At the beginning of the year spirits sales were up over 6% for January. Then in April and May sales took quite the nosedive, growing less than 2%, according to UBS. Since June they've been trending back up and it turns out August saw the second-best spirits performance this year. For the 4 weeks to August 17, per Nielsen data, spirits sales jumped 5.7%. Price/mix, which has been on a pretty steady growth trend for the year, was up 4%. Meanwhile, volumes were up 1.7% and the percentage of product sold on promotion continues to go down.