Welcome in, today is Wednesday, July fifteenth, and we begin with Brown-Forman, where the search for a new chief executive is now officially open. Following our earlier report on Lawson Whiting's plan to step down, the company has confirmed it. Whiting retires effective on the appointment of a successor, per Brown-Forman, with the board's governance and nominating committee running a search across internal and external candidates. He has agreed to stay available in an advisory capacity through the handover. The Drinks Business notes the exit closes a stretch that took in failed merger talks with Pernod Ricard and a rejected fifteen billion dollar approach from Sazerac. Alongside the announcement, the company reiterated its fiscal twenty twenty-seven outlook: organic net sales approximately flat, organic operating income down three to five percent. That is the guidance the next chief executive inherits, at one of American whiskey's largest independent houses. Some analysts read the transition as room for a strategic realignment, though a recurring note in the reaction is that the tariff exposure and volume pressure come with the chair. Also today, IWSR says one of the industry's most durable assumptions does not survive contact with its data, and that lands on a lot of portfolio and marketing plans built on the opposite premise. The firm's latest Bevtrac survey, covering fifteen key markets, puts the drinking rate among Gen Z adults, legal drinking age to twenty-eight, at seventy-four percent. That is up eight points from sixty-six percent three years ago, and close to the rate for the adult population overall. The cohort pulling back, per the research, is Baby Boomers. The Spirits Business reports IWSR describing Gen Z moderation as conclusively debunked. Reaction in the trade leans frustrated, with some pointing to years of targeting built the other way and a recalibration ahead. Separately, the June Consumer Price Index from the Bureau of Labor Statistics has beer as the outlier in beverage alcohol. Brewbound reports beer prices up three point one percent both at home and away from home, nearly keeping pace with overall inflation, while the rest of bev-alc trailed the headline number. Brewbound frames those numbers as a pricing-headroom story. On the BLS figures, beer is taking price roughly in line with inflation and the rest of the category is not. Per Brewbound, that gap is what shapes margin planning on both sides of the trade. Staying with the data, and following our earlier read on NIQ's scans heading into the holiday, the Fourth itself barely registered. NIQ's most recent weekly report describes the holiday as a small blip in off-premise scans, per Brewbound, with sales still in the red. That is with the two hundred fiftieth anniversary behind it, the largest promotional peg on this year's calendar. On the firm's read, an occasion of that scale did not pull the off-premise trend out of decline. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. BeerBoard's on-premise data has Michelob Ultra, High Noon and Mexican imports leading World Cup pours, per Brewbound, with incumbent brands converting the event traffic in accounts. At Beer Marketer's Insights this month, Arlington Capital Advisors managing director Townsend Ziebold said too many strategic buyers are chasing too few scaled ready-to-drink brands, calling it, quote, an M and A musical chair game, per BevNET. The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States is urging a court to overturn Oregon's Extended Producer Responsibility scheme over its glass fees, per The Spirits Business. It reads as a test case for packaging-cost exposure as other states weigh similar programmes. Observers point to fee schedules varying state by state as a planning problem for multi-state brands. And finally, La Martiniquaise-Bardinet has taken full ownership of Dutch alcohol-free cocktail maker Sir James one-oh-one, per Just Drinks. Another established spirits group buying into non-alc rather than building.