If You Don’t Have A Superior Product In 2026, You Might Be Out Of Business

"You're doing sales because you failed at marketing. You're doing marketing because you failed at product.” -Naval Ravikant

The stormy weather here in Los Angeles, coupled with the end of the year, has me thinking about the continued turbulence that awaits the wine & spirits industry moving forward. I’m not going to mince words: if you don’t have a superior product to sell in 2026, you’re not only in for a rough year, you might be on your way out of business.

We’ve known (or at least I’ve known) that our industry has been overproducing for the last five years based on a demand that was never going to last. Jim Beam’s recent announcement that it would halt production at its flagship Kentucky distillery for all of 2026 only confirmed what was already apparent to many.

For that reason, I’m not going to rehash the data, address those trying to spin this development as a maintenance issue, or waste time reiterating the downward trends I’ve mentioned in previous posts. Let’s just get into it.

There’s a pervasive, foregone conclusion across the industry right now that believes: if the big guys like Beam, Remy, and Diageo are way down, year over year, and Gen Z has decided they don’t like alcohol, and Ozempic is killing any desire to drink whatsoever across all generations, it must mean everyone is down in 2025. Across the board, everyone’s drinking less than they used to, and all brands are facing headwinds, right?

Wrong.

At Two-Nineteen, almost all of my clients are up, year over year, compared to 2024 sales results. They’re also showing steady growth (and potential for further growth) in the on-premise, which means bars and restaurants for those of you who don’t speak booze business lingo. Retail is flat in most places, but DTC growth is very strong. No single retail location seems to be thriving, but the national footprint for DTC shipping is up 20-30% for at least three of my clients. We’re seeing strong orders in places like Oklahoma, Indiana, and Texas, states that have historically been sleepy for these producers.

From my vantage point, there are plenty of people out there who:

1) still love drinking, and…

2) still have the means to spend money on boutique alcohol

That being said, I’ve spoken with plenty of potential clients, colleagues, friends, and acquaintances in the industry who are having a rough go this year. Almost all of them have the same core issue in common: the products they’re selling aren’t transparently-produced, distinctive, of a renowned quality, and desirable to a sizable swath of customers who care deeply about alcohol.

To put it another way, if no one is organically excited about your brand, you don’t have a superior product. If you’re relying on Meta ads and TikTok influencers to create leads for your brand, you don’t have a superior product. If your core consumer audience isn’t willing to pay extra for shipping, or drive out of the way to locate your brand, then you don’t have a superior product.

According to the sales data I’ve gathered across 2025, the boutique consumers who spent heavily on alcohol often knew what they wanted before they placed an order online or set foot in a retail shop. They didn’t “discover” new items on social media through pop-up ads or paid influencer placements, they were already following the producers that interested them and the people whose opinions they respected. The strongest results came from newsletter subscribers, wine club members, and distillery visitors.

I’ll use myself as an example. I spent more on alcohol in 2025 than any year previously in my life—and it wasn’t close. While my dollar volume was higher, my overall bottle volume was lower, meaning I was willing to spend more on bottles that were meaningful and profound, rather than cases of everyday table wine or cocktail spirits for mixing. I also did my homework in 2025 before purchasing. I wanted to broaden my horizons in Barolo, dig deeper into some of California’s up and coming winemakers, and drink more cocktails at some of LA’s trendier restaurants, rather than mix at home. I was willing to spend more, but I wasn’t going to give that money away, willy-nilly.

And I know for a fact that I’m not alone here.

I spend dozens of hours every week talking to people from all over the U.S. about their drinking habits—whether its on the phone, via email, Instagram DM, or at one of the many bars I frequent. In all my conversations with people who are serious about their wine & spirits, not one of them stopped drinking in 2025, cut back on their consumption, instituted a lifestyle adjustment, or made a conscious decision to spend less on their collection.

To be clear, these are not the people who grab a random bottle of wine from the grocery store for dinner, or order their usual vodka soda when they go out to eat. The people I speak to are meticulous about their booze and take the time to research their purchases.

Which leads me to my overall point: excluding financial hardship as the main driver, it’s my personal opinion that the customers who are spending and drinking less in 2025 are not the core consumers of brands that create superior products. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of consumers cutting back on their alcohol purchasing along with the consumers who keep my clients afloat, it would look like this:

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It remains to be seen whether new consumers will continue to gravitate towards these brands once our core consumers eventually age out, but that’s a conversation for another article (and it does worry me). Yet, at the end of 2025, I’m not worried about my clients’ prospects for growth in 2026 because—for the time being—the customers who still desire these products are in their prime drinking years.

Which brands should be worried about 2026? Per the opening quote from Naval Ravikant, any brand that relies heavily on marketing or a paid sales force to move product, including:

• Large scale value brands

• Brands that rely on industry trends or current fads

• Brands who focus on big box retailers, supermarkets, and restaurant chains

• Brands who depend on pay-to-play tactics for placements

• Celebrity brands

• Any brand that tries to be the least expensive or most expensive option in its class

• Any singular brand that sells the same product, over and over, year after year

• Any brand that relies on storytelling rather than transparency

If your product falls into any of the above categories, it means you’re dependent on either marketing professionals or regional sales teams that are going to eat up most of your revenue in 2026. Given the current downturn, the number of interdependencies needed to drive sales in a saturated market with burnt-out sales reps, overburdened retailers, and a fraying supply chain is too great to overcome. Even with everyone at 100% in a booming economy, it would be literally impossible for all of these actors to move the current volume of inventory. There aren’t enough functioning livers to consume it all!

Superior products, on the other hand, rely more on belief systems than marketing or sales teams. They sell based on word-of-mouth, the esteem of other respected professionals, and overall reputation, which speaks directly to consumers and reverse engineers the three-tier system. Sure, a great sales team will help boost sales, but—at the end of the day—superior products are in demand by a certain segment of the drinking population, regardless of what any singular person thinks, says, or does, simply because of their repute. Even in states where our distribution teams were struggling, many of the brands I work with thrived via DTC channels.

When you have a superior product to sell, you can tap into a niche market of consumers that is willing to pay for quality. Neither Ozempic nor the anti-alcohol movement have put a dent in this steadfast audience of connoisseurs because alcohol is not just a lifestyle, it’s part of their identity. These people still value wine at the dinner table and they still care about who made their booze.

For any brand not currently catering to this audience, 2026 is going to be a very difficult and expensive year.

-David Driscoll