Brown Hangs Tough

Brilliant bit of cross-market analysis at just-drinks.com by Chris Mercer (subscription-only, sorry) on Pernod's situation vis-a-vis the market analysts' slapping of them for their positions on debt and portfolio. The analysts want them more in "white goods" (vodka, light rum, and to a lesser extent, gin) which, the conventional wisdom goes, are more recession-resistant.


Mercer points out that Pernod's actually doing just fine with brown goods, thank you.

"In Jameson and Martell, the drinks giant has found two brands that have expanded its reach and made a mockery of weak consumer confidence. Asia's thirst for premium Cognac drove a 12% rise in net sales for Martell Cognac during Pernod's fiscal year, to the end of June. At the same time, the firm managed to round up enough consumer spending power in the US to achieve a 12% increase in global value sales of Jameson Irish whiskey... No wonder the firm is planning to expand storage capacity for Jameson in its native Ireland."

Suck on that, vodka. In fact...

"Its final dividend proposal is also the biggest for five years, at EUR1.34 per share. In short, early market jitters have hidden several reasons for Pernod to be cautiously cheerful."


...suck on that, analysts. I really wonder sometimes if the market analysts know anything about the actual industry they follow.

(Yeah, I realize that I know nothing about EBITDA and ROI and P/L ratios; I figure that makes us even. What they need is someone who knows both...or a team. Ahem...I'm available.)

Schedule Your Book Signing Now

To all Pennsylvania brewers and bars*: 

If you're interested in doing a book signing event when Pennsylvania Breweries 4 comes out this fall (late September, early October), shoot me a message and we'll work on scheduling a proper event. Thanks!

 

*If you're a bar owner, and you're wondering whether you're in the book, feel free to drop me a line to ask. Not every good beer bar's in: if you weren't close enough* to a brewery, or I just didn't know about you, or, well, I brain-farted, you might not have made it, in which case I'll explain why and apologize if necessary.

*"Close enough" is an arbitrary distance that varies depending on how rural or urban your area is. It might be five miles, or 30, depending.

Hey, Mister Kiely: which of your kids do you like best? Huh? Which one?

Interesting piece in Crain's Chicago Business this week on the struggle MillerCoors boss Leo Kiely is facing. There are a number of components, but the key factor, the big Wahooni, is this: how do you grow both Miller Lite and Coors Light, two beers that are obviously in direct competition with each other...and with the best-selling beer in America, Bud Light. How do you put together a business plan that keeps Coors Light chugging along (the brand grew 6% in the last 12 months, very impressive indeed) and also lights a fire of focus under the flailing Miller Lite (down 4% over the same period)?

This is exactly what I was talking about almost two years ago when I called an impending MillerCoors merger a shotgun wedding. This was a merger that simply had to take place; when you're at this level in a highly consolidated business -- as mainstream brewing certainly is -- the only way to survive is to be the biggest sumbitch in the jungle. SABMiller and Molson Coors weren't big enough alone -- amazing, but true -- to take on A-B, let alone the ABIB juggernaut that was starting to look ever more real at that point. They had to merge to have a hope of winning.

And that's the sad thing about what this business has become. It's not enough to do well any more. It's about the guys at the top winning. It's about the shareholders getting a big pay-out (and taking the money and buying more stocks in hope of hitting the jackpot again when some company gets gutted). The best thing I see about the current deep recession is that these damnable masters of the universe are no longer celebrities. I hope it lasts, and we make much of people who create something other than marketing campaigns and buy-out deals.

Dodging the Bullet: anyone have advice?

I'm slowly getting back together from a PC collapse that almost dumped my data. I have the core of it backed up to an external HD, and probably could have recovered 85% of it from that, but it got me thinking about how much I'd lose if something happened to both the PC and the HD...which are less than a foot apart, plugged into the same outlet.

So, readers: do any of you have suggestions/experience with online backup services, like Carbonite or SOS? Like to make some suggestions? First thing I did -- already -- was make a DVD backup of the most important stuff -- writing, contacts, e-mail -- and I'm going to put that in our safe deposit box. But I want something quicker and automatic.

Thanks for your help.

If you're trying to contact me...

My main PC crapped out today. I have limited e-mail (my @gmail.com account is still working), and I have no access to my files and notes. I've got the machine at the shop, and if they can't get it working tomorrow, I'm going to restore my backup files to my laptop.

If you're trying to contact me by my usual e-mail addresses, I can't read them. Call me, or send me a Gmail. Sorry, hope to be back up soon.

Beer Dinners: stepping it up

I hosted a beer dinner last night, and I wanted to tell you about the menu and beer choices.

• First course: Brooklyn Winter Ale with shortbread.
• Second course: three spiced ales -- Anchor Our Special Ale 2008 (a very drinkable vintage), Sly Fox Christmas 2008, and Nogne Ø Peculiar Yule -- with an assortment of small portions of ginger shrimp, duck paté on miniature toasts, air-dried beef in puff pastry, and a blue cheese crostini with house-made onion fig jam.
• Third course: Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale with pasta with spicy pork sausage, fresh organic spinach, and three Italian cheeses.
• Palate refreshment: a Burns Day toast with Aberfeldy 12 Year Old.
• Fourth course: Corsendonk Christmas and Delirium Noel with lamb stew with dropped dumplings.
• Dessert: Samichlaus 2006 with house-made cinnamon ice cream with an amaretto raisin reduction, followed by coffee and assorted chocolates (including bacon chocolate...).

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Here's the surprise: this was a private, in-home tasting I did for 18 people. The woman who hosted the party contacted me with a suggested beer list; the beers you see above. I ordered them -- I liked the idea of beginning with shortbread, and of putting out all three spiced beers together so people could compare and contrast -- and made general food pairing suggestions: the shortbread; matching the spiced beers with something cheesy, something spicy, something salty, and a paté; cheese or spicy with the SNCA; a stew with the Belgians; and something with raisins for the Samichlaus. And I brought the Aberfeldy; I always like to add a little bit of lagniappe to the small in-home tastings I host. She made all the actual decisions on what particular foods to pair, and then she made all the food herself (except the shortbread and the paté). And it was very good, particularly the cinnamon ice cream and the reduction.

I post this for two reasons. First, for business: I do private tastings, in homes or for business events, and I wanted to make you aware of that. But second, for general discussion: I was very impressed by the level of sophistication and enthusiasm shown by the hostess and her guests. It was quite a menu, and a very nice beer list; one I'd have not been disappointed in at any restaurant. The bar keeps going up, and that's great!

LewBryson.com Troubles

If you happened to come here after finding my "name site" down -- http://www.lewbryson.com/ -- well, my apologies. It's been a long morning already at 9:30 AM. My domain registry expired yesterday, although I thought I had an auto-pay set up: turns out that I should have paid attention to the e-mail from my service, warning me that their auto-pay system was down till Spring...I've paid, manually, and the site should be back up in a couple hours.

However, it means that my e-mail is also down, which is a major handicap. So as a notice to anyone who has business with me: if you have to send e-mail to me today, please use this address. Thanks, and my apologies for the inconvenience.

Is it too early for a beer?

Update: everything came flooding back Tuesday morning, so the usual e-mail is back online, as is the website. Apologies again, and thanks to all who adapted!