ABSTRACT
From a corporate perspective, distilled spirits bear far greater similarity to the beer than to the wine sector. Comprising several major categories, distilled spirits are highly heterogeneous due to their widely divergent raw material inputs. For analytical and expository purposes, the categories used in the preceding beer and wine sectors are inappropriate for distilled spirits. Rather, the distilled spirits industry can best be designated as comprising three geo-corporate complexes girdling North America, Western Europe and Japan. Seagram embodies concentrated corporate power. As against whisky’s leading role in the UK, distilled spirits in France are dominated by two completely different sets of beverages: cognac and aniseed-based drinks, with two companies as the clear market leaders. As the third ranking spirits producer in the Western European geo-corporate complex, the FRG provides a highly suitable terrain for TNC economic onslaughts. For centuries, the UK has been the centre of the world’s largest distilled spirits category: whisky.
