are still down. We talked about how in a lot of ways we’ve seen the– I don’t know if it’s a return to pre-Covid, exactly, but let’s say some of the structures and realities of the peak Covid era have largely abated, but this one has not. On-premise sales are up compared to, again, the deep Covid period for sure, but the balance where people are buying beverage alcohol has not gotten back to where it was pre-Covid. It leads me to wonder and maybe ask the– This is maybe something to think about for our next week’s episode, the 2023 predictions, but also to look at this year in review and wonder, like, why is it that you guys think that that element has not returned? Is it what you were getting at before, Adam, that people just have gotten sick of restaurant bar markups? Is it that they are savvier, they have the tools, the wherewithal and the ingredients to make cocktails at home, they’re just not as interested as a collective in that experience? It surprises me that here at this point, at the end of 2022, when so much of life has gone back to something like a pre-Covid normal, that has not really rebounded fully.
A: I think you answered your own question.
Z: I love it when I do that.
A: Yes. I think that 100 percent that’s what is happening.
J: Yes. I think it’s all of those things. I also think that it’s other things that we’ve discussed on the podcast in the past. Now everything seems more expensive. The drinks seem smaller somehow. Also, the service isn’t there because the hospitality industry is still struggling. So why are you going to spend all this money to go out to have these experiences that aren’t meeting your expectations of dining out from before?
A: I even think, like this week, in this holiday week, I’ve been out two or three nights this week, one to a very well-known restaurant that’s known for its service. The company is known for its service. Service was meh. You can tell because they’re stretched and they had two private rooms booked for private parties. The restaurant was packed. Again, the food was great as always, but you look at the buy-the-glass prices for wines especially, and they’re $25 and $30 a glass, which is insane. You look at the cocktails and they’re all around $20. Then another night I went out this week and I went to a cocktail bar where I have never seen prices as high. I think it’s probably the highest price I’ve ever seen in New York City. There was a highball on the menu for $40. They talk about their process and blah, blah, blah. It was insane. You’re seeing that price creep everywhere and I think consumers are like, “I can make a highball at home. I don’t care about your process.” Like, “I can make a pretty good Martini.” That’s what’s happening. I know a lot of people who’ve learned how to make Espresso Martinis at home if that’s their drink and have them before they go out and things like that. I get food costs are going up, but this somewhat impending recession, consumers are for the most part as we’ve seen all the research says, so pretty much doing just fine. There’s a few industries that are doing layoffs now. A lot of these business people believe it’s really because of wanting to shed weight than actually because there’s a recession. That’s this idea of what’s happening in tech is these.. because the companies are too bloated and they’re using this idea of an impending recession as an excuse, but most of the consumers are still doing just fine and have cash to spend. I think what everyone has to recognize is Covid made everyone smarter.
J: I think also more selective, and it’s something you’ve brought up before. Maybe you’re not going to go out to dinner three or four nights a week. You’re going to go out once. That’s why we’re not seeing the same growth on-premise.
A: I think a lot of it, Zach, is what you and I talked about a long time ago where it was like, if you’re going to come back from Covid– it was just two years ago. In our predictions episode, we said the cocktails have to be really unique and I’m still seeing a lot of them that aren’t. A lot of lists that are still like Boulevardier, Negroni, Martini, but $30. I’m just like, “No, man. I know how much that gin costs. I know how much Fords Gin is. You can’t charge me $30 for a Martini with Fords Gin when I know how much Fords Gin is. You can’t.”
J: Can I get into my next one then? I think this is a good segue of reviving the classics. I think we’ve seen that across the board, maybe they’re riffs or a bar’s take on a classic cocktail, but I think they very smartly have capitalized on this knowledge for drinkers or people who now know more about classic cocktails and are now more interested in them after the past couple of years to have those offerings specifically on their menus. I think that’s been really interesting to see and it factors into this other thing that we’re seeing with like, people can make them at home, why would they go out for them, but just more awareness around classic cocktails.
A: Very much you’ve seen that, and you’ve seen the trends of them get bigger and bigger. The Martini’s leading the way, but I’ve seen lots of Manhattans recently a lot more than I used to. I’ve seen Manhattan riffs, we see now the Godfather coming back. We see a lot of these very classic, classic cocktails.
J: The Cosmo.
A: It’s all coming back. The other thing that we’ve continued to see is premiumization. It happened this year. Again, it doesn’t really show signs of slowing down and so you’ve seen that play out in a bunch of different ways. Consumers when they are spending, spending on nicer. Beverage companies who are shedding their lower-end brands and trying to go higher-end. Beverage judges who are thinking about what that looks like on their lists. Again, like I’ve said, I’ve never seen higher-end wines on wine lists at just normal casual places than I have recently. Just this idea, again, when consumers go out, they are spending and I do believe they’re also spending when they’re at home. They’re opening nicer wines across the board, which is something that the industry said they’ve wanted to see happen for a long time now and it seems to really be happening.
Z: I want to piggyback on this really quick and talk about how one of the biggest indicators to me of how this change is evolving and how premiumization is in all facets of the drinks industry taking hold, is I think another trend that we saw this year, which is, in the seltzer category FMBs, so flavor malt beverages, losing ground to mostly vodka-based, but generally spirit-based seltzers and also to RTDs, which are hard to categorize and sometimes fit into one or both, but that people have basically said, “Wait a second, I like some of the structure of a hard seltzer, but I don’t really want to be drinking malt, flavor malt beverages.” I’ve honestly been a little surprised by this one. I assumed that things like high noon would be– not like they would fail, but just that they would not be as popular as they’ve become. It feels like we are moving towards a world where even if those things come with higher costs and to be clear, the spirits-based ones do, they have to legally because they’re taxed differently. They’re still really able to some extent to eat into the preexisting market share for malt-based hard seltzers. I think it’s coming from two directions. I think it’s coming from a little bit of what we’ve thought of as the core seltzer base that’s just maybe a little bit over FMBs. I think it’s also that seltzer has surprisingly found a robust market among, I would say, casual drinkers who are our age and older. I think some of them are okay with FMBs, but a lot of them are for right or wrong health reasons, looking at being more comfortable drinking a spirit-based seltzer than a malt-based one.
J: They also just taste better.
A: They do.
Z: There’s that, too.
A: I do think that’s where we’re moving is towards people who are thinking much more about spirit-based seltzers as the thing that they want to drink. Again, maybe this is going back into that’s what’s replacing that need to have the vodka sodas when you’re out is these spirit-based seltzers instead people are buying them more at the bar or than you’re buying nicer cocktails.
J: There’s a canned vodka water. I just wanted to mention that.
A: Wait, really?
Z: Oh, no. It’s not a canned diet vodka water, right?
J: No.
Z: We haven’t gotten there yet. That’ll be 2023.
A: I’m really upset about this. Why did you just tell me this right now?
J: It just occurred to me to mention it.
A: Let’s roll the calendar over to 2023, please. I think a lot of stuff that’s happened this year has been really fascinating to me. What’s continued to happen every year is the proclamation by publications that something is going to be a trend that never is. Dirty Shirley. It happens every year. Sherry’s going to finally come back. No, it’s not. I think that seems to continue to be something that there are publications that don’t have as much of a basis in drinks feel they’re experts on and because of whatever, they make these bold claims that just are never true. You can say that the Espresso Martini is going to be a huge drink because you can see everyone out drinking it. You can’t say a drink that no one has ever seen order or drink is going to be the next big drink. Stop it.
J: I think that’s because the danger here lies in social media, and I think TikTok is a huge part of this. I think you’re seeing things happen there and the speed that trends come and go on those platforms is much faster than what we see out actually out at bars. I think it’s places trying to hop on these trends that they see on social media and calling it a trend, but they’re actually just flashes in the pan and not actual trends.
A: You know what I think is really interesting actually, if you think about it this way? I don’t think, and I’ve delved into TikTok, tried to be active–
J: You love TikTok.
A: Yes. I almost never see Espresso Martinis
J: On TikTok?
A: Yes. I’ve seen lots of other cocktails. I see lots of other random weird cocktails that people are making and talking about like mixing Starburst with Everclear or whatever through their coffee filters, but no one’s actually ordering those drinks out. What they’re ordering out is Espresso Martinis. I think that also should be a real lesson for people, that the drinks that random influencers and creators are making on TikTok are for attention in order for these videos to go viral and maybe not necessarily ever getting made or even thinking about being consumed by the people who are watching these videos. TikTok is a very visual space. It’s the same as Instagram. We saw that forever where we said just because something is happening on Instagram doesn’t mean it’s happening in the real world. I think this year was a very clear example of that where there’s a lot of stuff that happens online in the Metaverse, it’s not happening in real life. Honestly, I don’t see a lot of people teaching you how to make a really great Martini on TikTok either. That cocktail is also booming. It’s always these things that are really crazy.
J: They’re fleeting.
A: Because that’s what’s fun to watch. It’s fun to watch someone try to make a milk punch. How many people make milk punches at home or even order them out? You know how many milk punches I see people making on TikTok, but how many I actually see on restaurant lists anymore?
J: Because they’re very labor-intensive. [laughs]
A: I’d like to try to make one in the new year. I never made one before.
J: You should do it.
Z: Put it on TikTok, Adam. Come on.
A: You know what I mean? That’s something that’s just always a really good lesson for everyone. It’s not just about what you see trending online.
Z: On that note too, I want to mention, I don’t think it’s worth a whole lot of conversation other than just a note here that one thing I’ve been seeing and thinking about a lot as this year draws to a close is we’ve seen a lot of turmoil in social media over the last year, whether it’s what direction is TikTok going.
A: Elon, is that you?
Z: [laughs] God, please never say that again.
J: Chief Twit, is that what they call him?
A: Chief Twit. Oh, God.
Z: Yes, my beloved Twitter. Who knows what’s going on there? We’re just going to leave that alone. There’s other podcasts for that, should you care. I do think that one thing that’s really interesting is, and I’m sure that we’ve all experienced this in our own way, that brands that I think had come to count on social media as a key spot for them, whether it was direct advertising, sponsored posts or trying to just be in the background, go viral, I think are a little bit unsure of what the landscape looks like because I think as we talked about when we did our TikTok episode, one of the things that’s tricky is it’s a little harder to commoditize and it’s harder to control because the algorithm is so hard to wrap your head around. Obviously, control of the platform is not– I mean, all of these platforms are opaque in their control except for maybe Twitter, which is weirdly very transparent and I f*cked up way. Anyhow, I just think we are in this place where you have a lot of brands that would like to be putting money into advertising on these various platforms but are unsure of how to do so because it’s really unclear what’s happening. Facebook is struggling massively. I don’t know that Instagram is, and Instagram is still doing fine, but it’s just a weird time. I know we don’t focus on social media a ton here, but as Adam was pointing out, as we’re both pointing out, its importance in how people discover drinks, connect to drinks trends, and engage with drinks content is still very powerful, and yet right now it feels like we’re in a weird space where no one’s sure what it’s going to look like in 2023, how people are going to connect through social media and what kinds of content or what platforms are going to dominate.
A: I think that’s true. Anything else you think we missed?
Z: I have one more, but go ahead, Joanna.
J: I think the non-alc space, the options we saw this year, I mean, we watched it explode and I think it will continue to do so. There’s more projected growth for the future for “no and low,” as they like to call it, even though these things should not be lumped together as far as I’m concerned. I think that’s been really interesting to watch as well as we concurrently to all of these other trends.
Z: The only other thing I wanted to mention is just we talked about it on the episode not that long ago. You can listen to that if you want more, but the incredible amount of money pouring into the bourbon industry that major corporations are either acquiring, existing distilleries pumping huge amounts of money to build new facilities. They are all very, very, very bullish on bourbon and are clearly betting on not just the continued success of it, but its continued growth, and especially in the upper tiers. A lot of these plays are about being able to have more older whiskey on hand in five to 10 years or more. I think that definitely bears watching and just noting. I don’t think there’s a lot. We talked about it recently. It was a huge part of 2022.
A: Absolutely. Let us know if you think we missed anything and hit us up at podcast@vinepair.com. Have a wonderful week, and we will see you back here on Friday for our special episode.
Z: Sounds great.
Thanks so much for listening to the VinePair Podcast, the flagship podcast of the VinePair Podcast Network. If you love listening to this show or even if you don’t, but I really hope that you do, as much as we really do love making it, then please drop us a review or a rating wherever it is that you get your podcast. Whether that be iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, anywhere.
If you are listening to this on a device right now through an app, however you got this audio, please drop a review. It really helps everyone else discover the show. And now for some totally awesome credits. So, the VinePair Podcast is recorded in our New York City headquarters and in Seattle, Washington, in Zach Geballe’s basement. It is recorded by Zach, mastered and produced by Zach.
He loves all the credit. Keep giving it to him. Drop his name in the reviews. He’s going to love hearing how much you love him. It is also recorded in New York City by our tastings director, Keith Beavers, who is the managing director of the entire VinePair Podcast Network. I’d also love to give a shout-out to our editor-in-chief, Joanna Sciarrino, who joins us on every single podcast as our third and most important host.
Thank you as well to the entire VinePair staff and everyone who’s been involved in making VinePair as special as it’s become. Thanks again for listening and we’ll see you next week.
