Conflict of interest (in Blanton's)

Editor’s note: Welcome to The Fingers Weekender, a Sunday digest exclusively for paying Friends of Fingers featuring the independent journalism about drinking in America you love, optimized for hungover scrolling. (Sorry it’s later than usual; I got sidelined with a biblical bout of food poisoning this weekend.) In today’s edition:

• A Big Beer strike watch;

• Good news for wine-based riot punch;

• The next chapter in Kroger-Albertsons;

And much more. If someone forwarded this to you, buy a subscription to get next Sunday’s edition straight in your inbox.—Dave.

🍺 BEER

Anheuser-Busch’s year is riding on next week. The world’s biggest beer company has shown some limited momentum in the right direction as it nears the one-year anniversary of the start of l’affair de Bud Light. But if ABI is exiting one crucible, it’s stumbling perilously close to another. Barring a last-minute breakthrough at the bargaining table, 5,000 Teamsters are scheduled to strike all 12 of its American breweries starting 12:01am Friday morning. I analyzed the high-stakes negotiating homestretch for the company and its biggest union in my column this past week at VinePair.

Molson Coors brought managers to Texas to help break the Teamster strike. On an industry conference stream, Brewbound’s Justin Kendall heard the macrobrewer’s chief financial executive openly admit that “we are using current employees to … make the beer in Fort Worth at the moment.” That’s the facility where Teamsters Local 997 have been striking since last weekend. Local 997’s secretary-treasurer Rick Miedema confirmed to Fingers in an emailed statement last week that MC brought in “current management employees to ‘attempt’ to run processes” at the plant. (This always goes great!) Seems like a test for the Teamsters here—can the union make this sort of strikebreaking unpalatable to the American drinking public?

Another craft brewery makes a THC seltzer play. The economic dynamic between beer and cannabis is totally to-be-determined, with some brewers watching weed warily as a foe while others see synergies beyond the smoke. Put Iowa’s Big Grove Brewery is in the latter category: it acquired 51% of nonalcoholic, THC-infused seltzer brand Climbing Kites last week. I can’t really tell whether THC seltzers are a legitimate market segment or a craft beer-adjacent figment of relaxing hemp restrictions—or both?—but I’ve gotten some emails from Friends of Fingers about it recently, and will probably write more about it soon. Stay tuned.

🍷 WINE

If demographics are destiny, American wine’s fate is BeatBox. Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America released the latest installation of its quarterly SipSource market report last week, and buddy, unless you’re in the grape-based riot bunch business, it ain’t pretty. Unsurprisingly, the category is still over-indexing on white drinkers and underindexing on Black, Hispanic and Asian populations. Overall depletions were down 7.5% year-over-year in 2023, and the brightest bright spot WSWA had to offer was a 0.5% gain in premixed wine-based cocktails—your BeatBoxes, your Rancho La Glorias, etc.

The feds want documents from Napa Valley’s influential agricultural nonprofit. The plot thickens in wine country. Last week the Santa Rosa Press Democrat reported that in addition to the subpoenas the Department of Justice has issued to Napa County for documents pertaining to some of the region’s most successful winemakers, investigators had also requested materials from Napa Valley Farm Bureau, a powerful, privately funded advocacy group. Seven of the vintners named in the DOJ subpoenas are also major donors to that org’s political action committee.

🥃 SPIRITS

Kentucky’s biggest court battle over vintage bourbon faces delay-by-tater. It’s been over a year since Bluegrass State booze regulators raided Louisville’s venerable high-end bottle broker Justins’ House of Bourbon, eventually confiscating over 600 bottles of liquor worth $2 million from its Derby City store and Washington, D.C. warehouse on charges of improper transport and sale of vintage distilled spirits. The Derby City retailer has since sued to get its bottles back, alleging the Kentucky ABC damaged one worth $100,000. Per a report last week from Kentucky.com, next turn in the case will be a ruling on whether the current hearing officer must recuse himself after he reported a potential conflict of interest: his personal bourbon collection. Delay-by-tater! Conflict of interest (in Blanton’s)! Are they teaching this stuff at the University of Kentucky’s law school? Because they should be!

🏛️ LOBBY TIME

Reminder: Lobby Time is its own email now. Here’s last week’s edition, always accessible to you as a paying Friend of Fingers. Thanks for your patience as I try out a new programming schedule that hopefully makes this edition less of a beast to read (and to write!) Keep an eye out for the next Lobby Time in your inbox on Tuesday.

👀 RELATEDLY

Federal Trade Commission suit to block Kroger-Albertsons soon come. A double-byline report last week from Bloomberg has anonymous sources signaling that the federal antitrust enforcer will file a long-awaited legal challenge to the grocery mega-deal. The suit is expected to drop next week, and several states are expected to throw in with the FTC once it does. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, Lina Khan.

21 Starbucks stores just unionized on the same day. Lest ye think that Starbucks Workers United’s momentum has been blunted by nearly three years of anti-union campaigning by the coffee giant, last week it announced simultaneous organizing drives at nearly two dozen locations in 14 states. Workers have undertaken union drives at some 417 stores; SBWU has won ~80% of the elections held so far.

Amazon joins Trader Joe’s and SpaceX in a frontal assault on American labor. Earlier this month, the country’s leading ecommerce portal (derogatory) threw in with the other two firms’ reactionary campaign in federal court to have the National Labor Relations Act ruled unconstitutional. It’s an aggressive, cynical gambit that would further hobble unions by forcing them to litigate corporate ratfuckery on drives and grievances on the job through the byzantine federal court system, rather than the administrative courts the National Labor Relations Board has been constitutionally empowered to operate specifically for that purpose since 1935.

💬 BUZZWORDS OF THE WEEK

The year is 2024. How to advertise your hazy IPA to stand out in an overcrowded market? Say no more, fam, counsels the ABI gibberish jockey responsible for rustling up descriptors for Elysian Brewing Co.’s uninspired new line extension of Space Dust IPA. Per its marketing copy, that beer, Juice Dust Juicy IPA is…

…which is worse than meaningless (“Orange is a type of citrus. Really mailing it in there,” notes Beervana’s Jeff Alworth), but also sort of poetic, in the sense that the phrase’s inscrutable and flailing redundancy matches the company’s strategy for its erstwhile craft portfolio as a whole. Thanks to Friend of Fingers Jim V. for the fathomless palate squeeze of a tip!

If you see beverage-alcohol corporatespeak in the wild that deserves to be the next Fingers Buzzword, submit it for consideration to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

🔗 VIRGIN LINKS

• The Hot New Luxury Good for the Rich: Air (The New Republic)

• Vice’s Avaricious Stewards Finally Succeeded in Bleeding It Dry (Defector)

• AI Search Is A Doomsday Cult (Garbage Day)

• Public Ownership of Housing Could Be Closer Than You Think (In These Times)