Welcome in, today is Friday, September eighteenth, and we begin with Berentzen confirming takeover talks with Sazerac, per Just Drinks. Berentzen-Gruppe has confirmed it is negotiating a voluntary public takeover offer for all of its shares with Sazerac. Just Drinks reports the Frankfurt-listed distiller disclosed the talks in a stock-exchange filing on Wednesday, while a Sazerac spokesperson declined to comment on what it called market speculation. Reuters, via Market Screener, reports Berentzen shares jumped about twenty-two percent to a fourteen-month high on Thursday, against a market value of roughly thirty-five million euros at Wednesday's close. The target is small but established. Based in Haselünne, Berentzen owns Puschkin vodka, Tres Países rum and its namesake fruit spirits, plus the mate label Mio Mio, per the same reporting. Just Drinks notes revenue fell ten point four percent last year to about one hundred sixty-three million euros, and first-half EBIT dropped to six hundred thousand euros, with the CEO citing the end of a private-label bourbon contract and weak German consumer spending. For Sazerac, a deal would add a German production base and a European portfolio to a buying run that closed Au Vodka this week, two months after Brown-Forman rejected its approach. Now to the Canada file, where The Drinks Business has more detail on what the September twenty-ninth import ban leaves open. Following our earlier report on the four-litre bulk exemption, that account says whiskeys, liqueurs and cordials shipped in containers above four litres escape both the ban and the fifty percent tariff, and bulk Canadian wine not packaged for direct consumption clears the ban, though not necessarily the duty. Everything bottled or canned, including Ontario VQA ice wine and British Columbia wines, is shut out. Per that reporting, Washington invoked Section three thirty-eight of the Tariff Act of nineteen thirty, a rarely used provision against countries found to discriminate against American commerce. Wine Growers Canada told db the measure eliminates the United States market rather than repricing it, and some in the trade read the exposure as sharply asymmetric, with Canadian exporters carrying the larger downside of a two-way shelf war. Separately, the Cameronbridge dispute now has dates. Just Drinks reports staff at Diageo's Scottish distillery will strike later this month and into October, following our earlier report on the vote. Drinks International and Harpers both tie the action to job cuts under the group's global restructure, and none of the three accounts carries a production impact from Diageo. That is the open question for the trade: Cameronbridge supplies the grain spirit behind Diageo's blends, so a stoppage running into October would be the first supply test of the cost programme. Some in the trade read the walkout less as an isolated labour dispute and more as a symptom of the broader whisky demand slump, with the consultation process still the flashpoint. In the UK, a second protected whisky category is now a live dispute. GB News and The Herald report English whisky secured Geographical Indication status under the UK Spirit Drinks GI Scheme last week, with Defra approving the English Whisky Guild's application over objections from the Scotch, Welsh and Irish associations. The friction is definitional. Per both accounts, English single malt need only be distilled at one site, whereas Scotch requires mashing, fermentation and distillation at the same distillery. The Scotch Whisky Association says it is profoundly concerned that the approved text undermines the established single malt definition, and that it is considering next steps. An English Whisky Guild board member counters that English whisky is not branded as Scotch, and Defra minister Stephen Morgan told MPs that Scotch's protected status and production rules are unchanged. Among critics, the flashpoint reads as the specification rather than the GI itself. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Brown-Forman has priced five hundred million dollars of five-year senior notes at five point three seven five percent, due October twenty thirty-one, for general corporate purposes, per the company. Global bulk wine exports fell eleven point eight percent in value over the twelve months from April twenty twenty-five, per World Bulk Wine Exhibition data reported by Harpers. The on-premise's hot summer appears to have fizzled out, according to the latest NIQ report, Brewbound reports. Sazerac has completed its Au Vodka purchase, following our earlier report on the agreement, with Reuters citing a source valuing the deal at more than three hundred million pounds, below the five hundred million first reported. And finally, De Kuyper is moving UK distribution of its spirits brands to Disaronno Group, Just Drinks reports.