April 6/Norwalk, Conn./PRNewswire -- The recovering economy resulted in improved growth for beverage alcohol sales, but the impact was mixed among the liquor, wine and beer categories. According to the Beverage Information Group's recently released Handbook Advance 2011, distilled spirits and wine saw positive results and continued to take share away from the beer category in 2010. Also, retail sales' growth showed signs of recovery as consumers slowly returned to the "trading up" trend that dominated the industry prior to the recession.
Distilled spirits has shown steady growth over the past two years. In 2010, the category grew 2.1% to 192.7 million cases, making this the 13th consecutive year of positive growth. In addition, on-premise consumption of distilled spirits showed a slight uptick, especially in the casual dining chains.