While grocery shopping Saturday for our barbecue that night and for today, I noticed one of my favorite seasonal beers, Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy, on the shelves.
Because I am an admittedly horrible grocery shopper who often comes back home with thirty items when sent out to get four, I added this to the cart along with an additional alcoholic beverage not quite as popular with others in my demographic, red sangria by Cruz Garcia.
In my own defense, I came to love sangria while dining many times at my wife's and my favorite tapas restaurant in the City.
If you have never had a real sangria with the bits of fruit in it while dining on the best tapas in the City, then you have not truly lived in my opinion. We used to go there two or three times per summer, but have not made it there in a few years.
Yet my love for sangria continues.
While reading yesterday's Chicago Tribune, which has been delivered to my home every Sunday for as long as I can remember I came across an interesting article by Greg Trotter detailing domestic beer shipments as down 2,7 percent through the first four months of the year. I learned that the trade group representing the largest beer companies in the U.S. is called the Beer Institute.
Reasons cited include the cooler weather and the fact that millennials, in particular, have eschewed cheaper mainstream beers for more premium beverages across categories.
Beer's share of alcohol sales peaked in the mid-nineties and has since been on a slow decline. Back in 2001, beer still represented more than 58 percent of total volume of alcohol sales in the U.S. Last year, the number was at about 49 percent, with both spirits and wine making gains. Spirits growth has been primarily driven by whiskey, which continues to gain market share.
I was surprised to learn that what I had thought of as a well-run smaller brewery in Wisconsin, Leinenkugel Brewing Company, is owned by behemoth Miller-Coors and that Leinenkugel's two warm weather offerings, Summer Shandy and Grapefruit Shandy, comprise 65 percent of their total sales. Those of us who spend a lot of time in Wisconsin, or formerly did in me and my wife's case, refer to the brewer as "Leinie's."
Leinie's Summer Shandy is coming off of a record 2017 in which it sold nearly half a million barrels' worth in just six months.
The article goes on to detail how there are almost 6,500 breweries in the U.S. and details some info about Revolution Brewing in Chicago, a brewery that I am supposed to like but don't really care about one way or the other. If you give me one, I''ll drink it, but I won't go out of my way for one or purchase a six pack of it if I see something that I like better, like Blue Moon, Leinie's, Shock Top or nearly any Sam Adams.
Without knowing anything about the statistics at all, I only know that when I saw the one remaining six pack of Summer Shandy at my neighborhood grocer a few days ago while purchasing burgers, chicken, sushi, V-8, apple juice, various veggies, pita chips, hummus, a nut mix that my wife and I refer to as "crack," and other assorted things, I knew that summer must be officially here.
If you have never had a real sangria with the bits of fruit in it while dining on the best tapas in the City, then you have not truly lived in my opinion. We used to go there two or three times per summer, but have not made it there in a few years.
Yet my love for sangria continues.
While reading yesterday's Chicago Tribune, which has been delivered to my home every Sunday for as long as I can remember I came across an interesting article by Greg Trotter detailing domestic beer shipments as down 2,7 percent through the first four months of the year. I learned that the trade group representing the largest beer companies in the U.S. is called the Beer Institute.
Reasons cited include the cooler weather and the fact that millennials, in particular, have eschewed cheaper mainstream beers for more premium beverages across categories.
I was surprised to learn that what I had thought of as a well-run smaller brewery in Wisconsin, Leinenkugel Brewing Company, is owned by behemoth Miller-Coors and that Leinenkugel's two warm weather offerings, Summer Shandy and Grapefruit Shandy, comprise 65 percent of their total sales. Those of us who spend a lot of time in Wisconsin, or formerly did in me and my wife's case, refer to the brewer as "Leinie's."
Leinie's Summer Shandy is coming off of a record 2017 in which it sold nearly half a million barrels' worth in just six months.
The article goes on to detail how there are almost 6,500 breweries in the U.S. and details some info about Revolution Brewing in Chicago, a brewery that I am supposed to like but don't really care about one way or the other. If you give me one, I''ll drink it, but I won't go out of my way for one or purchase a six pack of it if I see something that I like better, like Blue Moon, Leinie's, Shock Top or nearly any Sam Adams.
Without knowing anything about the statistics at all, I only know that when I saw the one remaining six pack of Summer Shandy at my neighborhood grocer a few days ago while purchasing burgers, chicken, sushi, V-8, apple juice, various veggies, pita chips, hummus, a nut mix that my wife and I refer to as "crack," and other assorted things, I knew that summer must be officially here.
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