Why The Future of Drinks Looks Increasingly Familiar to Me...
Every now and again, I read something about the drinks industry that feels particularly relevant to the journey I've been on with Noughty. That happened recently with a piece in BeverageDaily examining Brand Finance's Food & Drink Report 2026 and what is now driving growth among the world's leading non-alcoholic drinks brands.
The headline numbers are impressive of course - it's a sector of the drinks market that everyone keeps reminding me is blowing up...
The world's 50 most valuable non-alcoholic drinks brands are now worth a combined $170.4 billion. Not small change. But what interested me more than that whopping figure was the report's examination of why certain brands are growing.
Over the past few years, inflation has allowed many drinks businesses to increase revenues through higher prices. As those pressures ease, Brand Finance argues that genuine brand growth will increasingly have to come from somewhere else.
It points towards innovation, consumer trust, 'better-for-you' credentials and the ability to respond to changing tastes and drinking occasions as increasingly important drivers of value. All of which I have to say were the considerations I placed at the top of my list when I considered pivoting to becoming a non-alcoholic wine brand back in 2016.
There are some fascinating examples here too. Chinese water and tea brand Nongfu Spring has grown 38% in value to $15.3 billion, overtaking Coca-Cola on brand strength, including trust and familiarity.
Innocent has increased its brand value by 60%, with the report highlighting the importance of its 'better-for-you' positioning, and Eastroc has grown 62% as it expands beyond just energy drinks into electrolytes and functional beverages.
Even Canada Dry, a brand with apparently more than a century of history behind it, has increased its value by 116%, which clearly demonstrates to me that heritage and innovation are not mutually exclusive!
These are very different businesses operating across very different categories, but there is a common thread running through the report. Consumers are demanding to know more about what is going into their drink in a way that was only relevant to food 10 years ago at the height of the vegan boom.
We've become accustomed to looking at ingredients, sugar, provenance, sustainability and nutritional information when choosing food, and increasingly we are bringing exactly the same scrutiny to what's in our glass. But I have to point out - I said this way back in 2013 when I launched the world's first "Skinny Champagne." Everyone was obsessed with what was in their food but no-one was asking what was in their wine glass - so I made them think about it.
We now want to know what's in it, how it was made, whether we trust the company behind it and, perhaps most importantly, whether it fits our lifestyle.
I couldn't help thinking back to why I created Noughty in 2019. At the time, alcohol-free wine was nowhere near the category it is today. People were becoming increasingly thoughtful about what they ate, how they exercised, how they slept and how they looked after themselves, while alcohol seemed somehow to sit outside that conversation.
I love wine and everything that surrounds it: the pop of the cork, pouring a glass, pairing it with food, putting it on the table and sharing it with friends. I didn't want to take any of that away. I simply believed there should be a genuinely good choice for those occasions when you wanted the wine but didn't want the alcohol. That was the thinking behind Noughty.
Seven years later, that's why the Brand Finance findings feel so encouraging. This isn't a report about Noughty — we're not mentioned in it — and in some ways that's exactly why I find it so interesting. It's independent research looking at some of the world's biggest drinks brands and identifying innovation, trust, better-for-you choices and the ability to respond to changing consumer behaviour as increasingly important sources of brand value. Those are ideas that feel remarkably familiar to us.
People aren't expecting less from their drinks because they're choosing less alcohol. If anything, they're expecting more. And that's exactly where we believe the future gets interesting.