Category Insight
A deeper read into a specific category or trend – published every Wednesday, data-heavy and built for commercial and strategy teams navigating where each category is heading.
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Premium mainstream beer is the one beer segment growing in 2026 – here is the data behind it and what it means
Global beer fell 2% in 2025. Heineken grew 5.3%. Asahi Super Dry grew 31%. Here’s why.
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Scotch whisky: the US is losing ground, India is the growth market, and the category is premiumising by attrition
Scotch exports fell 4.3% by volume in 2025. India grew 15%. The US fell 15%. Here’s the split.
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Craft beer – production fell 5.1% and 481 breweries closed. Is it all doom and gloom?
US craft beer production fell 5.1% in 2025. The story behind that number is actually three stories.
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Champagne in 2026: the commercial implication of declining yields and a 20-year shipment low
Champagne shipped 60 million fewer bottles in 2025 than 2022. The recovery beginning now is uneven.
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Aperitifs and spritz: what Aperol’s slowdown, St-Germain’s surge, and 4 billion global servings tell brand teams
Global spritz consumption hit 4 billion servings in 2024. Aperol no longer captures all of it.
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Indian whisky: why the category that keeps the global whisky market in growth is more complicated than it looks
India is the world’s largest whisky market by volume. The category is splitting in two.
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No/low alcohol: what the data actually says about who is buying it, why, and which part of the category is growing
No-alcohol grew 9% last year. Low-alcohol shrank. The consumer buying it is not who most brands think.
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Tequila in 2026: the US market has stalled, the super-premium tier is contracting, and the growth is somewhere else entirely
US tequila volumes have stalled. The super-premium tier is contracting. The growth is in three other places.
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Vodka is declining. It is also forecast to outperform every other major spirits category
Vodka volumes are declining globally. The WSWA forward forecast singles it out as the category most likely to…
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American whiskey: where the category actually is, and what the divergence tells commercial teams
American whiskey is in two corrections running simultaneously – one at the supply level and one at the…
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Four consecutive years of decline in global wine consumption. The split within that number is what matters for commercial planning.
Global wine consumption fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2025. The category is not declining uniformly.
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Cognac lost a third of its value in three years. What the BNIC data says about where the category goes next.
Cognac lost a third of its export value in three years. The concentration risk behind that collapse was…