Gloom and Doom vs. Irrational Exuberance
November 24, 2025
Recently much has been written about brand successes in RTD Spirits; with the explosive growth of Long Drinks, Surfside, Beatbox and Buzz Balls, to name a few. Not to mention the extremely fast rise of White Claw, to over 3% share of beer, and High Noon, the original spirit brand to reach national scale and prominence. It almost sounds too easy. Comments like this is what the consumer wants: authenticity, satisfying an unmet need, beer too much of a flavor challenge and real cocktails too inconvenient. Is it time to roll over and embrace the inevitable? Before we do this, let us take a look at the proclaimed death of traditional beverage alcohol categories in the past.
Beer
The New York Times in 2002, The Wall Street Journal in 2004, USA Today, Ad Age and Time Magazine all wrote about the death of beer and the rise of sweet Alcpops and Craft Beer. The future is in FMB’s and Craft Beer!!!
In 2018 – 2025, Hard Seltzers and RTD’s are killing beer. It is ironic how craft is no longer written as the future of beverage alcohol.
Spirits
In 1980, per capita for spirits peaked and declined every year until 1997. Spirits were declared dead in many leading news publications and trade journals, its share of beverage alcohol dropped from 40%+ to under 30%.
The Wall Steet Journal in 1982, The New York Times in 1985, Beverage Industry News in 1988, Time Magazine in 1991 and Fortune “Can Spirits Survive the 1990s)
Wine
The Wall Street Journal in 1985, The Wine Spectator in 1987, Fortune in 1994 and Time Magazine in 1996 all declared wine dead.
While national media was writing the obituary for Beer, Spirits and Wine; the choirs in regional and trade press further proclaimed the end of these categories at different times.
Today the darling segments of Hard Seltzer and Craft have died. All these categories have been raised from the dead several times over the past 50 years The RTD push in 2010 got no-where as well as Hard Cider. Now RTD’s are back with significant resources being placed behind them, similar to spirits just a decade ago. Finally, NA Beer is another darling category. It was the 1990’s that it was written about as the next frontier.
What does this all mean? A couple of themes exist throughout all of these proclaimed market shifts and deaths.
- In each case, the emerging segment/category was viewed as new and exciting addressing long term needs of consumers with endless runway
- In nearly each case, a variation on healthy lifestyle followed by indulgence and back to healthy lifestyle occurred.
- Brands rose and peaked in a relatively short timeframe 5 – 10 years before flattening or declining in most cases.
- Money chased these segments/categories causing market fragmentation and saturation.
- Market leaders entered the game through a combination of new product launches and acquisition only to retrench at a later date.
- Younger consumers embraced the new beverage types driving performance before fatigue set in and they moved on.
We’re not suggesting that RTD growth is about to stall in the next year or two, nor that NA beer is destined to hit a wall anytime soon. The point is this: Beer, wine, and spirits have all been declared “dead” at various moments over the past 50 years, only to rebound and deliver strong and in many cases sustained growth over the decade that followed.
Market structures evolve, value systems shift, and consumer preferences reset. Some of those changes are already underway. So before anointing any category as the permanent winner, or dismissing others as finished, it’s worth remembering that the sun tends to shine again on traditional beer, wine, and spirits, often sooner than expected. New heroes always emerge.
Markets are not static. To truly understand where they’re heading, you have to look deeper across societal forces, product cycles, consumer behavior, and marketplace dynamics. Now is the moment to look ahead, not just at where we are, but where we’re going because history suggests the next resurgence is already taking shape, and the next bright spot may already be forming.