A Canned Cocktail Out-Earned Jack Daniel’s in Weekly Scan Data. The WSWA Just Confirmed Why That Is Not a Surprise.

The data from the first quarter of 2026 is unambiguous. Core spirits volumes in the US declined 4.4% on an annualised basis, according to WSWA SipSource data published last week. Revenue fell 5.7% – the gap between volume and value the widest in the SipSource dataset’s history, meaning consumers are not just buying less spirits. They are trading down within it. Spirits priced between $50 and $99.99 fell 8.8%. Those above $100 fell 9.3%. The premiumisation trade that defined a decade of growth is not just slowing. It is reversing fastest at exactly the price points where the most investment was concentrated.

In the same quarter, spirits-based RTD cocktails significantly outperformed broader beverage alcohol trends. The premixed cocktail segment grew 39.8% to $2.74 billion in the last 52 weeks. During the week ending 10 May, Cutwater – AB InBev’s RTD cocktail brand – out-earned Jack Daniel’s by $68,653 in Circana tracked off-premise channels. Cutwater’s dollar sales grew 83.6% in the same week. In the same data set, White Claw – an RTD – out-earned Miller Lite – one of the US’s largest beer brands – by $218,720.

These are not anomalies. They are the visible output of a consumer shift that has been underway for three years and that the companies now growing fastest understood before it appeared in weekly scan data.

The shift that was already happening before the data confirmed it