Nabca recently released the control state results for July, 2016, which reflect a slight drop in nine-liter spirit case sales and volume. Sales fell at a 4.2% rate, while rolling 12 month volume grew only 2.6%, a 0.7% decrease from June. A calendar anomaly was largely responsible for the downward trends. This anomaly can be best described by Michigan’s calendar, which “reported four weeks of sales this year versus five weeks of sales during July, 2015, artificially deflating growth and skewing Control States results. Michigan had seven fewer selling days during this year’s July than during last year’s.” After taking that into consideration, the results slightly improved. For example, July’s shelf dollar growth rate was up 2.7% compared to being down 2.4% without equivalizing sales due to the variations. Similar to June of this year, Irish whiskey was July’s fastest growing category in control states. While it grew 7.3%, all other major spirit categories saw decreases except tequila, which stayed neutral with a growth rate of 0.0%. In regards to wine, nine-liter case sales also had negative growth rates in several control state markets.
Source: NABCA