Welcome in, today is Wednesday, August fifth, and we begin with Morgan Stanley's read on the latest four weeks of U.S. retail scans. Morgan Stanley reports U.S. retail alcohol trends improved modestly in the four weeks ended July twenty-fifth, with spirits benefiting from the back end of the FIFA Club World Cup while beer stayed subdued. Per that account, the tournament's drinking likely skewed to bars and restaurants rather than the off-trade channels NielsenIQ tracks, which is the caution for anyone reading the improvement as a trend rather than a one-off. The same reporting puts Diageo's U.S. spirits sales down nine and a half percent year over year, a shade worse than its twelve-week trend, with share lost in both value and volume. Pernod Ricard was down seven percent, Rémy Cointreau three point four, and Campari one point four, each an improvement on its twelve-week run rate. Moët Hennessy moved the other way, down two point one percent against a zero point six percent decline over twelve weeks. In beer, Anheuser-Busch InBev fell three point two percent while gaining value and volume share, and Heineken was down seven point six percent while still ceding modest share. Industry reaction leans cautious, with some in the trade reading the scanner uptick as narrower than the headline suggests. Also today, a name is attached to one of the pieces of the RNDC estate. Following our earlier reporting on the Chapter Eleven filing and on buyers circling what remains, Shanken News Daily reports New York Wine and Spirits, part of Manhattan Beer and Beverage, has acquired the distribution rights to a collection of brands previously handled by RNDC New York, effective August third. Terms of the previously announced deal were not disclosed, and that account does not name the brands moving. It resettles route-to-market in the largest U.S. market, and sets a reference point for how the remaining territories land. Industry reaction tends to read the New York handoff as one step in a larger unwind rather than an isolated deal, and a recurring concern in the channel is unsettled money, with some questioning whether acquiring distributors inherit balances outstanding for months. Staying with the data, Brewbound reports total beverage alcohol sales fell both year over year and week over week in the latest Circana weekly scans, with weakness in beer, in that report's phrasing, too much for the rest of the category to overcome. That account carries no figures beyond the direction of travel. It is an off-premise shelf read, and it is exactly the evidence base that category-mix and shelf-space arguments get settled on. Some practitioners push back on treating the weekly decline as the whole picture, noting scans can miss per-account velocity in draft and taproom channels, and a recurring counterpoint is that non-alcoholic beer and ready-to-drink formats keep growing sharply even as the category slips. Separately, an update from Bordeaux. Following our earlier report on fires reaching the region's outskirts, The Drinks Business reports the wildfires are still burning amid extreme heat, and that President Emmanuel Macron has described the situation as the toughest France has faced since the Second World War. That reporting frames the region as confronting a growing environmental crisis, and puts no figure on vineyard damage; the scale of any loss remains unconfirmed. With harvest approaching in a benchmark region, what is unresolved is the vintage itself, and how buyers price climate exposure into it. A recurring point in industry-adjacent reaction is that the flames may not be the main commercial risk, with some practitioners flagging smoke taint, where grapes take up smoke compounds before picking, as the harder problem to reverse. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Campari's first-half profit fell even as organic sales grew, and the group raised its full-year margin outlook on a friendlier tariff environment, per The Drinks Business. Heineken zero point zero has tapped Serena Williams for a US Open promotion reviving old ticket stubs from her past tournaments, according to MediaPost. The Senate Appropriations Committee has added language to a funding bill keeping hemp THC and full-spectrum CBD products legal through December eleventh, a month past the ban, per Shanken News Daily. And finally, TheStreet argues MGP Ingredients front-ran RNDC's collapse, moving ten markets to Reyes Beverage Group in June and booking a two point one million dollar credit-loss provision.