Welcome in, today is Tuesday, July twenty-eighth, and we begin with Brown-Forman's board turning away a renewed approach from Sazerac, per Just Drinks. Brown-Forman's board has rejected a fresh, unsolicited takeover proposal from Sazerac, according to Just Drinks. The board says it received the offer on Sunday and concluded it was, in its words, not actionable. Terms were not disclosed. That makes a second rejected approach since the spring, and it leaves the ownership question open over one of American whiskey's anchor portfolios. Per that same account, a group of Brown family members holding the majority of Class A shares opposed the proposal, saying the company is well-positioned to deliver long-term value and that the offer does not align with that vision. Sazerac had bid roughly fifteen billion dollars, or thirty-two dollars a share, in April, and was turned down in May. The Lexington Herald Leader, citing the Wall Street Journal, reports Sazerac reiterated that cash bid on Friday, with backing from Wells Fargo and Apollo Global Management. TD Cowen analyst Seamus Cassidy, quoted by Just Drinks, said he suspects the renewed offer was prompted by Brown-Forman's chief executive succession news, and that family control remains the key obstacle to any change of control. Industry reaction leans toward reading the voting structure, rather than the price, as the decisive factor. Also today, the RNDC unwind has reached its formal end. Following our earlier reporting on the company's market exits and on suppliers chasing payments, Republic National Distributing has filed for Chapter Eleven bankruptcy in Texas, with the vast majority of its business already sold off and the filing covering the wind-down of what remains, according to Shanken News Daily. BevNET and Brewbound both report the filing lands after a year in which the distributor's footprint shrank substantially, with nearly all of its territories sold. Industry reaction leans toward treating this less as one company's failure than as a marker of structural change in beverage-alcohol distribution, and several observers describe it as widely anticipated rather than a surprise. A recurring thread among practitioners is whether the shakeout in the middle tier strengthens the case for opening direct-to-consumer routes, framed by some as the more viable path for smaller and craft producers losing distribution. The practical question left for suppliers is where the remaining books, brands and unsecured claims land as the middle tier consolidates further. Staying with the numbers, the US wine market is projected to slip three and a half percent this year, to below three hundred million nine-liter cases. That is a sixth straight year of volume decline, after a peak of some three hundred forty-four million cases in twenty twenty. The projection comes from Impact Databank, reported by Shanken News Daily as an exclusive, and we have not seen it matched elsewhere. For wine portfolios, that figure is the planning baseline for shelf allocation and depletion targets. Industry reaction leans toward reframing the decline as a positioning problem rather than pure demand loss, with a recurring view that still wine has been sold as a special-occasion purchase while beer, spirits and RTDs took the everyday moments. A contrarian thread cites consumer research suggesting younger drinkers already reach for wine casually, putting the constraint on trade messaging rather than intent. Continuing with the scans we have been tracking. The final week of the FIFA World Cup did little for off-premise beverage alcohol, with sales described as lackluster in the latest weekly read from Circana, per Brewbound. No figure has been reported in what we have seen. Coming after a Fourth of July that also barely registered, that gives planners a second tentpole in a month that did not convert. Industry reaction leans toward reading the weak finale as a category-mix story rather than a demand story. Several observers say the event lift concentrated in non-alcoholic options and ready-to-drink cocktails while beer lagged despite the heaviest sponsorship spend behind it, and a few treat the narrow set of beer winners as an early warning for the rest of the summer. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Grupo Cuervo posted second-quarter net sales down six percent, to five hundred sixty-four million dollars like-for-like, with organic volume off three point four percent, per Shanken News Daily. The company describes the US as sequentially improving. Edrington has struck a distribution partnership with Johnson Brothers in Indiana, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, on US volume of about three hundred seventy thousand cases, per Shanken News Daily. Brown-Forman stockholders re-elected all eleven director nominees and ratified Ernst and Young for fiscal twenty twenty-seven, per Nasdaq, and the board approved a quarterly dividend of twenty-three point one cents a share. US beer supply slipped back into the red in May after a positive April, according to the Beer Institute's monthly report, per Brewbound. And finally, Boston Beer is adjusting media spend and tempering its fiscal twenty twenty-six expectations, with Brewbound framing the overlap between Sun Cruiser and Twisted Tea as the pressure point.