Are We At End of High End Rope?

The long-awaited and much-prophesied consumer spending crunch may finally be upon us like storm clouds. What it means to the beer industry at large, and the high end in particular, remains to be seen. However, BBD has pored over about 100 pages of articles and research waiting for airplanes to attempt to answer that question. Here's what we've come up with.First, just how bad is it? BusinessWeek's Mike Mandel paints a rather dismal picture. He explains that in the past,