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Water is perhaps the single-most important liquid on the Earth. The United States Geological Society (USGS) reports that water covers about 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, which is about 96.5 percent of all the water on this globe.

Maybe I just have beer on the brain this month, but I feel like the popular alcohol beverage is everywhere I turn.

Consumers are accustomed to placing a call to order take-out food and, in some cases, carbonated soft drinks for home delivery. Now, they’re increasingly doing the same for beer, wine and spirits.

At the risk of placing a jinx on this warmer weather in the Midwest, it looks as though spring might be around the corner. With temperatures in the high 30s and low 40s, the snow and ice that Mother Nature shared with us in February might soon be a thing of the past.

In Beverage Industry’s 2015 New Product Development Outlook study, 18 percent of respondents named cinnamon as a top-selling flavor for2015. Although we are early into the new year, it seems as those the readers of the magazine are carrying that assessment in their voting records.

Yes, I am the rookie here at Beverage Industry, but I have no connection with the 1990 or the 2002 movies of the same name.

Aside from the Valentine’s Day candy and treats on the store shelves, the first quarter of a new year tends to be filled with diet- and exercise-related products to appeal to those consumers who resolved to lose weight or eat healthier in the new year.

For consumers who are not as excited about football, January and February are all about awards show season.

The readers of Beverage Industry see a future for liquid concentrates in the alcohol market. In the magazine’s Readers’ Choice New Product of the Year poll for 2014, Seismix LLC’s ZMix instant cocktail mixes captured the title of Favorite New Product of 2014 by garnering 40 percent of votes.

Readers must have brains on their brain. In Beverage Industry’s December Readers’ Choice Product of the Month poll, Fairfield, Conn.-based Focus Now Solutions LLC’s Focus+ took home the honor after garnering 31 percent of the vote.