Welcome in, today is Tuesday, September twenty-second, and we begin with Just Drinks reporting that Sazerac has put a price on Berentzen. Sazerac and Berentzen have signed a business combination agreement, and the German group's board is telling shareholders to accept. Just Drinks reports the bid is a voluntary public cash offer for all shares at five euros fifty-five apiece, a premium of about sixty-eight percent on Berentzen's unaffected three-month average price before the talks were confirmed last week. That follows our earlier report on those talks. Per the joint statement, closing requires a minimum acceptance of fifty percent plus one share, no regulatory clearances are needed, and completion is expected in the fourth quarter, after which Sazerac intends to delist the Frankfurt-listed group. The same statement has Sazerac's chief executive framing the deal as a base to manufacture and distribute across Europe, including private-label ranges. Set that against first-half revenue down eleven point one percent to seventy-one million euros, and this reads as buying European production and reach rather than momentum. Industry reaction leans toward treating the premium as a marker of what US buyers will pay for established European distribution. Also today, Treasury Wine Estates has agreed to offload the Seppelt brand. Just Drinks reports the sale comes months after Treasury announced plans to simplify its portfolio of brands, with the label going to the owner of the Stonier winery. That account carries no terms. The read sits in the direction of travel: a heritage Australian label moving off a global group's books and onto a smaller domestic owner's, which tells you where the line between core and non-core is now being drawn at that scale. Staying in Australia, South Australia's state government says it will put up more than one hundred million Australian dollars, about seventy-one million US, to support its wine industry. Just Drinks reports the state frames the money against oversupply and pressure on sales. That is public money committed to a glut the government itself is naming, which gives growers and buyers a signal on how the state intends to handle supply. Terms and eligibility are not detailed in that reporting. Industry reaction leans skeptical that paying growers to pull vines targets the right problem, with a recurring view that demand-side work should come first, and some recalling an earlier government-backed vine pull that was followed by replanting. Now to rum, where the numbers explain a repositioning. US volume has fallen from roughly twenty-three million cases in twenty twenty-one to eighteen point two million last year, per Impact Databank, reported by Shanken News Daily. That account attributes most of the decline to white rum and a pullback in the off-premise, while aged expressions hold up better. It cites Southern Glazer's putting aged rum down six point one percent over the past year against seven percent for unaged, and Campari's Appleton Estate at two hundred forty-five thousand cases last year, up thirty percent in control states in the first half. The category is playing for mix rather than volume recovery, which puts aged rum in direct competition for whisky and Cognac drinkers. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Anheuser-Busch is putting twenty-three million dollars into its Fort Collins brewery to expand Michelob Ultra capacity and rail access, per the company's announcement. Just Drinks reports Heineken and Stonegate have both stayed quiet on a report the brewer could buy hundreds of pubs from the UK group. Craft beer's declines accelerated through August and into early September, Labor Day weekend included, though eleven top brands improved on August, per Circana via Brewbound, following our earlier report on the category's summer softness. Royal Swinkels plans to move bottling at its Belgian brewer Palm, citing falling consumption in the country, with jobs at risk, according to Just Drinks. And finally, Stateside and Anheuser-Busch have agreed to dismiss the Surfside-Skimmers hard tea lawsuit, ending that fight without a court ruling, per Brewbound.