Beverage Dynamics is the largest national business magazine devoted exclusively to the needs of off-premise beverage alcohol retailers, from single liquor stores to big box chains, through coverage of the latest trends in wine, beer and spirits.
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1 Beverage Dynamics • Digital Edition Exclusive 2016 www.beveragedynamics.com A mongst the pale ales, light lagers and Belgian dubbels that jostle for space on the shelves, the beer aisles also have to make room for beverages that are beer's distant cousins, or may not even be beer at all. For reasons of tradition, statute or utility, these "non-beers" are generally the re- sponsibility of the beer manager. "Ciders and all malt beverages' would be the easy way to put it," says Matt Bardill, describing his port- folio as beer manager for Total Wine at the corporate headquarters in Maryland. "We have others handling wine and spirits, but my team is all beer, plus FMBs, hard sodas, non-alc and ciders—premium, domestic, imports. That's us." Although cider—a fermented fruit beverage that is thus techni- cally a wine—was mentioned by the Romans, the other non-tradi- tional drinks in the beer section are inventions of recent decades. Non-alcoholic beer uses techniques devised during Prohibi- tion to strip almost all alcohol from beer brewed normally. The result strives to be as beer-like as possible, but the taste is a re- minder of how important alcohol is as a carrier of fl avor. Other beverages are malt-based and have the strength of beer, but they distance themselves from beer in every other aspect. Alcoholic seltzer water, cane sugar-based and fl avored with fruit, may also be a new class of beverage to watch. These beverages, so different in character and prin- cipal ingredients, seem to share only one quality: social function. They are all relatively low in alcohol, dilute and af- fordable. Since each sub-category may appeal to a slightly (or even radically) different target audience, the beer department is obliged to stock them all. And the beer manager is left to make sense of the rapidly evolving choices. "I don't want to say it's a catch-all," Bardill says of his non- NON-BEER BREWS BY JULIE JOHNSON Ciders, hard sodas, FMBs and more. Just a few brands available in the vast cider category.