Numlock News: August 8, 2025 • Whiskey Lighthouse, Big PBR Energy

Aug 08, 2025

By Dave Infante

Walt is out on vacation, and filling in today is Dave Infante, writer of the outstanding newsletter Fingers, an indie newsletter about drinking in America.

Alcohol has been in the news quite a bit recently thanks to Trump’s tariffs, public-health scrutiny and supposedly “sober-curious” Zoomers. I work this beat every day, so I figured I’d turn today’s edition of Numlock News into Numlock Booze. Cheers!

Risky Whiskey

With all due respect (?) to insufferable wine snobs and craft beer neckbeards, one of the most odious forms of American alcohol obsession this decade has been the “tater.” This hyper-consumerist bottle chaser has made it impossible to find mid-shelf bourbons like Blanton’s and Buffalo Trace that used to be relatively widely available. And his (or her, but mostly his) unquenchable thirst has created a robust target for online scammers. The most recently uncovered scheme included grifters from central Africa and Southeast Asia. They created fake Facebook profiles of industry-famous master distillers from which to peddle highly coveted bottles that are either cheap knockoffs or pure vaporware. A cybersecurity expert and part-time scam-buster in Louisville estimates that on a global scale, this type of con is worth some $100 million annually.

Janet Patton, Lexington Herald-Leader

Toasts Not Tariffs

After much prognostication and optimism among winemakers and distillers on both sides of the Atlantic, the United States slapped a 15% tariff on all wine and spirits imported from the European Union earlier this month. With the vagaries of the domestic booze trade mean, this barrier will harm not only American consumers but also all three of this country’s “tiers”— suppliers, distributors and retailers. Protectionism: it’s complicated! This is why 57 trade groups in the sector signed an open letter urging the transatlantic negotiators to bilaterally drop wine and liquor tariffs in the final agreement between the two parties.

Emma Rumney, Reuters

Distillery Digs

As demand for whiskey and bourbon starts to plateau stateside and as Trump’s trade war jeopardizes foreign markets, distillery owners who took on big loans for rosier growth projections are facing a bit of a squeeze, if not an outright loan call. Earlier this month, Uncle Nearest, Inc., a so-called “unicorn” liquor firm valued at over a billion dollars by Forbes in 2024, was sued by its bank for nine figures’ worth of unpaid debts. Among claims that the boutique brand overstated its inventory and loan eligibility, the lender, Farm Credit Mid America, also alleges that husband-and-wife cofounders Keith and Fawn Weaver used $2.25 million in loans to buy a hype house on Martha’s Vineyard via an unauthorized LLC in 2023. They then allegedly mortgaged the Edgartown mansion to an unrelated lender. The Weavers say the bank’s calls for receivership are “unwarranted,” in part because the former chief financial officer (who they blame for falsifying the barrelage) has since been fired.

Ferron Salniker, BevNET

Mead, Man

You can ferment honey into an alcoholic beverage called mead, and people have been doing so for millennia — it’s not exactly a new trend. Yet mead is punching way above its weight here in the 21st century, at least on the leading beer-ranking app Untappd. The nectar of the gods holds 13 of the top 50 spots despite being a vanishingly small market compared to beer. Meadmakers think this disproportionate success is due to their “melomels” and “metheglins” delivering big, surprising flavors to drinkers burned out on IPAs. Admittedly, it may have something to do with it. But the relatively high prices and relatively few points of comparison also appear to be driving the high scores, too.

Evan Rail, VinePair

Shipping Back to Boston

The craft brewing industry is amid something that insiders call a “second shakeout” and outsiders call “who cares, I’m burned out on IPAs.” The segment’s second-largest player, Boston Beer Company, doesn’t even make much money on actual beer. Samuel Adams and Dogfish Head are just drops in the ~~bucket~~ barrel compared to Twisted Tea on a volume basis. In these uncertain times, the firm’s septuagenarian cofounder and chairman, Jim Koch, is retaking the reins as chief executive officer, a position he hasn’t held in 24 years.

Laura Cooper, Wall Street Journal

Lighthouse Down

One of the longest-running legal battles in the American wine world recently came to an end after almost two decades. A coalition of 11 wineries in northern Michigan won a lawsuit against their local municipality over whether zoning rules that prohibited signage infringed on their free-speech rights. Last month, a federal judge ordered Peninsula Township to pay the wineries nearly $50 million in damages; this month, township officials have been brainstorming ways to come up with the cash. Selling Old Mission Peninsula’s historic Mission Point Lighthouse, built in 1870, is on the table.

Big PBR Energy

After being saved from insolvency by coastal hipsters’ collective sense of irony in the Aughts, Pabst Brewing Company, the country’s fifth-largest brewer by volume, is once again struggling. Between 2023 and 2024, the firm’s overall volumes declined by 5.6%. The newly introduced Pabst Light spinoff hasn’t made much of a splash either. So the brewery’s board is pinning the Blue Ribbon on somebody new: a former Pabst executive whose more recent experience has been at 1st Phorm International, a supplement company that just launched an energy drink with Pabst’s aspirational rival, Anheuser-Busch InBev.

Justin Kendall, Brewbound

Find Dave at his wonderful boozeletter, Fingers, an indie newsletter about drinking in America.

Send links to me on Twitter at @WaltHickey or email me with numbers, tips or feedback at walt@numlock.news. Send corrections or typos to the copy desk at copy@numlock.news.

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