Articles Archives

Town of Cardston, Alberta lifts prohibition law after 121 years

Cardston in Alberta, one of Canada’s few remaining dry towns, has recently voted to remove laws forbidding the sale of alcohol.

It was announced that last week the town council voted in favour of allowing “limited liquor sales.” The historic decision resulted in voting 5-2 in favour of a bylaw allowing restaurants and recreation facilities to apply for a liquor license.

The Mormon-founded town has maintained its Prohibition laws long after the rest of the province axed them in 1923, with previous attempts to have the ban lifted, in 1957 and 2014.

“Do I have fears? I do. But I trust the people,” said Cardston mayor Maggie Kronen. “Changes can be good, changes can be bad — we shall see.”

According to the 2021 census, 62% of Cardston’s residents are Mormons, belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which forbids the consumption of alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine.

It will still be some months before the first alcoholic drink is served at a Cardston restaurant as applications for liquor licenses will take some time to process.

Cask Whisky Association officially launches

The Cask Whisky Association has just launched in the whisky sector which will protect buyers who buy and sell casks.

This new association is made up of two boards and advisors, including cask whisky businesses, distilleries, independent bottles and whisky experts, alongside legal and insurance professionals.

Colin Hampden-White, Chairman of the advisory board and spokesperson, states “The CWA’s goal is to uphold the overall reputation of the Scotch whisky industry.”

“The Cask Whisky Association exists to protect private customers from unscrupulous business practices and traders, and safeguard independent bottlers from over-inflated pricing,” he said. “Our members are committed to, and will provide guidance on, best practice.”

Wendy Chamberlain MP, chair of the Scotch Whisky All Party Parliamentary Group states: “Having met with the Cask Whisky Association, I am aware that there are many reputable organisations who want to provide good investment opportunities to enthusiasts and investors alike. The actions of bad actors in this field risk harming not only consumers but the reputation of Scotch whisky and the long-term viability of the industry as a whole.”

The association has also met with Lord Richard Harrington, who states “This type of cross-industry collaboration is welcomed. Where blind spots in regulation exist, such as in the cask investment space, it is encouraging to see different parts of the industry coming together to address the issues that emerge. Scotch is a true British success story so measures must be put in place to protect the integrity of the sector.”

A full list of Cask Whisky Association members will be published in November.

50% of UK Millennials Perceive Drinking and Dining as Essential Spending

Design My Night has just released the results of its city survey, with this year’s focus being on affordability.

The results show that a large proportion (83%) of participants have changed their spending habits due to the cost-of-living crisis.

However, 50% of millennials who completed the survey view drinking and dining as essential spending. The survey also shows 46% of respondents would happily spend £60 on a meal.

When asked what event people would most likely splash out on, birthdays came up as the clear winner, with 85% stating they would happily spend more for this occasion.

Katie Kirwan, head of brand and B2C at Design My Night, states: “The going may be tough right now, but going out remains important to our audience across all price points. While we’ve seen that a demand for affordability is propping up the industry, quality of spending is equally as important, and people aren’t willing to sacrifice their money for the mediocre. Hospitality’s run of it post-covid has been difficult, but our consumer survey has shown that shared experiences are still there to be catered to, and that with over 50% of millennials seeing drinking and dining as a necessity, a cost of living crisis isn’t going to hold the industry back.”

US Adults 55+ are drinking more alcohol according to research

The percentages of 18 to 34-year-olds, who report that they either don’t drink, drank the past week, or sometimes drank more than they should, are all lower than they were 20 years ago, according to research conducted by American analytics company Gallup.

Yet, drinking on all three metrics has trended up among Americans 55 and over, while holding fairly steady among middle-aged adults.

These results were based on an analysis of Gallup trends on Americans’ self-reports of their alcohol drinking habits. To allow for reliable analysis of the trends by age, the data was reviewed in three three-year time periods: 2001-2003, 2011-2013 and 2021-2023.

Adults under the age of 35, 62% reported that they drink alcohol, down from 72% two decades ago; and
Drinking has increased among adults aged 55 and older, from 49% to 59% in the same 20-year period.

This shows that drinking habits among younger adults may be on a downward trend, while the opposite can be said of people 55+. According to the research, there are still more drinkers under the age of 35 (62%) than in the 55 and over category (59%).

While these groups on either end of the age spectrum now report similar drinking rates, those in the middle, aged 35 to 54, maintain a higher drinking rate, at 69%, on par with the prior 67% readings for this age group.

The same trend can be seen among those classed as regular drinkers. Younger adults who drink are less likely than they were in the past to say they had an alcoholic drink within the past seven days, down from 67% to 61% over the last two decades. Older adults, aged 55 and over, have done the opposite, with figures rising from 63% to 69%.

Among all Americans (both drinkers and nondrinkers), fewer than four in 10 young adults (38%) now appear to be regular drinkers, on par with older adults (40%) with middle-aged adults (48%) more likely.

Research Results: https://news.gallup.com/poll/509501/six-americans-drink-alcohol.aspx

Bodegas Familiares de Rioja leaves the Plenary Session of the Regulatory Council due to its strategic policy

The Rioja Family Winery Association withdraws from the management tables of the Denomination of Qualified Origin (DOCa) Rioja, the Plenary of the Regulatory Council, and the Interprofessional of Rioja Wine, due to its disagreement with the strategic policy, which goes against the business model of the small and medium-sized wineries.

The announcement was made public this week by its President, Eduardo Hernáiz, in an information conference, together with his Vice President and spokesperson on the Regulatory Council, Juan Carlos Sancha, and manager, Ana Jiménez, after the two assemblies of the association, which They have supported the decision, unanimously, they have indicated.

The group was established in 1991 by twenty winegrowers and small wineries in Rioja and currently has almost 70 members with 216 which are accredited in the management bodies of the Denomination of the Interprofessional and Regulatory Council tables.

This representation translates into over half of the total of the commercial branch in both management bodies. Still, its participation is limited to only 8% of this branch and 4% of the votes, as the system of representativeness of the Council.

The departure of this association from the management boards of the DOCa Rioja does not imply its abandonment of the Denomination, a region that is “the best in Spain for making wines of value and quality”, which, from its point of view, has currently lost, where volume is what prevails, the President stated.

The decision was formally communicated this week to the Rioja Wine Interprofessional Regulatory Council, the autonomous governments of La Rioja, the Basque Country and Navarra, as it is a Denomination shared by the three communities, and to the Ministry of Agriculture, as the guardian administration.

“We are Rioja, and we are going to continue being so because we have all our investments in this land and because we continue to believe in it and in its potential to make great wines,” assured the President of the Association.

However, “we do not have the capacity to redirect Rioja’s course towards a model of value, of quality”, which focuses on “sustainable viticulture and the production of quality artisanal wines”, he said.

“We are convinced – he added – that the current situation of Rioja, its wineries and winegrowers, would be very different if the policy followed in recent years had been more concerned with protecting the value of the grapes, the wines and the territory, than to produce more grapes and wine to bring Rioja to its current situation.”

Currently, the DOCa Rioja is going through “one of the biggest surplus crises in its history, sending wines to distillation,” said Hernáiz, who added that, “despite the fact that we have been producing clearly more grapes than we are capable of since 2017 to sell, large companies continued asking for new plantations until very recently.”

For his part, Sancha, one of the oldest members of the Plenary Council, has said that the historical model of the social distribution of the vineyard and wealth is being broken in favor of industrial companies, for which the bills continue to come out, among other aspects, because they sell wines from numerous sources, not only Rioja, as well as liqueurs and spirits.

“We find ourselves unable to change a business model that we do not share, since it is based on the production of wine for food shelves at prices with which small and medium-sized wineries cannot compete,” Sancha states.

The president of the Regulatory Council, Fernando Ezquerro, has conveyed to the association his interest in changing the representation system, but there is no concrete proposal and until there is a modification, which will have to be in the next elections in 2025, Bodegas Familiares will not participate in the decisions of these management bodies.

Source: https://agroinformacion.com/