French vintners beware – a pomegranate wine from Israel could just be what the doctor recommends. Pomegranate wine is pleasing on the palate and good for the heart. What more can you ask from a drink? On a recent visit to Israel I discovered pomegranate wine, which could easily become my drink of choice because of the above reasons.

The Finance Ministry said it will seek ways to re-examine alcohol prices, following an outcry over its decision to raise alcohol taxes six months earlier and higher than planned.

A tax hike on alcohol of more than 340 percent - others say 700 percent - in a mere decade - what do you call that? Worrying, at least.

While economic figures and forecasts continue to paint a not so rosy scenario for Indian economy for a while, the country’s beer industry is looking for growth.

Is yours a Cobra or a Kingfisher? Indian beers have been round the UK’s 9,000 or so curry houses for years without making any real inroads into the more traditional beer market. This is not for lack of trying. Ever since brewer Molson Coors took a majority stake (50.1 percent) in Cobra Beer Partnership Ltd, a joint venture set up in 2009 with Cobra’s founder Lord Karan Bilimoria, volume sales have grown and in 2010 Cobra made its first ever profit in over a decade – it was founded in 1989. It is estimated to sell about 270,000 hl in the UK.

It’s a cruel world if you are a stock market-listed company. Only a week after Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) issued a profit warning, saying that EBIT for the six months ending June were expected to fall 8 or 9 percent, the first fall in first-half earnings for seven years, analysts argued that time was up for CCA and that it should seek to merge with rivals Lion or Foster’s.

The recent spat between Coca-Cola Amatil’s CEO Terry Davis and Australia’s major retailers over why CCA’s products are several times more expensive in Australia than, for example, in Thailand, is as much a political battle as it is an economic one.

In an April 2013 submission to the Federal Treasury, Carlton & United Breweries (CUB), the Australian unit of SABMiller (formerly known as Foster’s) maintained that "the beer industry is no longer recession proof and it’s time that beer received similar favours to those enjoyed by wine and other beverages." CUB asked the Treasurer to follow the lead of the UK government, which earlier this year cut beer excise for the first time in over half a century, saying that tax now makes up 50 percent of the price of a case of VB, its major-selling beer.

In order to stuff the big holes in the country’s budget, the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, has doubled the sales tax on beer. On 23 April 2013 the Knesset’s financial committee decided to increase the sales tax on beer to NIS 4.20 (EUR 0.90) from NIS 2.18 (EUR 0.46) per litre, despite sharp criticism from industrial brewers and noisy protests from the many smaller breweries, which in Israel are called "beer boutiques". The Finance Ministry expects the sales tax increase to sweep about an extra EUR 60 million into their coffers.

Since Lion, Foster’s and even Coca-Cola Amatil are so heavily into craft beers, Asahi decided it did not want to be the odd one out. But rather than develop its own craft beer brand, at the end of April 2013 it decided to buy a brand that was already launched in 2009: Cricketers Arms.