I recently interviewed Michael Morton from Federal Merchants. He spoke directly about the role his teams have played in achieving strategic success for Scotch. Harnessing the power of your team (however you put that team together) is the difference between a good idea and a winning strategy. Read on..

Businesses need good decisions more than they need good ideas.

Let that sink in for a moment. Because if you’re a founder, there’s a good chance you’ve got the equation backwards. After all, this business is your baby. It came from within you. This idea all started with you.

The most dangerous position in business is being a business leader who’s fallen in love with being the ideas person. The only one who comes up with solutions, the one who always gets their way. You’ve got more than skin in the game, it’s emotional investment. I’ve seen thriving businesses brought to their knees because an ideas person didn’t just need to succeed, they needed to succeed doing things their way. A game of ego and identity, and not just business anymore. You know the ones—every strategic decision or marketing tactic has to go up the chain to the big boss, because they’re personally invested in every move. Heck, it used to be me.

These are the moments your brain starts playing tricks on you. Back in 1974, psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman published their landmark paper “Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,” demonstrating how people systematically seek information that confirms their existing beliefs while ignoring contradictory evidence. It’s called Confirmation Bias. When it’s your idea? That bias goes into overdrive.

Creativity and productivity go hand in hand for most founders, but when times are tough, it’s time to stop being the ‘ideas’ person and start stepping up as the tougher, less glamorous “decisions” guy role. Your business needs a cohesive set of leadership skills—ideas, execution, and objective decision-making—and it doesn’t matter where those skills come from. But here’s the problem: if you’re the only person who’s always coming up with the solutions, your ability to make tough, objective decisions is under threat. You can’t be both the architect and the quality inspector. Not effectively.

The Trap You Can’t See

Studies on entrepreneurial decision-making show that confirmation bias causes founders to latch onto information that confirms pre-existing beliefs while dismissing naysayers or negative information, which can lead to the death of a startup. You start seeing only the evidence that supports your vision. Research shows that professionals across management are particularly prone to overconfidence bias—especially CEOs—which significantly impacts their decision-making.

It’s like being a blender who falls in love with their own recipe before anyone else has tasted it so doesn’t bother getting feedback. Justin Fenchel, founder of BeatBox Beverages, learned this the hard way: “Don’t just assume your idea is great. Even if your family and friends say so. Get a prototype out into the market. Get people outside of your network to tell you it’s a good idea.” This is particularly crucial in the NZ drinks industry where there are low barriers to entry making it easy to create a drink and bring it to market—but the real challenge is getting the market share.

Consider Blockbuster in 2000. Executives were convinced their business model would never fail—and laughed Netflix’s founders out of the room, ignoring a partnership deal that would have changed everything. They filed for bankruptcy a decade later. Netflix is now worth billions.

Be the Decisions Guy Instead

Imagine if someone had the courage to pause that meeting to ask some constructive questions of the Blockbuster CEO?

In your business, whether you’re the founder or the Managing Director, your job isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to filter and direct the solutions to get the right outcomes. To make sure the right questions are being asked. You’re the master blender, so you taste everything, understand the full palate, know what to keep and what to cut and—crucially—when to stop. And you know who’s palate to trust for feedback. Most importantly, you don’t lone-wolf it.

Umberto Luchini, founder of Wolf Spirit Distillery, nails it: “The most important habits I must maintain are focus, resilience, and flexibility. I must enforce a delicate balance of not changing strategy too often, but being nimble enough to change it when I realise that something is not working out as hoped.”

If survival in the drinks industry was a game, the spoils will always go to the winning strategy, not the strategist. It’s a tough lesson for a strategist to learn, but it changed the course of my career. Ultimately, it rarely matters who comes up with the winning idea because it’s only execution that matters. See? A poor strategy is always blamed, but a good one is rarely praised. Being the ideas guy ain’t so much of a thrill. Trust me, I worked in advertising.

How to Become a Better Decision-Maker

Here’s the uncomfortable bit: founders can be some of the hardest people to tell the truth to, because they’re used to creating their own universe; surrounding themselves who also believe in the cause. Cue scenes from WeWork, The Dropout, The Social Network.. you name it.

If you’re working solo or with only one or two employees who rely on you for their livelihoods, you have yes-people by default. Not because they can’t say no, but because power dynamics are real.

Three practical moves:

Build an advisory board. Not cheerleaders. Find constructive and qualified people who have nothing to lose by telling you no or giving you challenging but constructive feedback. People who’ll look you in the eye and say “show me the data.” They’ll interrogate your business model.

Demand evidence, not enthusiasm. The fix for confirmation bias is straightforward: embrace criticisms and negative information. Use it to make your idea stronger and more likely to succeed. Ask for market validation. Ask for numbers that back up the brilliant hunch. Never rely on a single source of feedback.

Ask the uncomfortable questions.
“What are we missing?”
“What would have to be true for this to work?”
”What would have to be true for this to fail?”
“Where’s the data that says this will work?”

Make these questions routine, not emergency measures. Investigate your own magical thinking.

The liberation here is profound. Less pressure to be brilliant, more space to be effective. You’re not the source of all innovation—you’re the quality control that ensures the best ideas win.

A Boring Strategy Still Beats A Brand-New Idea (Usually)

Here’s the thing about great ideas: most of us don’t have them. And that’s fine. There is only one Taylor Swift. (IYKYK).

Regardless of how good the idea is, you’ll still need to do the work that makes every good idea successful. The hygiene. The COGS management, the marketing investment and finding an audience ready to engage. No revolutionary idea alone can generate revenue. You’ll always have to do the work. Which is why sometimes you don’t need a flashy new idea (did somebody say rebrand?). You need to knuckle down to consistent strategic decisions, methodical improvement, and the discipline to execute what works rather than what feels like the exciting silver bullet. Over time, strategy beats the sizzle of a new idea, because most customers are mainstream and not early adopters.

(Unless, of course, your idea actually is Netflix. Then Netflix wins. Evenutally. So far.)

The exception that proves the rule: if you’ve got the capital to play with and can carry the risk of your good ideas not delivering outcomes, then play all day. Experiment. Follow your instincts. Learn from failure and success. Refine and master your craft. But if the outcomes matter more than how you get there—if cash flow is tight, if margins are razor-thin, if you’re betting the business on this call—then you need strategy based in reality, not ideas that sound good in an echo chamber.

There’s a NZ producer making two products—one costs him $4 a bottle to sell and the other $0.30. He’s still making both because the opportunity cost still outweighs the opportunity investment. But he’s done the work and rationalised the strategy. Simple.

But here’s a critical self-reflection: do you have the clarity to know which role you are fulfilling right now? Are you being the solutions-lead or the strategy mastermind?Because that is exactly the kind of objective assessment that’s impossible when you’re lost in defending your brilliant solution.

Most businesses succeed through relentless execution of sound strategy, not flashes of genius. The best idea in the room should win. Not just yours. That’s not weakness. That’s leadership.

So start being the strategist, pulling together your A-team of advisors and challengers. Because businesses need good decisions more than they need good ideas. And if you can’t tell the difference, you’re already in trouble.

Need Someone to Tell You No?

Look, I’ve just spent 800 words telling you to find people who’ll challenge your ideas. So here’s where I remind you I’m here to help.

I work with drinks business leaders who need objective input—someone who’ll ask the hard questions and demand to see the data or help you find it. No nodding along. Just years of experience helping you sort the good from the great decisions. Available for consulting or as a strategic sounding board. Let’s talk.

“It gives you the responsibility to act as a leader and do the right thing.”

It could be a quote from any leader in almost any industry, but when Michael Morton (or Morts, as he’s known) says it, he’s talking about stewardship. About what it means to be a custodian of Scotch whisky in a market 18,000 kilometres from Scotland.

When the Federal Merchants’ MD placed his hand on a giant silver quaich at Blair Castle, he wasn’t just accepting an honour – he was becoming part of New Zealand’s place in Scotch whisky’s global story. And yes, there were bagpipes. Fanfare. A banquet in a castle.

Let’s be honest: the drinks industry loves its awards. We hand out medals like confetti at a wedding, slap “Best in Show” on everything from gin to glassware, and create enough trophies to stock a small museum. But some honours operate on a different frequency entirely.

The Keeper of the Quaich isn’t something you campaign for. You can’t buy your way in. You get nominated by people who’ve watched you work, who’ve seen you build something meaningful in Scotch whisky, and who believe you’ve earned a seat at one of the industry’s most exclusive tables.

When Morts walked into Blair Castle in Scotland’s Perthshire Highlands earlier this year, he became one of roughly 2,700 people worldwide – and only the eighth New Zealander – to receive this designation.

This matters. Not just for Morton, not just for Federal Merchants, but for what it signals about New Zealand’s evolution from Scotch whisky consumer to Scotch whisky market that matters. The Keepers are a unique industry initiative in the world of spirits. A group of whisky houses that fiercely competie for consumer affections, they band together twice a year to recognise those doing significant work to nurture, protect and promote Scotch whisky, uisge beatha - the water of life.

A Long-Serving Guardian

“I love Scotch. I love the industry,” Morts tells me, and there’s none of that corporate-speak polish you sometimes get when people talk about their work. “I’ve been fortunate enough to visit quite a few distilleries in Scotland, and when you meet the people, hear their stories and see them making the whisky, and the passion that they’ve got for it – it’s hard not to get swept up in all of that.”

This isn’t a recent romance but a path that has woven through William Grant & Sons multiple times – at Lion when they held the portfolio, directly for the whisky house itself, and now as Managing Director of Federal Merchants, which has distributed the majority of William Grant’s brands in NZ since 2017.

Michael is proud and open about that long standing connection, after all, relationship is at the heart of the Scotch industry. “You do need to be nominated,” he explains. “Now I’m a keeper, I can literally nominate anyone. But there is definitely a lot more weight behind your nomination if one of those whisky houses is nominating you.”

Because becoming a Keeper isn’t about sales targets. It’s about what you’ve actually done to advance Scotch whisky as a category. So I asked him where he sees the impact he’s made as a leader in the NZ industry and in particular with this recognition for Scotch whisky.

“Good question.”

When Federal Merchants took over the William Grant’s portfolio from Lion in 2017, they inherited brands underperforming their potential. Take The Balvenie – Morton’s personal favourite, with the 14-year-old as his everyday dram and the 21 Year Old Portwood for when he’s feeling generous.

“When the brand was at Lion, they had the 12 year old and Balvenie was very much an afterthought,” he recalls. “It kind of stuck around the same volume, year in year out. One of the first things we did at Federal was just to unlock the rest of the premium portfolio.”

Growing luxury malts in a market conditioned to think of Scotch primarily as blended whisky required actual strategy.

“That was one of the things that was called out in my nomination, actually – the role that I’d played in growing luxury malts here in NZ,” Morton says. “We’ve now brought in the first 50 year old Glenfiddich bottles into the country, things like that. A lot of people’s experiences in the past had really just been blended scotch. So we’ve gone out of our way to open up the consumer experience and bring premium expressions into the market.”

Federal has significantly invested in advocacy and education, including bringing in brand ambassadors, supporting consumer whisky events like Dramfest in Christchurch and convincing retailers to showcase premium single malt whisky in-store. That particular endeavour led to installing “maybe two, 300 Glenfiddich stands in retail,” Morton estimates.

“That was a bit of a turning point in convincing not just consumers but retailers that, hey, there is a market for this, and if you showcase them, guess what? You’re actually going to sell some.”

The Castle, The Quaich, The Ceremony

Blair Castle isn’t some industry conference in a hotel ballroom with bad coffee.

“It’s a beautiful ceremony,” Morton says. “The Scots do pomp and ceremony just as well, just slightly differently. Lots of bagpipes, lots of processions, and because we ate haggis, of course there’s the ode to the haggis.” The evening is a celebration of Scotch whisky’s best marketing strategy—a genuine camaraderie where time spent goes by in a blur.

Forty-eight new Keepers were inducted at Morton’s ceremony. You arrive to the Atholl Highlanders – Europe’s only private army – and move through different rooms in elaborate orchestration but the ceremony itself is smaller, private and imbued with meaning as new Keepers are inducted just five at a time.

“You go into the ceremony room, where the Grand Master is with the big quaich (the Grand Quaich of the Keepers of the Quaich),” Morton explains. “A citation is read out about you and the other four that you’re in that particular room with. You put your hand on the quaich and you take an oath to uphold the values and keep promoting scotch. It’s kind of like getting married, I guess – you say I do.”

Then comes the feast: 250-300 people, five courses, five whiskies matched to each. And not just any whiskies: Morton got to drink a Balvenie 19 year old that isn’t even available in New Zealand. The whole event ran until nearly midnight.

“It was one of those ‘money can’t buy that’ kind of experiences,” he says. “Something I’ll never forget.”

One detail he particularly loved: “The ceremony is exactly the same every single time. One of the guys on our table, Ken – he’s the William Grant’s representative on the committee – he’s been to it 30 times.” So if it sounds full of ritual, it is. With just slightly less hazing than welcoming a new brother-in-law to family Christmas.

Morts spent three days before the ceremony at Dufftown, living on-site at Balvenie House with three other William Grant’s nominees. “We spent three days together with some of the Scottish people, and they’re just so nice. And I just think there’s a lot of commonality, apart from the accents, in the way that we look at life and the way that we treat people, and how friendly everyone is.”

“We couldn’t be further away – you couldn’t get further away from Scotland than New Zealand,” Morton laughs. “But we’re very similar people.”

And he’s right for a reason. When you start exploring New Zealand’s history, people and whisky, there are deep threads of connection back to those Caledonian roots. It’s in the DNA, really – that sense of hospitality, of generosity, of valuing craft and time and doing things properly.

What It Means Now

Here’s what they made clear to Morton at the ceremony: “This is not to make you work harder on Scotch in the future. This is really a recognition and reflection of what you’ve done to date.”

But of course it changes things, Morts reflects. Hence the responsibility to do the right thing.

“Being a keeper kind of makes you broaden your horizon, just from your brand to the category as a whole,” Morton observes. “It gives you the responsibility to act as a leader and do the right thing.”

The Reality Check

Scotch whisky is having a rough time globally. New Zealand isn’t immune.

“Consumers – there’s only so many price rises they will accept,” Morton says frankly. “They get to the point where they just go, no, enough’s enough. I’m actually not going to buy that $80, $90, $100 bottle of whisky. I’m going to buy the $50 this time.”

Federal Merchants plays heavily in the premium end. Result? “Effectively, to maintain turnover in the market, all distributors and everyone involved are all having to squeeze their own margins.”

Morton’s been around long enough to see the ebbs and flows. “We’ve been around long enough to know that it is a cycle. We’re hoping that 2026 will return to some sort of normality when some people are willing to pay that extra to buy those premium products again.”

Here’s the thing about industry cycles: a lot of people working in the Scotch industry didn’t know, weren’t planning, weren’t prepared. You can’t get away with that for long. Morton has been in the industry long enough to know you survive by maintaining your allocations (product in country), by keeping your relationships strong, and not panicking and making rash decisions when times get tight.

Allocations have always been a challenge for small market importers. “Once you’ve got an allocation of a product or an aged malt, if you don’t use that allocation in any particular year, you can lose it. So the challenge for us is to maintain our allocations when we’re going through this phase of downturn, so that we’re fully stocked and supplied for when the market does return.”

Federal Merchants will keep bringing in the good stuff, even if it means losing margin short-term. When the market turns – and it will – they want to be ready.

The Blend Comeback

While luxury malts struggle, blended Scotch is “on fire at the moment, because consumers are trading down to mainstream blended whisky, just because it’s more affordable.”

Which brings us back to that idea of leadership. Of responsibility.

“We have the responsibility to make sure that Scotch is accessible and competitive in the market without cheapening blends or the category,” Morton explains. “Because Scotch is not, Scotch is premium. It’s harder to make. You’ve gotta put it in the barrel for three years. You can almost turn on a tap and make vodka, but you can’t do that with Scotch. So we certainly don’t want to be cheapening Scotch or giving it away. But you also do need to make it accessible.”

The tightrope: maintaining competitiveness while preserving premium positioning.

It’s a significant challenge to explain the value of time, particularly in a cost-of-living crisis when consumers are watching every dollar. But that’s the job. That’s the responsibility that comes with being a leader in the category.

The Independent Advantage

Federal Merchants is 100% New Zealand owned and operated. In an industry increasingly dominated by multinational consolidation, that’s rare.

“I think coming through those COVID years, everyone became quite patriotic and supporting local became really kind of like a badge of honour,” Morton observes. “We don’t shout it from the rooftops, but we just mention it – it’s in our email signature, just little things like that.”

The advantage? “They all own their own businesses, and they like the fact that we own ours. And they especially like it – our suppliers – like the fact that when they’re talking to me, I’ve got shares in the business, so they’re talking to one of the owners, rather than a brand manager or a marketing manager who might leave in a couple of years.”

The downside? “We haven’t got big, deep overseas pockets to absorb losses like some of our competitors.”

But: “If we think something’s a good idea, we can do it the next day. I’ve worked in those big distributors for big global companies a lot of my career, and it always slowed you down when you had to go up the chain of command. We’re nimble, and we have to be, because we haven’t got the money that some of these international companies have. So where we can win is on speed and flexibility.”

The Message to Industry

When I ask what he’d tell trade customers right now, Morton doesn’t hesitate: “Tough times never last, but tough people do. You’ve just got to survive and be ready for when the market does turn, because it will.”

He’s worried about venues closing. “We’ve seen so many restaurants and shops even closing recently, which is really, really sad. The danger is that people aren’t brave enough to open new venues. But thank God there are people out there still willing, because life would be pretty boring if we didn’t have restaurants and bars to go to.”

This is the message that needs to be heard across the industry right now. Don’t make groundbreaking or rash decisions based on the market as it is today. Survive. Be ready. Support each other.

“We’re all selling sociability and hospitality. It’s really important that we continue to thrive and look after each other as an industry, and make sure that we last. Because life would be pretty boring if we didn’t.”

And personally? He’s still reaching for that Balvenie 14. “I guess that’s one of the traps when you’re distributing some amazing products – you tend to drink those all the time. Nothing wrong with that.”

Though he did give The Balvenie’s Malt Master Kelsey McKechnie special mention for The Sweet Toast of American Oak. The woman is doing extraordinary work, and Morton knows it.

The Responsibility

For most Scotch single malt drinkers in New Zealand, they likely don’t realise how much they have to thank Morts and his teams for over the years. Did you taste the Glenfiddich Grand Cru after it won Best in Show at the 2022 New Zealand Whisky Awards? Have you seen the Gran Reserva or Project XX on a shelf or backbar? Tasted the Balvenie or enjoyed Monkey Shoulder? The journey from Glenfiddich 12 to the 50 year old bottles in market has been hard-won every step of the way. So the steps Morton took into Blair Castle weren’t just for himself, but for all the people that did the work along the way. And in a way, for the New Zealanders who love Scotch and keep pursuing their passion for it.

Because here’s the thing about becoming a Keeper of the Quaich: it’s not really about the ceremony, the castle, or even the recognition (though those are nice). It’s about being part of a global community that genuinely gives a damn about Scotch whisky as more than just a product category. It’s about caring enough to build bridges between Scotland and New Zealand that go deeper than simple distribution agreements. It’s recognition for doing the work but more than that, it’s a reminder that leadership in Scotch whisky isn’t about quarterly targets or market dominance but often about staying the course and doing things the right way.

The Quaich itself is a two-handled shallow cup, that has come to represent trust, love and friendship. It’s an apt reminder that being a Keeper is about stewardship—promoting, protecting and nurturing all that is Scotch whisky from the juice to the relationships with the people who make it, sell it, serve it, and drink it.

Even from the furthest corner of the planet.

Michael Morton remains Managing Director of Federal Merchants. His Balvenie 21 Year Old Portwood allocation remains jealously guarded. The haggis was consumed safely at the ceremony. The bagpipes, sadly, had to stay in Scotland.

Keen to hear more from industry leaders? Perhaps you have a burning question. The inbox in open for your questions, requests and feedback.

Did you miss last week’s Full Pour feature?

Dave Broom recently wrote about whisky’s twenty-year cycles—those giant swells of peaks and troughs that have shaped the industry since the 1960s. “There’s a storm a-comin’,” he warned, noting that many people running firms today have never navigated a downturn. They’ve only known rising sales, benign climates, clear horizons. Now the skies are darkening.

He’s right. But he’s only describing one front of the storm.

For centuries, the spirits industry understood something fundamental: you measure success in decades, not quarters. Plant agave, wait eight to ten years. Fill a cask, wait twelve. Build a brand, wait a generation. The industry’s greatest successes were built on patience, on understanding that demand and supply move like tides—slow, cyclical, inevitable. You batten down during the troughs. You sail hard during the peaks. But you always, always know which part of the cycle you’re in.

Then everyone forgot how to keep time, fell out of rhythm and focused on counting the wrong numbers.

What Broom identified for whisky—that cyclical downturn, falling demand meeting rising capacity—is just the visible wave on the surface. Underneath, four separate storm systems are converging. Climate chaos redrawing where we can grow and make spirits. Geopolitical upheaval closing borders we assumed would stay open. Digital vulnerability turning copper stills into code-dependent targets. And consumers fundamentally rethinking their relationship with alcohol itself.

Each storm alone would demand adaptation. But here’s what makes this existential: each storm is an accelerant to the core problem. We built too many distilleries for a shrinking market. And just when we needed growth to absorb that capacity, four forces arrived to ensure the market contracts even faster.

The Core Crisis: We Built Too Much for a Market That’s Shrinking

The numbers tell the story with brutal clarity.

U.S. craft spirits sales declined for the first time ever in 2023, with producers losing market share—dropping from 4.9% to 4.6% in volume and from 7.7% to 7.5% in value. Yet the number of active craft distillers grew by 11.5% to 3,069. American whiskey volumes grew at 5% annually from 2019 to 2022, then crashed: -1% in 2023, another -2% in the first eight months of 2024. MGP Ingredients—a major contract producer—announced plans to reduce production in 2025.

More distilleries chasing fewer sales. That’s not growth. That’s a glut.

And Asia Pacific is following the same trajectory. Twenty years ago, you could count New Zealand’s commercial distilleries on two hands. Today there are almost 200, with 321 NZ entries in the 2024 New Zealand Spirits Awards. In Australia, the number went from a dozen in 2010 to over 300 today, with distilleries rising by 30% in recent years. Scapegrace just opened a NZ$30 million distillery—New Zealand’s largest—capable of producing 160,000 cases of single malt whisky per annum.

Spectacular growth in capacity. Declining growth in consumption. The maths doesn’t work.

Australian data shows alcohol sales value grew by just 0.7% whilst sales volume dropped 3.9% in the year to June 2024. People are drinking less. The spirits business operates on long pendulum swings—boom and bust, scarcity and surplus, decades of patience followed by decades of reward and peppered with FMCG consumable trends. But somewhere along the way, the industry filled up with people who only understood quarterly growth. Who didn’t know—or didn’t care—that you can’t build a spirits brand on a start-up timeline or based on trends alone.

So they overplanted. Overproduced. Overpromised. And now we have a glut of liquid in a market that’s contracting under the weight of health trends, economic uncertainty, and consumer fatigue.

The standard response? Export. As one Australian distiller noted, domestic use of native ingredients “has reached saturation, and the industry will be looking to international markets to grow.” According to Deloitte Access Economics, whilst only 17% of Australian spirits manufacturers currently export, 40% are interested in doing so. And increasingly, NZ distillers are seeing it as business-critical, not optional.

Except when everyone exports, export isn’t a solution. It’s just moving inventory sideways whilst margins compress and competition intensifies. You can’t export your way out of a structural oversupply problem.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Rebase your revenue assumptions: If your forecasting model was built during 2019-2022, throw it out. Start with what you actually sold last year. Model for flat to -5% volume growth domestically. Better to plan conservatively than overproduce and carry unsold stock.

2. Factor in the real tax burden: In NZ, 60-70% of retail price is excise and GST. In Australia, spirits face $104.31 per litre excise—one of the world’s highest. Build your pricing models around this reality. On a $90 bottle, you’re working with $27-36 before production, packaging, distribution, marketing, and salaries. If those margins don’t work, your pricing or cost structure is wrong. And you can’t bank on excise being cut, dropped or frozen anytime soon.

3. Cut your SKU count in half: Many small distilleries carry 8-12 SKUs when they should carry 3-5 exceptional ones. Every additional SKU costs you in production complexity, inventory management, marketing dilution, and shelf space competition. Many are competing with themselves. Master your flagship products before launching variants nobody asked for.

4. Only pursue export when domestically profitable: If you’re not profitable at home, export will accelerate your collapse. Export demands volume, consistency, marketing support, and extended payment terms. Treat it as portfolio diversification (spreading risk), not your primary growth engine. And if you are export-capable, you’ll need to find clear space even one market at a time.

Now, here’s why this oversupply crisis is about to get worse. Four external forces are converging to ensure the market contracts faster than the industry can adapt.

Storm One: Climate Chaos Destroys Your Revenue Timing

Climate change isn’t coming for the spirits industry. It’s already here, destroying the revenue patterns you’ve built your cash flow around.

Scotland’s 2018 summer heatwave forced five of Islay’s ten distilleries to halt production, alongside Blair Atholl and Edradour in Perthshire. Glenfarclas in Speyside lost 300,000 litres of whisky—an entire month of production—simply because it was too hot to make whisky. The same heatwave caused a 7.9% decline in UK spring barley production, spiking prices from £145 to £179 per tonne and adding roughly £27 million in costs to an industry requiring 800,000 tonnes annually.

By 2080, researchers predict Scotland will face droughts every 20 years instead of every 40, with summer rainfall declining by up to 18% and temperatures rising by 2°C.

Here in the Asia Pacific, we’re watching our own version unfold. California and Queensland farmers have turned to agave as drought-resistant alternatives. Top Shelf International now farms nearly half a million agave plants in the Whitsundays. Australian grain production is booming but prices are dropping so market forces will look to correct for profitability - so your Australian NGS may not get cheaper. But here’s the immediate crisis for NZ and Australian producers: extreme weather is hitting during your peak revenue periods. Peak summer in New Zealand—January, when hospitality and tourism should drive massive spirits consumption—is increasingly disrupted. Nelson and Hawke’s Bay, two of our most important holiday hotspots, have faced cyclones, floods, and road closures during what should be the highest-revenue period. Remember Cyclone Gabrielle in January 2023? Roads closed. Deliveries stopped. Revenue evaporated. Not to mention contracted, low snowfall ski seasons back to back in the South Island, dropping visitor spend and days in market.

How this worsens oversupply: You built inventory expecting November - February to deliver 15-20% of annual revenue. When extreme weather cuts off key markets during peak season, that inventory doesn’t move. Meanwhile, you’re still producing because the still is running. The glut compounds whilst cash flow collapses at precisely the moment you need it most.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Remodel seasonal forecasting with climate disruption as baseline: Build scenarios—what does revenue look like if Nelson is cut off for two weeks in January? If Hawke’s Bay faces another Gabrielle-level event? If Auckland festivals are cancelled due to heat warnings? Make January variable (±30%) in your planning, not guaranteed.

2. Diversify your geographic revenue dependence: If 40% of your revenue comes from two regions, you have a climate risk concentration problem. Develop relationships with accounts in multiple regions so one weather event doesn’t sink your quarter.

3. Build deeper cash reserves: If your cash flow model depends on a massive Q4/Q1 bump that may not materialise, you need 12-18 months of operating reserves, not 3-6. That changes everything from production scheduling to staff planning.

4. Invest in climate adaptation proactively: Water management systems, backup power, temperature control. Sustainability can’t be an afterthought—it’s survival infrastructure.

Storm Two: Geopolitics Closes Your Escape Valve

The drinks industry has always relied on a gentlemen’s agreement: borders stay open, tariffs stay reasonable, and spirits flow freely between trading partners. That agreement is dissolving, and it’s destroying the one solution everyone counted on for oversupply—export.

When Trump imposed 25% tariffs on Canadian goods in March 2025, Canadian provinces retaliated by stripping American spirits from government-controlled store shelves. U.S. spirits exports to Canada plummeted 85% in the second quarter. Ontario’s LCBO pulled more than 3,600 American products—Jack Daniel’s, Bacardi, California wines—creating empty shelves overnight.

Brown-Forman’s CEO called it “worse than a tariff” and “very disproportionate,” noting it was “literally taking your sales away.” Michter’s Distillery lost $115,000 in cancelled bourbon shipments to Canada, its largest foreign market. Cedar Ridge Distillery in Iowa had spent two to three years building the Canadian market after being forced out of Europe—only to watch that investment evaporate.

Not because of quality issues or consumer rejection. Because of political decisions made thousands of miles away from any distillery.

How this worsens oversupply: Export was supposed to be the escape valve. Domestic market oversaturated? Sell overseas. Except 40% of NZ distilleries are eyeing the same strategy where they’ll now compete with American whiskies dropping in pricepoint to move volume—cashflow is King. And when borders close or saturate—not gradually, but overnight—all that inventory meant for export has nowhere to go. It sits in warehouses, tying up capital, whilst you keep producing to hit the volume that justified the investment in the first place.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Diversify export markets before you need to: If you’re established in one market, don’t build 80% of export revenue there. Spread across 3-5 markets minimum. When one closes, you have alternatives. And start building those relationships now, before crisis forces desperate decisions.

2. Build contract flexibility for geopolitical disruption: Force majeure clauses that specifically cover tariffs and trade restrictions. If you can’t deliver due to political actions beyond your control, you need contractual protection.

3. Reassess your 20-year distribution strategy: The days of stable, predictable trade relationships are over. Plan for pivots every 18-24 months. That means lighter commitments, faster exit options, and relationships that can adapt.

4. Strengthen domestic market position first: You can survive losing export markets if your domestic business is solid. You can’t survive losing domestic market share whilst chasing export dreams. Get profitable at home before expanding abroad.

Storm Three: Cyber Attacks Destroy Production When You Can’t Afford Downtime

The spirits industry is digital now, whether it likes it or not. And that’s created vulnerabilities that can wipe out weeks or months of production overnight.

In September 2025, Asahi Group Holdings—Japan’s largest brewer producing Asahi Super Dry, Nikka Whisky, Peroni, Pilsner Urquell, and Grolsch—suffered a ransomware attack that shut down all 30 domestic factories. Production remained halted for days. The Qilin ransomware group claimed they had stolen 27 gigabytes of data. Convenience stores across Japan faced shortages.

Critical ERP systems and manufacturing execution systems were compromised, halting bottling lines and packaging equipment across multiple prefectures. Production control servers became inaccessible, triggering automatic shutdown of plant machinery. While the beer sat in tanks. While distributors pivoted to competitors. While market share evaporated and contracts went unfulfilled.

This isn’t happening in some distant market. This is our neighbourhood. And smaller operations are more vulnerable than the big players because they lack dedicated IT security infrastructure. Even your credit card on file for software subscriptions could fail you in a security breach.

How this worsens oversupply: A ransomware attack hits and production stops entirely—but your fixed costs don’t. Staff still need paying. Rent is still due. Distributors still expect deliveries. Except you can’t access your systems to manage supply chain or cashflow. Meanwhile, competitors fill your shelf space.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Budget for cybersecurity like insurance: Because it is insurance. If you’re using digital systems for production management, customer databases, or online sales—and you are—allocate $5,000-10,000 annually minimum. Regular backups stored offline, two-factor authentication on everything, employee phishing training, and a disaster recovery plan.

2. Test your recovery plan: Having a plan that’s never been tested is having no plan. Run disaster scenarios: what if your systems are locked tomorrow? Who has authority to negotiate? What’s the communication protocol with customers? Test it.

3. Maintain manual backup systems for critical functions: You should be able to run basic production and fulfil existing orders even if all your digital systems are down. Paper backups of customer orders, manual inventory tracking, alternate payment processing. Redundancy saves businesses.

4. Get cyber insurance with business interruption coverage: Standard insurance won’t cover ransomware losses. You need specific cyber coverage that includes business interruption. It’s not cheap, but a month of lost production is far more expensive.

Storm Four: Consumers Are Drinking Less—Permanently

The “sober curious” movement isn’t a fad. It’s a fundamental recalibration of how people relate to alcohol, and it’s shrinking the market faster than producers can adapt.

New Zealand data tells the story: hazardous drinking among adults declined from 21.3% in 2019/20 to 16.6% in 2023/24. In the year to June 2024, total alcohol consumption fell by 7.2%—the largest decline in eight years—with spirits dropping 14%. This despite the NZ population growing 11% over the same period. Translation: Kiwis are drinking significantly less, with 84% now drinking responsibly, but those who do drink are spending selectively on higher-quality products.

And we’re seeing signs that as people age and life-stage into more disposable income, drinking returns. But not as high or frequent so watch this space.

The market for full-strength spirits is contracting whilst demand for alternatives grows. For industry, this requires a rethink of new product development, branding, and target audience. And a cautious approach because the data is still moving.

How this worsens oversupply: You built capacity assuming 2019-2022 consumption patterns would continue or grow. Instead, the market is shrinking structurally, not cyclically. Fewer people are drinking spirits. Those who do are drinking less. Premium positioning helps margin but doesn’t solve volume problems when the overall market contracts 3-9% annually. You have more distilleries, making more liquid, for fewer consumers buying less alcohol. The mathematics is catastrophic.

What You Must Do Now:

1. Shift from volume to value immediately: Stop chasing case counts. Start building brands that command good margin from the shrinking but sophisticated consumer base that remains. Better to sell 5,000 cases at healthy margins than 15,000 cases at break-even.

2. Diversify into low/no-alcohol offerings: Not as token gestures, but as genuine business lines. But a word of caution—you must do the numbers and commit to a long term play or run the risk of the RTD-pop boom: products pushed out to meet boom trends only repeat the cycle of shelf saturation and quick consumer fatigue.

3. Build direct relationships with consumers: When the market shrinks, wholesalers and distributors consolidate too. They’ll carry fewer brands. Your survival depends on having direct-to-consumer channels that deliver 30-50% of revenue at full retail margins, not 10% at wholesale pricing.

4. Measure what matters: Stop tracking vanity metrics (social media followers, award medals). Start tracking survival metrics: gross margin per bottle, customer acquisition cost, repeat purchase rate, days of cash on hand, inventory turnover. If you don’t know these numbers monthly, you’re flying blind.

Special Considerations: The Medium-to-Large Distillery Paradox

If you’re producing 50,000 to 500,000 cases annually, you face the most acute challenges. You’re too large to operate on craft margins but too small to compete on multinational efficiency. Small operations can pivot quickly. Global giants have scale and reserves. You’re caught in the middle, with the worst of both worlds unable to just hit pause and ride it out.

In New Zealand, too many small craft distilleries can simply slow production, pull back hours, employee numbers and ride out the storm while managing day jobs to expect the kind of closures the US industry has reported since 2024 (25%). It’s time to be honest, 25% fewer New Zealand brands competing for shelf space sure sounds good, doesn’t it? But this is not Survivor and there’s no way to vote people off the island. And because it’s the medium size distilleries that face the toughest operating conditions, there’s no way to promise the best of the best will survive purely on quality alone. That’s no longer the prize.

Your cost of goods sold might look efficient on paper, but if you’re haemorrhaging value through a distribution model built for volume that no longer exists, time to rethink. You’ve invested in automation, professional sales teams, distributor networks, and marketing infrastructure but now you need to ask: is your infrastructure model delivering return, or just burning cash?

What You Must Do Now:

1. Apply rigorous brand value to COGS analysis quarterly: For each product, calculate true COGS (including allocated overhead), compare to realised wholesale price (not list price—what you actually receive after discounts), then measure against brand perception metrics. If a product isn’t delivering both margin and brand value (think onward sales opportunity and lifetime customer value), kill it. You don’t have the luxury of carrying dead weight.

2. Remodel sales forecasts with seasonal change as baseline: Peak summer revenue is no longer guaranteed. If your cash flow depends on January delivering 15-20% of annual revenue, you’re building on sand. Model January as variable, require deeper reserves, flatten revenue expectations across the year. This changes production scheduling, staff planning, and inventory positioning. And remember all the seasons that impact consumer spending in economic crunch—elections, OCR announcements, holiday seasons, winter downturns.

3. Bring in external commercial expertise: You’re too close to see where you’re burning money. Spending $20-50K on external analysis that finds $300K in inefficiencies or identifies pivots adding $1 million in margin is the highest ROI decision you can make. They’ll identify which channels are stalling versus moving product, which accounts are profitable versus draining resources, and inefficiencies you’ve become blind to.

4. Prepare for consolidation—as acquirer or target: The shakeout will create M&A opportunities. Either position to acquire struggling competitors’ best assets, or make yourself attractive for acquisition by building genuine brand equity and operational efficiency. Know which outcome you’re building towards.

Navigating the Storm

The perfect storm is here. Climate chaos destroying revenue timing. Geopolitics closing borders. Cyber attacks eliminating production capacity. Consumers drinking less permanently. And underneath it all, structural oversupply in a contracting market.

As Broom wrote: “Batten down the hatches, lash yourself to the wheel. It’s going to get rough.” But I’d add this: you also need to check your charts, recalculate your position, and make sure you’re sailing for a destination that still exists.

These aren’t theoretical concerns. Scotland lost 300,000 litres of whisky production in a single month due to heat. U.S. spirits exports to Canada dropped 85% overnight due to tariffs. Asahi’s 30 factories sat idle for days due to ransomware. Australian alcohol volumes declined 3.9% whilst distillery numbers grew 30%. The forces reshaping this industry aren’t coming—they’re here.

The distilleries that survive won’t be the largest, oldest, or the ones with the best products. No one is entitled to survival. They’ll be the ones who understood early that the rules have changed. Who rebuilt their financial models around disruption, not historical patterns. And kept embracing what customers were saying.

The question isn’t whether the industry can survive. It’s whether individual businesses can remember the principles that built this industry in the first place: patience, quality, and the understanding that some things—good whisky, strong brands, sustainable businesses—simply take time.

The compass is spinning. The survivors know which direction to sail.

And don’t stop there. Have your say in the comments below.

There’s a shift in the air when a maker moves from the consulting bench to the production line, trading the finite satisfaction of contract flavour genius for hire for the relentless, total immersion of a single distillery. For Mikey Ball, a man whose name has become shorthand for flavour precision in the New Zealand spirits landscape, that pivot isn’t just a career change—it’s the full-circle embrace of his own rigorous standards at Woodward St Distillery in the heart of Wellington.

The distillery’s founding is also a quintessential capital city story: a tale of necessity and vision—just not of the land, but of the architecture. When brothers Johnny and Robbie Thomson couldn’t find an anchor tenant worthy of their extensively refurbished Edwardian building at 97 The Terrace, they decided to anchor it themselves. What started as an “amateur interest in alcohol, i.e. drinking it,” became the foundation for The Woodward Street Distilling Company.

Ball, known ubiquitously as Mikey to the New Zealand drinks industry, joined the founding group as Head Distiller alongside hospitality veteran James Pask (Director and General Manager) to realise the goal: build a boutique city distillery that creates world-class spirits imbued with a sense of provenance, integrity but also fun.

The Woodward St team couldn’t have found anyone who more aptly fits the description. Found in iconic venues at home and abroad since his late teens, Mikey is the person most likely to wrap up closing and still run 12km in the morning. He’s worked as a drinks educator, consultant, head bartender and hand model for some of the best cocktails and brands in the business. And in Woodward St, he seems to have found a home for his exacting standards and endless pursuit of excellence in story and flavour.

After consulting and working with significant NZ brands, it’s a big call for Ball to commute between Blenheim and Wellington for this gig, but so far the commitment is worth it for the alignment of values within the team.

“We are now a family,” says Mikey of the still new-ish team. “So we are all in and you have to make those relationships work day-to-day, but you also have to cherish them,” Ball notes. This total commitment is driven by the fiercely competitive market. “We’re in this lucky position right now where we actually have to make the liquid incredible, because it’s a really, really tough market. It all has to have meaning or has to have story. Everything has to be built in. This is an experience.“

From Blueprint to Bottle: The Structural Purity of Flavour

The rigorous, almost engineering approach Ball brings to product development is an intellectual carry-over from his initial studies in architecture—a path he abandoned for hospitality, yet one that is evident in the foundation of his flavour philosophy. For Mikey, a product must be built like a building: with a strong structural framework and multiple layers of meaning. Storytelling is not marketing; it’s the load-bearing wall.

“There’s definitely an ethos, and everything is kind of built with a million facets in mind for whoever wants to know as many little details about it and any quirky little pieces that they can be, versus people who don’t want to understand any of it.” From the origin story of each ingredient, to the specific techniques and treatments used—everything with Mikey has a ‘why’, a purpose that offers integrity to the end result.

This philosophy ensures quality from the outset. As Ball states, “If you can do all the smart stuff to start with, then you can be a lot more all over the creativity of it. If you start with what your restrictions are, then you’re always going to be heading to the right place.”

Essentially, what he means is that if you jump to the end conclusion too fast and without having built a solid purpose and integrity to the plan, you’ll risk having to take shortcuts and make compromises. Shortcuts to flavour and product consistency don’t really exist, in the same way a house without a solid foundation eventually falls down. How loud of a crash it makes, depends on how closely people are listening.

This critical lesson, distilled from years of working under contract for other producers, is that flavour is an ecosystem built on culture, context, and place. To design a product with integrity, one must first deeply understand the provenance of its components: the soil that fed the botanical, the tradition that perfected the technique, or the people who held the knowledge for centuries. This foundational, respectful excavation of history—treating the knowledge and component correctly—is what elevates inspiration beyond mere surface-level borrowing. It is the only route to creating a truly authentic spirit, ensuring that the final liquid pays homage to its cultural origins and avoids the trap of cultural appropriation by integrating, rather than simply taking, the inherent value of the source tradition.

This methodology is most evident in Chchi Vodka, the first spirit to emerge from the Woodward St 300-litre still, Agnes. Chi Chi is not merely a vodka; it is a deeply considered study in texture and tradition.

“If we were going to create a vodka, we’re not just going to throw ethanol in with with a bunch of water—which is, you know, let’s (meaningful silence)….let’s just, let’s just say that’s a thing people do. So what will we do?”

The vodka’s methodology draws from a centuries-old tradition of dairy distillation. “The whole idea is that Chichi means ‘father’ in Japanese, but it can also refer to milk. “We just deep dived into everything, milk and cream. We’re making ricotta, like, all of these pieces. Try to work out how we can get the specific textures we wanted to create,” Ball explains. Chichi is also the long forgotten vodka Pina Colada recipe, created by father of Tiki cocktails, Don the Beachcomber. There’s all of these little pieces that tie into the story.” He adds: “The Chichi was the third attempt at bringing vodka into American culture in the 1970s. So many great little pieces that we can tie into the story and culture.“ Cue disco balls.

Sometimes to set the foundations right, you have to dig deep. And in more than just cultural references. Using wheat, extracting flavour and texture from coconut flesh and using Koji rice cultures to produce an elevated vodka that belongs in cocktail bars and pride of place? The flavour architect has been at work, supported with the culinary input of Wellington hospitality and culinary stalwart James Pask. Pask himself brings a reputation of commitment to origin, source and authenticity.

The sparkly disco setting, the father of Tiki and a vodka that celebrates distillation from dairy? And all of this to plug a gap? Chichi Vodka wasn’t meant to be the first cab off the rank but it grabbed the dancefloor spotlight. When you examine Chichi against the backdrop of the Woodward St values, it’s clear why it resonated so strongly with Mikey and what the people of Wellington can enjoy on their doorstep, with the bar integrated into the building and a highly recognisable figure about to join the team to support the social offering and drinks programme. (Watch this space!)

Mastery, authenticity, sustainability, innovation, society and integrity are called out on the masthead of the brand website and through the storytelling that begins to emerge, the vision of a social hub for the discerning and a place of meaningful engagement with the makers. It’s no wonder Ball has found a sense of ‘family’ amongst a group of characters equally uncompromising in the pursuit of quality.

The already highly anticipated Penguin’s Crossing gin scooped a highly commended nod from the judges at the NZ Spirits Awards for how well it matched with tonic. This should be no surprise from the mastermind behind both Scapegrace and East Imperial recipes and former Head Bartender at multiple-award winning Dandelyan (now Lyaness) in the UK. The man can make a gin and tonic, from scratch, all the pieces. Which is exactly what’s coming down the line and fast. But a business decision to rethink the gin bottle meant space and time to bring the next product to market.

When mastery, authenticity and integrity are part of your navigating compass, you can’t half-ass the landing when launching a new product, as many a distillery is learning in the current crunch and re-normalisation. Shelf impact makes a difference and is as much part of the storytelling and brand offering as the liquid. In a shift from the heady gin-boom days where everything lived in an Oslo, the better the product the better the bottle ought to be. So when the team realised they hadn’t ticked mastery, it was back to the drawing board for a new custom bottle. That opened up a gap for Chichi to dance right on into.

“The thing is the gin’s ready, it’s just waiting on the bottle to come and then the tonic will be hopefully by the end of the year. So everything’s within the next four months. So lots boiling away, but I think the way to look at it is we’ve effectively built a brand house.”

While the gin pause gave focus to the vodka, this ‘brand house’ foundation with multiple product streams allows them to expand quickly but carefully. Mikey points out the unique composition of the team skillset. “It’s all quite reliant on the whole team—my background in product development and the creative sync between me and Jimmy (Pask), which has been very cool.”

The Perfectionist’s Crucible

Ball’s dedication to structural rigour was unlocked and fused with a profound creativity during his formative years in London, particularly at Dandelyan. It was here he realised the power of going beyond the surface of a spirit.

“I thrived in that kind of creative environment,” he recalls. “I was quite good at understanding [and] researching... and then when to stop—and more importantly, when not to stop—the deep dive.” He notes that, ultimately, “I think the more you understand the ingredients, the better result you get out of them.”

This experience in the importance of integrity and mastery of the process later clarified the difference between consulting and true creative quality control, leading to his commitment at Woodward St.

“I needed more. I needed to sink my teeth into something other than producing on a pilot still, then handing them off to somebody else for them to be made with no knowledge of what’s actually happening in the process. A lot of blind stuff going on from a product development side and off the back of that, lots of mistakes, and often I would end up down the rabbit warren, trying to work out how those mistakes happened (to fix them).”

The motivation was clear: “I was looking for the chance to take on the next step in my distillation. I wanted to be a distiller. I am now.“ The commitment is to relentlessly uphold the standard: “When you want to do something properly, you have to, you have to continue to put the love in and continue to do it properly, because as soon as you try and make a shortcut, then it changes.”

Woodward St: The Full Expression

So here he is, no longer trying to fix other people’s shortcuts or creating flavour story backwards. 100% responsible for… making his own mistakes? You can be sure, on the rare occasion he may make a misstep, he’ll already know why before he starts cleaning it up.

”I’m just looking for an understanding across the board that hey, it doesn’t need to be super hard. And we don’t need to over complicate a lot of these things if we do it properly from the get-go. And even if you do over complicate it, well it doesn’t have to be the whole focus, you know, I’m always learning.”

Ball joined the team after the initial planning, but was “instrumental in the still process and what we were going to put in the space.”

He recalls: “How we can make a really small space work as effectively as possible, I mean, if you’ve walked past or you’ve seen it, it’s very small for a wee 300-litre pot still. And how we can make this space not only super cool, but incredibly beautiful. It’s been very well designed.”

Today, that vision is tangible. The corner site, designed with architect Alistair Cox, is an experience centre—a physical manifesto for Ball’s creative ethos. The full structure of the brand house is taking shape, alongside Cox’s vision for Woodward St as a social hub, even the possibility of daylighting the Kumutoto stream that still runs underneath.

Woodward St is already delivering on the promise of a maker who has finally found a space where his principles, world-class hospitality experience, and uncompromising flavour focus can fully converge, (metaphorical) sparkly disco lights and all. “I think proof of approachable quality, is probably the one of the big parts that I’m personally looking for,” he concludes.

It’s a rare and beautiful thing when a company’s public face finally catches up to its soul. I’ll admit, when I heard Hancocks Wines, Spirits & Beer Merchants had given itself a spit-and-polish, my internal cynic took a deep breath and poured a gin. After all, the trade knows the business as Hancocks. They’re a cornerstone. Why mess with the recipe? The Jakicevich head coach surely knows better than to mess with that kind of tradition?

Then I read the new, not-so-new name: Hancocks Family Merchants.

And suddenly, that gin morphed into a cask-strength, complex single malt. Satisfying. Layered. Depth appeared in the glass.

Launched at the always highly anticipated annual tradeshow, the rebrand is more than a lick of vibrant neon green paint. Take a bit of time and you’ll see this isn’t a marketing stunt either; it’s an absolute bullseye. Embracing that Hancocks remains 100% family-owned and that the incredibly cool, highly skilled, colourful and occasionally chaotic work colleagues are actually... part of the family. And that is the fuel revving the business up for the future, when others are battening down the hatches.

From Shorthand to Strategy

Let’s not pretend for a second that anyone in the trade ever used the full, verbose previous name for anything other than official documents. For decades, they’ve simply been Hancocks. They’ve been the rep you call, the reliable warehouse that moves the stock and the home of some of the world’s most desirable brands.

Owner Joe Jakicevich is refreshingly direct about the shift: “For years, we’ve focused on being a house of brands. Now, it’s time we rebranded the house itself. The change to Hancocks Family Merchants isn’t just a nod to our family’s stewardship; it’s a promise to our staff and partners that they are part of our enduring story.”

As Paul Holmes, the marketing manager, confirmed, “Hancocks will always be shorthand in the trade.” That familiar anchor is vital. But the full new name signals something deeper. It’s a deliberate move to leverage the immense, quiet trust they’ve built and monetise their culture. This is the commercial genius of the rebrand.

The Human Element: Why Mentorship and Humour Matter

The four pillars that emerged from Hancocks’ deep dive—Family, People, Trust, and Service—are exactly what you hear when you’re talking to people in the trade. But it’s the quiet cultural threads that truly reinforce them.

There’s a legacy of mentorship that many employees speak of - being “brought through” by someone else in the business. Several staff members I spoke to reflected on being taken under the wing of an old hand, an experience shared by other family members working in the business. That’s the Hancocks DNA—it’s not a formal system; it’s organic in the way they operate.

Those sometimes chaotic and incredibly cool colleagues? It’s a celebration of individuality in a business doesn’t just tolerate difference; it embraces it, according to Paul.

That’s fed through a regular schedule of bringing people together; quarterly hui, the chook & garden roster and the yearly table tennis championship. They work together, laugh together and more importantly look out for each other. And you don’t have to spend much time with the Hancocks team to know their litany of table games, rituals and traditions are part of the strong storytelling instinct that builds trust, authenticity and a sense of connection that extends to the brands they represent, as well as the ones they are building.

As Paul confirmed, “Hancocks will always be shorthand in the trade.” That familiar anchor is vital. But the full new name, Hancocks Family Merchants, signals something deeper. It’s a deliberate move to leverage the immense, quiet trust they’ve built and monetise their culture.

This is the commercial genius of the rebrand. It takes an intangible asset—the family-run feel, the long-term relationships—and makes it the primary selling point and focus of how the business will continue to move forward and navigate complex waters.

Longevity is Built, Not Bought

The rebrand isn’t just a cosy throwback; it’s a strategic lens for the future. The Jakicevich family’s multi-generational stewardship gives them a rare 10–20 year horizon on their decisions, focusing on longevity over short-term gains, something that has been consistently present since the family purchased Hancocks in 1991 with the intention of rebuilding the company’s legacy.

And that long-term thinking is actually built into their Auckland home, Te Whare Tuuranga, which they moved into in 2021.

Hancock’s cultural pillars are also tied to a strategic investment in sustainable infrastructure. The purpose-built Te Whare Tuuranga facility is fitted with 480 solar panels—meeting 100% of the site’s energy needs in 2023 through generation and purchased RECs—and harvests 50,000 litres of rainwater. This captured water is then used to maintain the onsite 40 square metre community vegetable garden and, yes, the chicken coop housing their 96 free-range hens. When you need a boost of daily goodness, a quick glimpse at the Chicken Camera or Solar Dashboard does the job.

These unique, community-focused assets—which provide fresh eggs and produce to staff (saving them an estimated $27,000 annually)—are direct, measurable outcomes of the company’s embedded commitment to people, planet, and multi-generational stewardship.

This is not just fluffy HR. This is a distributor running on solar power and rainwater, leveraging massive operational efficiency (lowered utility costs, high insulation ratings, streamlined logistics) to provide a deeply rooted, value-driven work environment. That means staff stay longer, staff know their product better, and the service is more reliable.

Investing in the Next Generation of Brands

The true health check of a distributor is not just who they keep, but who they attract. The new ‘Family Merchants’ banner acts as a beacon for like-minded partners—brands looking for stability and genuine partnership, not just shelf space. This year alone, the portfolio has expanded to include exciting agencies like The Maker (wines exclusive to the on-premise trade, designed by Kim Crawford), the practical bar solution of Re’al Cocktail Ingredients, Teremana tequila, Asian powerhouses Hani and Bohae, and new focus on heritage European brands alongside blockbuster beers Michaelob, Modelo and Budweiser. This strategic selection confirms their agile nature—they are staying grounded while actively positioning themselves for the next growth cycles in local, premium, and bar-focused categories. They are consistently poised to deliver depth, experience and the right product at the right time to customer demand.

The Business Impact They Hope to See

The enthusiasm sparked by the rebrand is designed to drive tangible business benefits in a tough market.

1. Retention and Engagement: Internally, the uplift in staff pride is about reducing churn and maintaining that high level of service. Engaged employees who see their stories reflected in the new identity, and who get free eggs from the backyard, are better salespeople and better partners.

2. Deeper Collaboration: Externally, the shift to Family Merchants has immediately opened up deeper conversations with partners and suppliers. Paul noted it’s a “cultural signal that Hancocks is doubling down on relationships.” This means securing better long-term brand partnerships, winning exclusive distribution rights, and fostering resilient supply chains—all vital competitive advantages. The new name ‘invites trust’, ensuring customers feel part of something enduring, rather than being treated as just another transaction.

3. Agility and Resilience: They are a company that is willing to put on more staff when the market compresses, relying on their strong values to guide difficult decisions. This multi-generational lens helps them “stay grounded while remaining agile,” which translates to stability for every brand and customer they serve.

Hancocks Family Merchants is a warm, and utterly relevant rebrand. It even has a quirky and heartfelt story delivered by Joe, Jedda and Tonci Jakicevich. The ‘new, not-so-new’ logo was sitting in front of them the whole time, a stencilled design found on an old Hancocks bottle that has long sat in the company’s office. This historic mark pays homage to Hancocks’ 1859 heritage, now reimagined with a modern pop of colour, symbolising the fusion of tradition and innovation.

It proves that a deep, genuine investment in people—the staff, the partners, and the customers—is not an expense, but the most powerful asset a modern distributor can possess. It manages to honour the craft of their legacy while embracing a future built on relationships and resilience.

And Paul says the rebrand to Hancocks Family Merchants has sparked a genuine sense of pride and renewed purpose across the organisation.

”Internally, it’s created a stronger emotional connection to the company’s legacy and future — especially among long-serving team members who see their own stories reflected in the new identity. There’s a noticeable uplift in engagement, with staff leaning into the values and history that underpin the name. Externally, partners and suppliers have responded positivity. The rebrand has opened deeper conversations about shared values and long-term collaboration. It’s not just a name change — it’s a cultural signal that Hancocks is doubling down on relationships, heritage, and future-facing thinking.”

And no, I don’t work for Hancocks. But I would. Which is really saying something. Maybe it’s the family, maybe it’s the storytelling. But there’s a boldness to being so open about what a name can mean, that tells you something about how this family might have your back in times of trouble. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to find out who’s responsible for the table tennis championship trophy.

What do you think is the trickiest part for a long-established company trying to honour their history while modernising their image? It’s a delicate balancing act and there are more than one or two legacy businesses going through it. Send me your thoughts.

This week, bartenders around the world will pour hundreds of thousands of Negronis and while Campari will probably make millions from those sales, the descendants of Count Negroni won’t make a cent—unless they are working for someone in the supply chain. Why? Because their ancestor invented a drink so famous, no one can own it and no royalties apply. Not even for Campari, the only proprietary ingredient in the recipe.

The Law of the Drink: Your Cocktail, Your Rules (and Someone Else’s)

Every now and then, I’ll be at a bar and something incredible lands in front of me. Maybe it’s a really clever twist on a classic, or a name so sharp it makes me smile before I even take a sip. Usually, it’s something so unique and delicious, I’m intrigued. You fall in love with it, you ask for the spec and the next thing you know, you’ve got the ingredients list scribbled on a napkin or shorthanded in the Notes app on your phone. Then you’re in your own prep kitchen, wrangling the measures and you wonder if you’ve nailed it or failed completely. Maybe a little tweak or two, maybe the perfect representation and then you wonder… Can I just put someone else’s recipe on the menu? What are the ethics and legalities of using other people’s recipes or cocktail names?

The short answer is: you probably shouldn’t. And the reason for that little hiccup lies in a bizarre legal dance between copyright and trademark law. While the global principles are similar, here in Aotearoa—some things are fair game, and others are very much off-limits.

Let’s start with the easy one: the recipe itself.

The Recipe: A Love Letter, Not a Law

When you’re reading a recipe in a book, on a menu, or a website, that specific text—the flow, the phrasing, the little story about how the creator came up with it—is protected by copyright under the Copyright Act 1994. It’s an original creative work, just like a poem or a song. This is why the head notes of a recipe are so important, including the way you express your original idea conceptions and how you arrived at the variations.

But here’s the key part: copyright protects the expression, not the idea. You can absolutely learn the ingredients and the proportions of that drink and make it for yourself. You can even write your own version of the recipe in your own words. Copyright has no problem with you stirring up a storm in your own living room; it only cares if you steal the love letter itself, not the technique behind it. Think of it like this: anyone can write a song about lost love, but you can’t use the exact lyrics to “Yesterday.”

The Name: Where Things Get Personal

The real power play in the spirits world is with the name. This is where trademark law steps in. A trademark is a word, phrase, or logo that identifies the source of a product or service. When it comes to a cocktail, it’s all about protecting that unique name and the reputation it carries.

Goslings vs. Pernod Ricard
One of the most famous examples is the Dark ‘n Stormy^®. Yes, you read that ^® right. You might think it’s just a combination of dark rum and ginger beer. And it is. But the name “Dark ‘n Stormy” is a registered trademark of Goslings Rum in many countries, including the US.

When Pernod Ricard released their “Dark N’ Stormy” and “Black Stormy” cocktails on the Malibu Rum website, they were considered just too close for comfort for Goslings. Goslings won a trademark infringement lawsuit in the US, meaning any drink marketed as a “Dark ‘n Stormy” must use the authentic recipe featuring Gosling’s Black Seal Rum.

Most importantly, the ruling meant bars serving a “Dark ‘n Stormy” with any other rum could face legal action from Goslings.The dispute highlighted just how seriously Goslings takes its legacy—and its recipes. They argued that using similar names would confuse customers and dilute the brand’s reputation.

While the general principle applies, for that name to be legally protected in New Zealand, it would need to be registered with the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand (IPONZ). And guess what - it is. So think carefully about what you name that ginger beer and rum concoction.

Another lesser known example is the Pusser’s Painkiller. Pusser’s Rum trademarked the name for its creamy, tropical concoction of rum, cream of coconut, pineapple, and orange juice. Just like the Dark ‘n Stormy, if a bar isn’t using Pusser’s Rum, it can’t sell a drink by that name in countries where the trademark is registered. (Yep, it’s also registered here, but Pusser’s Rum is hard to get hold of and I’m yet to see this drink on a menu).

The Most Powerful Storm
The reason trademarks are so powerful is that they prevent consumer confusion. They tell you that when you order a Dark ‘n Stormy, you’re getting the genuine article from the people who created it. It protects both the brand and, ultimately, you. This is why a name like “Vodka Soda” is not trademarkable—it’s merely descriptive. It’s not distinct enough to be a brand identity.

So should you rush to trademark every new creation you think will take the drinks world by storm? Probably not. Just because it’s trademarked, doesn’t make it famous.

So Famous, No One Can Own It

How do you know you’ve really created a iconic recipe? It’s so famous, no one can own it. Which is why the descendants of Count Negroni don’t earn a cent from the millions of Negronis served this week or will earn a cut from every bottle of Campari sold. It’s because the cocktail and its name have entered the public domain. When Count Camillo Negroni requested a stronger Americano with gin in 1919, he wasn’t creating a product to be sold on a shelf, but rather a modification of an existing recipe. He never trademarked the name “Negroni” or filed for any legal protection, and it soon became a generic term for a widely accepted recipe without proprietary ingredients.

Because the recipe and its name were never legally protected, they are now considered part of the public lexicon, free for anyone to use, create, and sell without owing royalties to the Negroni family. This is why Campari does not have a legal entitlement to the Negroni or Americano cocktails; they are simply classic recipes where Campari is a key ingredient, but not a proprietary element of the drink. While Campari actively promotes its role in these drinks to boost its brand and works with organisations like the International Bartenders Association (IBA) to solidify its status as the official ingredient, the recipes themselves remain in the public domain. This highlights the crucial distinction between a brand’s promotional partnership with a cocktail and actual legal ownership of the drink.

The Secret Ingredient: The Final Boss

What if you’ve got a recipe that’s so unique, so special, you want to protect it entirely? In New Zealand, the protection for this sort of thing falls under trade secrets, which are primarily protected by common law and contracts, rather than a specific Act. Think of the Coca-Cola formula—it’s a secret held in a vault.

For a cocktail, a trade secret might be a proprietary blend of bitters, a unique house-made syrup with a secret ingredient, or a specific process that no one else knows. As long as you keep it under lock and key and have agreements in place like an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement), the law protects you from someone trying to steal that confidential information.

And these days, it’s every recipe creators dream — to create something so unique it becomes iconic. A new classic.

The Bartender’s Legacy: Your Name on a Glass

For bartenders and consultants creating a drink for a bar or a brand, the legal situation is often a matter of contract law. As with any intellectual property created during employment, unless a specific agreement states otherwise, the rights to the creation often belong to the employer. This means the bar or brand would likely own the trademark for the cocktail’s name, and the “expression” of the recipe (if it’s ever written down by them). This is the kind of small print clause you want to review your contract for or if you’re consulting — be extremely clear with your client as to exactly what they are purchasing from you and the license to use the recipe and/or technical specs exclusively.

However, a creator’s legacy is rarely just about legal ownership. Take Dick Bradsell, for example, the legendary British bartender credited with inventing the Espresso Martini and the Bramble. While he created the Espresso Martini for a customer in the 1980s, the name itself was never legally trademarked by him. His enduring association with the drink comes from his reputation and the widespread public acknowledgment of his role in its creation, not from a specific legal document. This “moral ownership” is often the most powerful form of recognition a bartender can have in the industry, even without a formal trademark. So too with the Cosmopolitan, credited to Toby Cecchini, who developed his modern recipe at The Odeon in New York City, 1988.

Think Naked & Famous, developed by Joaquin Simo at Death & Co in 2011, making it a relatively recent addition to the cocktail world, notes Difford’s Guide. It joins a collection of what the IBA calls “new era cocktails”, recipes so pervasive and widespread in the last 25-30 years, they form the new lexicon of modern classics. And let’s be honest - some of those drinks are older than the bartenders serving them which begs the question what comes after the new era?

The Paper Plane is a harmonious blend of bourbon, Aperol, Amaro Nonino, and fresh lemon juice, created in the 2000s by Sam Ross. Sam was actually working at Milk & Honey in New York at the time, but created the drink for another venue. He also penned the Penicillin, another drink that feels like it’s been around forever but is only about 20 years old.

The major difference? While the history and authorship of many classics that fueled the cocktail renaissance of the early 2000s are lost to the ether of time, modern technology has enabled the authorship of these new drinks to be retained and recorded by writers and historians like Simon Difford, Gary Regan, Dave Wondrich, Jim Meehan, Sasha Petraske and Jeffrey Morgenthaler to name just a few. You can even still grab a drink in some of the bars these great drinks were created.

Yet, we still neglect to list spirits by name on our cocktail menus, let alone the recipe creators and we rarely take the time to credit the luscious, rich history by which these precious recipes and techniques came to us.

Surely No One Would Prosecute Me?

Employment and contract law in New Zealand is pretty clear cut about Intellectual Property and Confidential Information. You’re most at risk if you walk out of one job and into another with a notebook full of proprietary specs and processes if you’ve signed a contract that says any work you created while under employment belongs to the bar or the brand. Just the same as confidential information like budgeting forecasts, contracts and competitive pricelists. And similarly, most of the time your creative knowledge travels with you but you have to leave the recipes behind.

Creating Legacy

The chasing of new ‘classics’ is far from over. Bartenders are actively creating drinks that transcend menus and enter the public consciousness, particularly through hospitality networks. Bacardi Legacy is based on the premise.

Unlike trademark law, which protects a name for a company, competitions are all about building a bartender’s legacy. And brand/bartender partnerships can create iconic recipes that transcend culture (although I’m still not sure anyone immediately thinks Goslings when they read Dark ‘n Stormy on a menu). A Legacy Drink is simple, reproducible, and has a compelling story—a drink that can be made anywhere, by anyone, and will be remembered long after the competition is over. A drink’s legacy is built on deliciousness, reputation and public adoption rather than legal protection.

So, in the end, the law of the drink is pretty simple: you can copy the recipe, you can even copy a name but you can’t copy the trademarks (at least, not in the countries where it’s trademarked). What we can do a better job of is narrating history and the story of how that drink you loved made it’s way from a napkin spec to your menu in your bar.

And now you have a good story to tell the next time you’re at a bar and spot a “Stormy Night” on the menu that looks an awful lot like a classic Dark ‘n Stormy.

New Zealand bartenders - here’s your chance to create a remarkable Del Maguey serve that speaks to Family, using VIDA or Chichicapa.

Del Maguey has been ensuring the preservation and sustainability of ancient traditions and the future of the families who make their mezcals for over 20 years. Family is everything - particularly when these local village mezcals have changed the future of the families at the core of the product. Want to read more? You can read more about Mezcal and Del Maguey here.

The Brief

• The competition is open Monday 10^th June til July 31^st

• You must create your cocktail using VIDA or Chichicapa, and have it listed in your venue for 4 weeks

  • Winners announced August 8^th

• Winners will need to be available for the final during Sydney Bar Week

  • Tuesday 10^th Sept

• 2x NZ Bartenders will be flown to Sydney for the final

• The winner of the final will win a trip to Oaxaca!

You know the drill - don’t miss your chance to experience an authentic expression of family, great mezcal and Oaxaca!

TWO WEEKS LEFT TO ENTER!

The annual Roots Gin 'Show Us You Roots' cocktail competition is open with just two weeks left to enter.

One winner from across New Zealand will join the award-winning distilling team to create the 2024 Show Us Your Roots Gin Expression...an all-expenses paid trip for two to Marlborough.

Create a cocktail using one of Roots' core range (Marlborough Dry, Norwester, Rosso) which best represents your roots - an opportunity to create your own story in aroma, taste and sensory experience. Enter here.

Check out previous winners here at Roots Cabal.

Get entering people, you've got until the 27th May to get them in!

The Hennessy MyWay 2024 Challenge has launched, a global cocktail competition to discover the finest, most sustainable cocktail with the most memorable service ritual, for the world’s #1 luxury spirit brand. Inspired by the Cognac House’s centuries-long pursuit of excellence and its pioneering spirit in environmental field.

To launch the cocktail challenge here for the first time, Jordan Bushell, the global Hennessy brand ambassador, will host a series of exclusive events and masterclasses throughout Australia and New Zealand, joined by Alex Zanarini, the ANZ ambassador. Together, they will equip you with all the tools to become the next Hennessy MyWay champion by delving into the world's leading luxury spirit brand. They will explore key elements of the competition, such as highlighting local ingredients, methods, sustainability, and showcasing unique service rituals. Each event will also include a Hennessy cocktail on arrival and an exclusive tasting of Hennessy Very Special, V.S.O.P Privilege and X.O led by Jordan.

Bartenders are invited to come along to an event and participate in Hennessy MyWay, a quest to discover the most innovative and sustainable cocktail creations paired with spectacular serving rituals.  On offer are cash prizes of €1000 for top 50 finalists with the top 10 invited to Paris and Cognac to compete in the live final in October, alongside some of Hennessy’s rarest cognac blends.

Auckland – Monday April 15^th 12:30PM – 2:30PM
Tommy’s Champagne Parlour, Seafarers
RSVP Here
featuring guest speaker Jason Clark, owner of Bedford Soda & Liquor, and author of The Art & Craft of Coffee Cocktails.

For full competition details visit https://myway.hennessy.com/

Manzo Gets the Teresa Treatment

Teresa Bar is coming to Auckland to take over Manzo's Mezzanine Bar in Remuera for a limited time only, April 18th-20th & 24th-27th.

Andrea Marseglia will craft exciting cocktails infused with foraged and seasonal produce & herbs straight from Hawke's Bay, a showcase of some of the finest hospitality and cocktail craftsmanship New Zealand has to offer. Don't miss out on this limited opportunity.

April 18th-20th & 24th-27th. Bookings online at Manzo.

Tokki Tokes Up

tokki_nz

A post shared by @tokki_nz

Tokki ‘Canteen’ is a special Monday night pop-up, open for eight consecutive weeks, April 15th until June 3rd. The offering will change weekly, promising collaboration and creativity in each Monday menu with some of Auckland’s best talent showcasing their skill. Can’t tell you who, but promise you won’t want to miss a moment or a Monday.

April 15th - June 3rd, open from 5.30pm, no bookings required.

2nd February - The Reid Global Cocktail Competition is open for entries

20th February - Spirited Awards nominations close

22nd February - The Cocchi Futurist competition closes for entries

29th February - Entries open for the NZ Spirit Awards

All month - The Perfect Blend is in build up to the regional finals with bartenders promoting and slinging their drinks in bar and talking it up online.

MARCH

March 26th - 28th - The Drammys Judging

29th March - The Reid Global Cocktail Competition Round One online entries close

APRIL

18^th April - The Drammys Awards

MAY

14th May / 13th May 2024 (US)Tickets for Tales of the Cocktail go on sale.

14th May / 13th May 2024 (US) World Cocktail Day

JUNE

JULY

July 17th – 19th - The Rumbles Judging

AUGUST

4 - 6th August - NZ Bar Convent

15^th August - The Rumbles Awards

SEPTEMBER



OCTOBER

October 21st -22nd - The Junipers Judging

NOVEMBER

20^th November - The Junipers Awards

DECEMBER

The team at Tickety-boo Liquor are driving forward the Cocchi competition - inviting participants to think creatively about how vermouth can be used to drive complexity and sensory exploration in fizz and lower ABV options. The rules are simple — 30ml Cocchi minimum and 5 ingredient maximum (ice and garnish excluded).

Round 1 – Online Submission (closes 22nd February!)

12 Semi Finalists from across NZ will be selected for Round 2!

Round 2 – Mystery Judging (19th March-1st April)
Mystery judges will score semi-finallist cocktails in-venue to try their cocktails where they will be scored against the judging criteria. Top 6 scoring drinks will move on to round 3!

Round 3 – FINAL (16th April – 19th April) // PRIZE ROUND

6 Finalists will get treated to a proper Italian style 2 day trip to the beautiful Martinborough. Filled with hospitality, food, wine, masterclasses, workshops, mindfulness. Shared with an awesome group of top NZ bartenders. Before travelling back to their regions, they will then spend a day in Wellington to compete for the winning title - NZ 'Cocchi Futurist' 2024.

Contact Gina Nicholls gina@ticketyboo.co.nz for more information

Tales of the Cocktail, July 21-26, 2024, in New Orleans, where the 2024 theme, “Inspire,” aims to entice and challenge the global drinks industry to embrace future thinking.

Tickets will be on sale on World Cocktail Day, May 13, 2024. Subscribe to the newsletter for tickets on-sale reminders and mark your calendars.

Spirited Awards

Don’t be late. Want to be noticed? Submit your nominations.

Nominations for the 2024 Spirited Awards are now open. Submit your nominations to recognize excellence in the global spirits industry. One nomination is all it takes to be considered for the 2024 Spirited Awards. Self-nominations are accepted and encouraged.

Nominations are due by February 20, 2024, at 11:59 PM ET.