Welcome in, today is Tuesday, September eighth, and we begin in France, where preliminary government figures reported by Just Drinks point to one of the smallest wine harvests in thirty years. France is heading for one of its smallest wine harvests in three decades. That is from preliminary figures published by the French government, reported by Just Drinks. That account sets the comparison against thirty years of vintages, and puts no final volume on the crop. For anyone contracting French wine or bulk volume into twenty twenty-seven, a shortfall on that scale sets the floor under price talks before the negotiating season opens. Industry reaction leans toward reading it as structural rather than one poor year, with recurring references to record-early picking dates and to vine planting creeping into cooler northern regions as the more telling signal. Some in the trade separate volume from quality, noting the small crop still ripened well. A related strand of consumer sentiment worries that scarcity framing mainly feeds price escalation and speculation. Also today, the beer category's summer softness looks less uniform than the headline direction suggested. Brewbound reports that some top brands are running a late-summer boost in spite of the slump, according to the latest weekly off-premise scans from Circana. That account carries no figures beyond the direction of travel. It follows our earlier report that the rut was likely to hold until Labor Day, and it changes the question going into the fall reset, from whether volume is leaving the category to whether it is moving between brands. Some practitioners caution against reading single-week scans as category verdicts, since rival providers measure different store universes and windows and can point opposite ways. Separately, Pernod Ricard has engaged at least four investment banks for a proposed listing of its India unit. That is Moneycontrol, citing people familiar with the matter, and we have not seen it matched elsewhere. Per that reporting, Kotak Mahindra Capital, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and BofA Securities are mandated, and one person put the issue above a billion dollars in twenty twenty-seven, with no final call on size or structure. Pernod Ricard India told the outlet the discussion is ongoing and exploratory, with no certainty as to implementation. India is the group's second-largest market by sales, so a listing would put a public valuation on the growth engine the majors keep pointing to. That same reporting notes Carlsberg has already filed confidentially for an India listing. Industry reaction dwells less on the bankers than on reported leadership churn at the unit, which some read as pre-listing cost discipline. Staying with India, and with duty-free. Writing in Drinks International, Joe Bates argues travel retail spirits are splitting by category, with Scotch brands having to work harder to convert Asian travellers while Indian whiskies thrive at their home airports and eye overseas expansion. The summary we have carries no volumes behind that argument, and it is his read, not ours. On fixed duty-free shelf, it lands as a channel-mix question rather than a demand one. Industry reaction leans toward reframing India as an origin rather than only a market, with some practitioners pointing to tropical maturation and a far higher annual evaporation rate as a structural reason young Indian malts can present as much older. A recurring trade-side note is import-duty asymmetry as friction on reciprocal access. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. AB InBev India has put about two hundred crore rupees, roughly twenty million dollars, into a new brewery at Neemrana in Rajasthan, running since July, per the Economic Times, following our earlier report on beer demand spreading beyond the metros. Irish whiskey exports to the European Union rose twenty-one and a half percent by volume over four years, on Irish Whiskey Association figures reported by the Belfast News Letter, with Greece up eighty-eight percent as United States tariffs bite. CVH Spirits is returning Bunnahabhain, Deanston, Tobermory and Ledaig to South Africa, per Just Drinks and Cape Business News, which cite deluxe whisky, at two thousand rand and above, growing nineteen percent. And finally, Rémy Cointreau has appointed A Brand New Day as its Netherlands distributor from the first of October, per Just Drinks, handing the Breda-based firm brands including Rémy Martin and The Botanist.