Welcome in, today is Monday, August thirty-first, and we begin with The Wall Street Journal on European distillers holding more inventory than the world is drinking. The Wall Street Journal argues Europe's distillers have landed in the corporate equivalent of over-ordering for a party where half the guests never showed. That read puts producers with heavy United States exposure between two pressures at once: American tariffs on European Union imports, and global demand running softer than the plans those cellars were filled against. Cognac stocks aging in southwest France sit at the center of the argument. The gap between what is maturing and what is selling is what suppliers, importers and distributors will be pricing against for several quarters yet. Industry reaction leans toward reading the barrel overhang as a balance-sheet problem more than a tariff one, and a recurring caution is that cheap-looking spirits valuations mask stock laid down in better times, across bourbon, cognac, Irish whiskey and Scotch alike. Some also flag retaliatory consumer sentiment as a demand risk that could outlast the duties themselves. Also today, Pernod Ricard closed its fiscal year with organic sales down three point nine percent, to nine point four billion euros. Chief executive Alexandre Ricard told analysts the company is working to adapt faster to changing conditions, per Shanken News Daily. Robb Report carries the harder numbers underneath: United States sales down fourteen percent in the year to June thirtieth, China down nineteen percent, and guidance pointing at the low end of a three to six percent growth range through fiscal twenty twenty-nine. That account, citing Reuters, has the shares off six percent, and names Scotch as the steadier ground in the portfolio. This is the number two spirits group telling the market softness is a multiyear planning assumption, not a quarter to wait out. Industry reaction leans toward treating that guidance as confirmation of a structural rather than cyclical downturn, with some naming low and no alcohol lines and RTD extensions as the more credible near-term growth lane. Indiana now has a buyer. Morales Beverage Group, the distribution arm of Mexcor International, has signed a letter of intent for Republic National Distributing Company's Indiana assets and operations, the companies announced, per Shanken News Daily, BevNET and Brewbound. That reporting has the deal taking Morales to six states. It is a letter of intent, not a closed deal. This follows our earlier reporting on Breakthru Beverage walking away from RNDC's Indiana and Kentucky books, and on KEG One River City stepping in for Kentucky. Both of the walked deals have now drawn a fresh suitor inside a month, which narrows the open question of where the wind-down's remaining territory lands. Industry reaction at the small end of the supply base leans less to footprint than to fallout, with some producers describing unpaid invoices and unauthorized discounting during the wind-down, and a recurring doubt that a wider distribution map answers a demand problem. Separately, Sazerac is deploying capital elsewhere while its fifteen billion dollar approach for Brown-Forman sits unresolved. Shanken News Daily reports that bid has so far failed to gain traction, and that the company, the top volume player in United States spirits at some forty-seven million cases per Impact Databank, has agreed to buy the United Kingdom's Au Vodka in a deal reported at five hundred million pounds, about six hundred seventy-seven million dollars. Food Dive reports Sazerac confirmed the acquisition without a price and expects it to close within weeks. Au Vodka sells flavored vodka and canned cocktails, entered the United States in twenty twenty-two, and is on shelves in eight states and online in thirty-five, per that account. At home, Shanken has Fireball launching a limited-time Torch'd Vanilla expression into national distribution at thirty-three percent alcohol. The same reporting has Fireball down six percent in NielsenIQ channels over four weeks, even as Sazerac's overall dollar sales rose four point two percent. That is a large private supplier pushing capital into RTD and overseas footprint while its headline deal stalls. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. The Wall Street Journal reports the Brown family, controlling owners of Brown-Forman for more than a hundred and fifty years, is fending off a takeover approach amid a rift among its heirs. USA Today reports the Supreme Court has been asked to review the nearly hundred-and-sixty-year-old federal ban on home distilling, after two appeals courts split on whether it is constitutional. And finally, NIQ's weekly off-premise scans held consistent through mid-August, with beer leading the year-over-year declines, per Brewbound, following our earlier report on the corrected Circana figures.