Despite my wife averring that whisky, gin, and red and white wine constitute the four basic food groups, there are actually five important drinks in the world: beer, coffee, rum, tea and Coke. I say this with great authority based on being considered by my friends to be an excellent drinker. My tipple of choice is wine, and I decide which wine to drink on a case-by-case basis. Ba-dum-tiss.
Coffee has arguably the most significant history, because early coffeehouses became meeting places for the privileged, in part, because they were more genteel than bars. Coffeehouses were places where serious conversation was held, including the burning topics of politics and business . They were also where coups were planned and international trade initiated. The London Stock Exchange, for one, developed out of a coffee house.
This brings us to Distell. And in case you think that introduction is irrelevant, it is not, because the world has a severe case of drink fragmentation. The dominance of a drink is associated with the dominance of a culture, and we live in an age when global cultural dominance isn’t what it used to be.
But the larger story is that while, globally, beer holds its own, it is not particularly a growing market. You can slightly see this in Heineken’s share price, which has been remarkably strong in the current downturn, but is more or less where it was in 2016. That’s actually good compared with the global giant AB InBev, which is still about 50% down following its purchase of SABMiller in 2016.