Day Two of BevNET Live Summer 2026 featured more insights from venture capital investors, entrepreneurs, embracing AI in branding strategies and deep dives into the relaxation and intoxicating hemp drink categories.

Winemaking is a slow process, requiring years devoted to growing, harvesting, fermenting and aging before a bottle is uncorked.

Much to the frustration of its producers, the adoption of adult non-alcoholic (ANA) wine is taking a similar pace. Long dominated by sparkling varieties, still varieties of ANA wine are populating the category as mainstream wine brands enter the set, with an ability to scale and open the door to a broader addressable market with less expensive options.

Mass retail giant Target is expanding sales of intoxicating hemp beverages, adding the products to stores in Florida, Texas and Illinois. 

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) proposed legislation last week that would allow states to respectively determine the future of hemp-based product sales within their own borders.

THC drinks will have an expanded potential retail set in Minnesota. Despite an existential timeline ticking on the category’s future, beverage retailers continue to add intoxicating hemp drinks to store shelves. Target is the latest to go deeper in the set…at least in its home state.

As Congress’s November deadline ticks closer for intoxicating hemp beverage makers, states are not waiting to pass their own regulations on if and where THC drinks can be sold.

Breakthru Beverage Group, one of the largest beverage distributors in the U.S., is jumping into the intoxicating hemp drink business.

The future of hemp beverages remains in flux as potential legislative bills circulate on Capitol Hill, but for suppliers and distributors in the space, keeping up with demand has been business as usual. Almost.

While some intoxicating hemp brands are positioning themselves as alcohol alternatives, one early adopter of alcohol-free spirits is joining the fray from the opposite direction.

An influential group of beverage-alcohol retailers and distributors are supporting legislative efforts to keep hemp-infused beverages alive despite their prohibition, slated to take effect in November 2026. 

Intoxicating hemp drinks are getting a lifeline in Chicago, despite the outlawing of other hemp-derived THC products.

Intoxicating hemp beverages have gotten another vote of confidence, this time from Sprouts Farmers Market, which is slated to become the first national grocery chain to offer the drinks starting next week.

New funding could be a sign of optimism from the investor class as hemp-derived THC drinks await regulatory clarity.

Tobacco crops used to stretch to the horizon in the farmland of Kentucky, but now, many of those fields grow hemp plants. It might not last.