A Question of Drinks

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.