A Question of Drinks

Is the current wisdom about moderation actually true? That’s what Lulie wondered as she watched two couples at a sporting match set out to get wasted with four bottles of wine and a set of pint glasses. How does that stack up against the two-thirds of drinkers who claim to be moderating? And Felicity has been buried in public health research and discovered a very unusual trend emerging — for a gro...

Like it or not, AI is now the gatekeeper between your wine or spirits brand and your consumer. So how do you ensure that when consumers go looking for a product, that you come up in the recommendations? Felicity and Lulie do a deep dive into the evidence and surface with the answer as to why AI recommends some products and not others. And the news is good for small brands — structure your data pro...

Why do cool drinks feel so refreshing? And how did coldness become an essential selling point for drinks? The link between chilled drinks and refreshment is so common today that it feels natural — but it took 2,000 years of innovation to get there. In this entertaining, Freakonomics-style episode, hosts Felicity and Lulie trace how drinks went from being served at room temperature, to being so col...

How did the spritz take over every pub, bar and supermarket this summer? Is it a fad — or is it the result of clever marketing? While Aperol dates back to 1919, the seeds of its success were planted in 2003, when Campari bought the brand and introduced the aperitivo moment to Germany. But, luckily for them, their bright orange drink coincided with the expanding of Prosecco production. While the ti...

Felicity has just returned from a conference in Dublin devoted to drinking studies, an academic field that examines alcohol's role in history and culture from angles the wine world rarely considers. This prompts Lulie to reveal the ordeal she suffered at a recent tasting, where the audience had to wait for 42 agonising minutes before tasting a single wine. That's the signal for Lulie and Felicity...

Treasury Wine Estates, one of the world’s biggest wine companies, has announced it is about to cut more than 40 brands from its portfolio, including names with deep roots in history, like Seppelts. Instead, it will concentrate on 10 ‘regional heroes’, and three main brands: Penfolds, DAOU and Matua. In this latest episode, Lulie and Felicity look at what this decision means. Lulie argues the move...

Global wine consumption fell another 2.7% in 2025 —part of a cumulative 14% drop since 2018. Across the top 20 markets, wine volumes are down more than 20% since 2019. That’s one in five bottles, gone. But Lulie presents the case for why wine remains relevant, from Gen Z participation rates to the cyclical nature of drinks categories, and why she’s genuinely optimistic about the case for wine. And...

Global wine consumption recently hit its lowest point since 1961, the same year most people were filling jerry cans with wine from the local cooperative and serving it for dinner. In this episode, Felicity takes the first half of a two-part debate with Lulie Halstead, making the case that wine's extraordinary 50-year mass-market expansion was a demographic accident. The baby boomers brought prospe...

Lulie and Felicity touched a nerve with their recent debate on storytelling — so they decided to go one step further. Lulie brought along a full-page Sunday Times ad for the Sunday Times Wine Club with all the ingredients of good storytelling — and then they proceeded to tear it apart. They discussed why a lyrical opening about schist and shale is the wrong beginning for a newspaper ad, what WIIFM...

Felicity and Lulie tear apart the wine industry's most cherished marketing belief: that the thing that will drive more sales and loyalty is better storytelling. Felicity, a guest lecturer in brand storytelling at the University of Cape Town Business School, argues that real storytelling — structured around stakes, reversals, and the narrative templates that have powered human communication since t...

Non-alcoholic drinks are the industry's favourite growth story right now, but Felicity and Lulie begin by asking the question nobody in the trade wants to answer: is this actually a health movement, or is it simply the drinks industry colonising new occasions? The data tells a more complicated story than the headlines suggest. Much of the category's growth is coming not from drinkers cutting back...

Lulie and Felicity are back to talking about the drinks news! And the news is big. Diageo's new CEO Sir Dave Lewis (also known as “Drastic Dave”) has delivered his first major investor presentation, outlining many of the problems facing Diageo, including a portfolio  overweighted at the expensive end of a market. Felicity and Lulie dig into what Lewis's blunt assessment reveals about the state of...

A/Prof Justin Cohen from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute takes wine marketing myths apart, one by one. He talks about why mental availability wins out over awareness, how to prioritise category entry points, and why the law of double jeopardy means small brands should stop chasing “loyalty” and start recruiting light and occasional buyers. Cohen maps the mechanics of growth across wine and beyond, fr...

Lulie Halstead is on sabbatical. While she's away, she's chosen her favourite episodes from Drinks Insider to feature on A Question of Drinks and she explains why she's so impressed by them. Her first pick is an interview with Marian Leitner-Waldman, founder of Archer Roose canned wines, which she says is a masterclass of brand building. Entrepreneur and co-founder Marian Leitner-Waldman has singl...

Are people leaving alcohol behind, or are they simply drinking less and less often? In this episode of A Question of Drinks , Felicity Carter and Lulie Halstead dig into the data behind moderation. Drawing on IWSR, Gallup, Barclays, WHO and FT reporting, they unpack three forces reshaping consumption: First, health and identity. Moderation is normalising. Abstinence peaks are flattening. Smartwatc...

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...

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...

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 wine...

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...

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-dea...

Why is it red wine that accrues all the prestige? Is this because red wine is better — or for a historic reason? Felicity and Lulie dig into this mystery and discover that red wine’s prestige didn’t come from taste alone, but from logistics, trade, and the infrastructure that developed around red wines — merchants, classifications, and long-distance shipping. Red’s ability to age made it tradable...

Natural wine has attracted vitriol, mean-spirited editorials and plenty of controversy. One of our listeners wrote in to ask why all the angst, and the hosts use it as a springboard to map the movement’s rise, backlash, and commercial co-option. Felicity sketches the history from Beaujolais and the “Gang of Four,” through the Parker era reaction, NOMA’s catalytic influence, and the media flashpoin...

While Lulie and Felicity are busy writing the scripts for the new episodes, here's a repeat of one of our most downloaded episodes to date, asking that all-important question of why you can only get wine in big formats. If everybody is moderating their wine intake, then how come there aren’t more small wine bottles on the shelf? And what would it take to put them there? In this episode of A Questi...

Lulie and Felicity are going on holiday! And so have re-uploaded one of our most commented-upon episodes, for new listeners. Pink wine is everywhere. On supermarket shelves, on Instagram, and clutched in the hands of celebrities. If there is a single defining wine of the 21st Century, it has to be rosé. How did this pink wine go from being considered an icon of 70s kitsch to a celebrity diva? In t...

Celebrity drinks are nothing new — they’ve been around for the past couple of centuries. But today’s star-backed bottles are more strategic than ever, blending personal branding with product placement. In this episode we look at where the phenomenon started, the different ways celebrities attach themselves to drinks, and the very real influence they can have on whole categories — for better or wor...