Welcome in, today is Tuesday, October sixth, and we begin with Shanken News Daily on the terms Southern Glazer's has agreed with the Federal Trade Commission. Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits has reached settlement terms with the Federal Trade Commission over the agency's allegation of price discrimination, according to Shanken News Daily. The proposed order still needs approval, per that reporting. Just Drinks reports the case turned on allegations that the distributor charged small retailers more than larger chains for the same products. BevNET reports the deal, announced Monday, caps the price gap between chains and nearby independents, and orders the company to pay retailers directly if it breaches the settlement going forward. For the largest distributor in the country, that sets the first concrete reference point for how chain and independent pricing may diverge, and rival wholesalers will read the terms as a compliance baseline. Industry reaction leans toward treating the order as a signal rather than a crackdown, with some noting the price discrimination statute stays in force either way. Also today, the Wine and Spirits Wholesalers of America says its SipSource depletion data shows the on-premise holding up better than the market overall. Per Shanken News Daily's summary of the report, wine and spirits fell six point seven percent overall, while the on-premise and certain categories and price segments showed more promising trends. We have that summary rather than the full report. A channel-level split like that is the input that decides where allocation and brand support go next year. One recurring counter-read in the trade is that the same data shows premiumisation stalling in spirits, with on-premise strength read as relative, not a return to growth. Staying with wine, U.S. industry depletions are set to fall below three hundred million cases this year, a sixth straight annual decline, according to the current edition of Shanken's Impact Databank Review and Forecast. That reporting credits wine-based cocktails with slowing the slide. It is a forecast, not a result, but it tells producers, importers and buyers where volume is still being added while the base shrinks. Some practitioners reframe the decline as a discovery problem rather than fading interest, arguing that automated purchase recommendations default to high-velocity mass-market labels. Separately, Carlsberg is buying its way deeper into the PepsiCo system. Just Drinks reports the Danish brewer will acquire the bottlers Iberia Refreshments in Georgia and JI Pepsi Cola Bottler Armenia from their owner Revery, taking on production, sales and distribution of PepsiCo soft drinks in both markets. Terms were not disclosed, and the Armenian deal needs local regulatory approval, per that reporting. Interfax reports Carlsberg also inherits local brands including Iberia Lemonade and the Maxx energy and coffee lines, and that both countries become Carlsberg operating markets once the transaction completes. It takes the PepsiCo bottling tie-up to seventeen markets, after the Azerbaijan expansion announced in July. Soft drinks were thirty percent of group volumes last year, so this is scale being made to carry more beverages rather than new volume. Industry reaction leans the same way, with integration named as the real test. Now, a few more headlines moving the trade today. Brewbound reports a McDermott Will and Schulte partner told a firm webinar that federal agencies could use the Southern Glazer's bribery probe as a template for future middle-tier pay-to-play investigations. Merca2.0 reads Diageo's fiscal twenty twenty-six results as a tequila setback, with U.S. tequila net sales down twenty-one point one percent, Don Julio off nineteen point two, and Casamigos down twenty-seven point seven. Shanken News Daily reports a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed the class action alleging Diageo misled consumers on the composition of those same two tequilas. The National Beer Wholesalers Association's September Beer Purchasers' Index came in contractionary, Brewbound reports, an early monthly read on wholesaler ordering into the fourth quarter. Harpers reports William Grant and Sons posted a thirteen percent profit decline for the year to the thirty-first of December, twenty twenty-five, calling the year challenging as headwinds persist. And finally, Gallo's Black Box has been named the first official wine of the National Hockey League in a multiyear deal, per Shanken News Daily, built around a Wine Wednesdays platform.