Today, fitness beverages are resonating with consumers and Beverage Industry readers. In the magazine’s Readers’ Choice: New Product of the Month poll for June, Celsius Heat won the poll by obtaining 33 percent of the vote. 

Raise your glass, because National Drink Wine Day is Feb. 18.

U.S. wine exports, 90 percent of which are from California, reached $1.62 billion in winery revenues in 2016, a new record, according to the San Francisco-based Wine Institute. Despite challenges from a strong dollar, winery revenues were up 1 percent from 2015.  Volume was 412.7 million liters or 45.9 million cases, it adds. 

By combining years of wine-making knowledge and expertise with innovative techniques inspired by whiskey-making, Modesto, Calif.-based Apothic Wines is appealing to wine and whiskey fans alike with its new, small-batch, limited-release red blend: Apothic Inferno.

Miami-based Southern Wine & Spirits of America Inc. and Glazer's Inc., Dallas, announced the signing of a definitive agreement that will create Southern Glazer's Wine and Spirits LLC. The new company will distribute more than 150 million cases of wine and spirits annually, cover nearly 90 percent of the legal drinking-age population in the United States, employ more than 20,000 team members and have operations in 41 states plus the District of Columbia, the Caribbean and Canada, the companies say. Headquartered in Miami, the new company also will maintain ongoing operations, systems, executives and team members in Dallas, it adds.

Kobrand Corp.’s port wine brand Croft announced the launch of a new varietal — Croft Reserve Tawny Port. 

Whether it's relaxing at home, dining out at a restaurant or celebrating with friends and family, American consumers are enjoying wine in a wider variety of occasions. A recent report titled “The 2015 Gallo Consumer Wine Trends Survey,” commissioned by Modesto-Calif.-based E. & J. Gallo Winery, found that 85 percent of frequent wine drinkers now consider wine as an appropriate beverage for casual and formal settings alike. One-thousand frequent wine drinkers between the ages of 21 and 64 were surveyed as a follow-up to the 2014 survey of the same name, which aims to capture the current state of American wine-drinking attitudes and behaviors, the company says.