Has Beer Turned a Corner?

Beer is narrowing the growth gap with wine and particularly spirits recently, at least in off-premise channels. Let me back up: If you go back two years to October 2004, beer, wine, and spirits were all growing at basically around the same 52 week rolling average..... somewhere between 2 and 3.5%, according to ACNielsen off-premise scans. Fast forward to one year ago, October 2005, where beer was just above being flat, spirits was growing north of 5%, and table wine