This week: Diving into three stories, from what’s happening in Canada, to Porsche walking away. Thanks as always for being here, reading these newsletters. This is my 24th since the relaunch, and it feels great! So, with that, lets get to it!

Starting September 29, Crown Royal disappears from American liquor store shelves. So does most other Canadian beer, wine, and spirits. It's the latest escalation in a trade dispute that has spent the better part of two years slowly working its way into the liquor aisle on both sides of the border, and neither government is backing down.

Here's what actually happened, what's banned, what isn't, and what it means for the glass in your hand regardless of which side of the border you're standing on.

On September 9, the Trump administration signed a series of executive orders excluding a range of Canadian products from entering the United States entirely. The list includes malt beer, wine, cider, and a wide range of spirits, whiskies and vodka among them, along with non-alcoholic beer, whey products, and molasses [1]. The measure largely replaces a 50 percent tariff that had already been applied to those goods, swapping a steep cost for outright exclusion [1]. Products already in transit or in bonded warehouses before September 29 will still be allowed in under the old 50 percent rate rather than the new ban [2].

There's a meaningful carve-out worth flagging for anyone tracking the whiskey side specifically: Canadian whiskey and liqueur in bottles larger than four litres are exempt from the ban [3]. That spares bulk and industrial-scale product, but it does nothing for the standard 750ml bottle sitting on a retail shelf, which is exactly the format Crown Royal and most consumer Canadian whiskey ships in [4].

U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer characterized the move as a response to what his office called ongoing discriminatory treatment of American exports by Canada [1]. Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne pushed back on the idea that Ottawa was the one escalating, telling reporters the conflict wasn't something Canada chose or intensified [3].

This didn't start with whiskey, and it didn't start this month. The alcohol fight is downstream of a much broader tariff dispute that's been running since early 2025.

The first flashpoint on the drinks side came in March 2025, when Canadian provinces began pulling American beer, wine, and spirits from government-run liquor store shelves in response to the initial round of U.S. tariffs [5]. British Columbia's Liquor Distribution Branch, for example, stopped purchasing American alcohol and cleared existing stock from its stores that month, with then-Premier David Eby framing it as both a response to escalating threats from Washington and a reflection of public sentiment at the time [5]. Other provinces followed a similar path, and consumer-driven "Buy Canadian" boycotts of American goods more broadly picked up alongside the government-level moves [6].

The dispute kept climbing through 2026. In August, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe announced a 50 percent tariff on American imports, which his office described to reporters as a reciprocal measure meant to support local producers and push toward a fair trade resolution rather than an act of pure retaliation [1]. Then, on September 9, Canada implemented its latest round of counter-tariffs, covering roughly $20 billion Canadian in U.S. goods, the same day the Trump administration announced the new alcohol import ban [1]. Each government has, at every stage, described its own moves as a response to the other side's actions rather than the instigating step, which is a big part of why the dispute keeps deepening instead of resolving.

The financial toll is already substantial, and it landed well before this month's ban.

Canada used to be one of the biggest destinations for American spirits, accounting for roughly 11 percent of total U.S. distilled spirit exports and pulling in more than $250 million annually between 2022 and 2024, making it the second-largest export market for American whiskey, bourbon, and rum [8]. That relationship cratered fast once the provincial bans took hold. By the second quarter of 2025, U.S. spirits exports to Canada had plummeted 85 percent to just $9.6 million, the first time that figure had dropped below the $10 million mark, with April 2025 alone showing a 68 percent monthly drop in American spirits sales north of the border [9]. For the full year, DISCUS's 2025 American Spirits Exports Report put the damage at more than 70 percent, a decline worth roughly $143 million between March and December alone [10].

The whiskey category absorbed a disproportionate share of that pain. American whiskey exports fell 19 percent globally in 2025, down $250 million to $1.08 billion, and for the first time dropped below half of total U.S. spirits exports [11]. Whiskey exports specifically to Canada declined 57 percent to just $33 million [11]. Total U.S. spirits exports slipped 3.8 percent for the year to $2.37 billion, and DISCUS was explicit that excluding Canada entirely, exports actually grew 2.5 percent, meaning the Canadian market alone is responsible for turning a healthy global year into a down one [10].

The new U.S. ban flips that exposure onto Canadian producers instead. Industry analysis has framed the measure as designed to put significant economic pressure on Canadian beer, wine, and spirits makers that depend heavily on U.S. sales as their primary export outlet, since the ban removes their access to the American market at the federal level rather than simply taxing it [7]. For a brand like Crown Royal, which sells heavily into the U.S., that's a materially different problem than a tariff. A tariff raises the price. A ban ends the transaction.

For American consumers, the practical effect starting September 29 is straightforward: familiar Canadian whiskey brands start thinning out or disappearing from stores, and what's left in distributor inventory becomes the last supply until, or unless, the dispute resolves [4].

For Canadian consumers, American whiskey has already been largely absent from government liquor stores in several provinces for over a year, so the practical change on that side of the border is smaller. The bigger Canadian-side story is less about what's on the shelf and more about what it's costing the producers who can no longer easily sell into the U.S.

Frederique Constant sits in my personal top five watch brands, period. Not top five "for the price," not top five "in the accessible category." Top five, full stop. So when Monochrome ran a first look at the new Classics Moneta Handwinding a few weeks back, it wasn't just another novelty to file away, it was a reason to finally write about a brand that's quietly been part of my collection for years.

Frederique Constant doesn't have a founding story that stretches back centuries. It has a better one: two people who simply decided to build it.

Dutch entrepreneurs Peter Stas and Aletta Stas-Bax founded the brand in Geneva in 1988, with a mission to build Swiss mechanical watches that didn't require wealthy-connoisseur money to own [12]. It took four years of development before the first collection actually reached the market in 1992, powered by outsourced Swiss movements, since the young company didn't yet have the resources to build its own [12][13]. The name itself is a tribute rather than a marketing invention, borrowed from the great-grandparents of the two founders.

The brand's real signature arrived in 1994 with the Heart Beat model, which cut a small aperture into the dial to expose the balance wheel underneath, a way of showing off the mechanical movement without going full skeleton [12]. It's the kind of design idea that looks obvious in retrospect and got copied across the industry once it worked [12].

The bigger milestone came a decade later. In 2004, Frederique Constant released the Heart Beat calibre FC-910, its first fully in-house movement, turning the young brand into a genuine vertically integrated manufacture rather than an assembler of outsourced parts [12][13]. A watchmaker named Pim Koeslag, who'd turned down a job offer from Patek Philippe to take a role at FC instead, played a key part in getting that movement built [13]. Along the way, the company expanded its ambitions further, acquiring the Swiss sports watch maker Alpina in 2002 [14] and later co-founding the high complication specialist Ateliers deMonaco.

By 2016, Frederique Constant, Alpina, and deMonaco were all acquired by Citizen Watch Company, bringing the Geneva manufacture under a Japanese parent [12][14]. Today the brand produces roughly 120,000 watches a year and has developed more than 30 in-house calibers since that first Heart Beat movement, everything from moonphases and world timers to full perpetual calendars and tourbillons [14].

That Citizen ownership is directly relevant to the watch that got this whole piece started. Citizen also owns La Joux-Perret, the movement maker behind the new Moneta Handwinding's manual-wind caliber, which is why sourcing that movement internally rather than going to Sellita or ETA makes such obvious sense for FC's mid-tier watches. It's the 2016 acquisition quietly paying dividends a decade later.

I've gone through a handful of these over the years, and the pattern says something about the brand: FC makes it easy to find a version of a watch you love, and just as easy to figure out which version wasn't quite it.

I owned the Classics Index in rose gold for a while, a clean, accessible dress piece that does exactly what the Classics line is supposed to do. I also went through two versions of the Vintage Rally Healey, the 42mm stainless steel model first, then the 40mm rose gold with the white and silver dial. The smaller rose gold version is the one that stuck, and it's still in my collection today. Something about the proportions and that dial just works better on the wrist than the larger steel version did, which is exactly the kind of thing you only figure out by owning both.

I also had a Perpetual Calendar for a stretch, a genuinely impressive piece of in-house engineering for the price point, undone a little for me by an integrated black leather strap I never warmed up to. Sometimes the movement is right and the execution around it just isn't, and that's enough to move a watch out of a collection even when the engineering underneath deserves better.

The watch I've actually had my eye on for a specific occasion is the Classic Moonphase Date Manufacture, reference FC-716S3H6. It's a 40mm steel case with the new FC-716 in-house caliber, a 72-hour power reserve at 4Hz, and a single window at six o'clock that combines the moonphase and date into one restrained, astronomically minded display [15]. It retails for $4,995 and now comes with a five-year warranty [15], a level of confidence in the movement that tracks with everything FC has built toward since that first in-house caliber in 2004.

I'd wanted it as a wedding watch. That timeline may end up slipping, but the watch itself hasn't moved off the list. If anything, having lived with three or four other FC pieces over the years makes we want this one more; the Manufacture line is where the brand's actual engineering ambition shows up, versus the more accessible Classics pieces I've cycled through.

Which brings the story back to where it started. The Classics Moneta Handwinding, with its smoked salmon dial and coin-edge fluted bezel tucked under the sapphire crystal, is a limited run of 999 pieces at CHF 1,995, powered by the customized La Joux-Perret manual-wind caliber FC-435 [16]. It's not competing with the Moonphase Manufacture for engineering ambition, and it doesn't need to. It's a different kind of watch entirely, smaller, simpler, more overtly vintage in its styling, and priced to be an easy yes rather than a considered splurge.

For the first time since 1998, Bugatti belongs to no one but itself.

On September 9, Porsche closed the sale of its 45 percent stake in Bugatti Rimac and its 20.6 percent stake in Rimac Group, handing both over to a consortium led by New York-based HOF Capital, with BlueFive Capital as the largest investor [17]. The deal nets Porsche roughly $1.16 billion, with about $290.7 million of that earmarked for pension obligations [17]. Financial terms of the original agreement, signed back in April, were never disclosed [18].

On paper, it's a divestiture. In practice, it's the quiet close of a 28-year chapter that turned a bankrupt, dormant marque into one of the most technically obsessive car companies on Earth, and the start of an uncertain one where Bugatti, for the first time in its modern life, has no industrial parent standing behind it.

The modern Bugatti story doesn't start with an engineer. It starts with a toy.

In 1998, Volkswagen chairman Ferdinand Piëch walked into a board meeting and set a scale model of a Bugatti Type 57 on the table, then told the room that Volkswagen would buy the brand [19]. It fit a pattern. That same year, Piëch's shopping spree also delivered Lamborghini to Audi and the Bentley marque to VW after a messy fight with BMW over Rolls-Royce [20]. Bugatti, which had collapsed into bankruptcy in 1995, was acquired for a reported $50 million [19].

What followed was less a product launch than an engineering dare. Volkswagen's designers cycled through a run of concept cars in 1998 and 1999, the EB118, the EB218, and the 18/3 Chiron, each testing pieces of what would eventually become the production car [21]. The EB 18/4 Veyron concept debuted at the Tokyo Motor Show in October 1999, and at the 2000 Geneva Motor Show, Piëch made the number public: 1,001 horsepower, a top speed north of 400 km/h, and 0-62 mph in under three seconds [22]. Nobody in the room believed it was buildable. It took five more years to prove them wrong.

The Veyron 16.4 finally reached production in 2005, went on to a decade-long run through 2015, and set the template Bugatti has followed ever since: absurd numbers, absurd price tags, and a level of engineering indulgence no accountant would ever greenlight on their own [23]. The Chiron picked up the baton in 2016, sold out entirely by January 2022, and closed its own production run in May 2024 with the Chiron L'Ultime [24]. Across both cars, Bugatti wasn't really selling transportation. It was selling proof that Volkswagen's engineering culture, when handed an unlimited budget, could still make the impossible boring.

By the early 2020s, the hypercar conversation had shifted, and Volkswagen knew Bugatti's combustion-only identity needed a partner who understood where the ground was moving.

Enter Mate Rimac. In 2021, Porsche and Rimac Group formed Bugatti Rimac as a joint venture, with Rimac Group holding a 55 percent majority stake and Porsche taking the remaining 45 percent [25]. The stated logic was straightforward: pair Bugatti's coachbuilt heritage and W16 mythology with Rimac's electric powertrain and software expertise [25]. It was also, quietly, a changing of the guard. A company that ten years earlier had been an EV upstart out of Croatia was now co-steering one of the most storied names in the industry.

This is the chapter that gets skipped over in most of the coverage this week, but it matters. For five years, Bugatti existed in a kind of in-between state: no longer purely Volkswagen's toy, not yet fully independent, run by a joint venture that was trying to graft old-world craftsmanship onto new-world electrification without breaking either.

The pressure that ended the arrangement wasn't really about Bugatti at all. It was about Porsche.

The automaker has been under mounting strain, with 2025 operating profit down 93 percent amid weaker demand in China and slowing EV momentum [26]. Porsche CEO Michael Leiters framed the sale plainly: the company needs to focus on its core business [27], which is getting crowded on its own, a new Macan replacement, electric and combustion Boxster and Cayman variants, a three-row SUV, and reportedly even a GT-style halo car or hypercar under consideration [27]. A 45 percent stake in someone else's hypercar brand no longer fit.

So Porsche sold out completely. Once the deal cleared regulators, BlueFive Capital came away with a 30 percent direct stake, one board seat, and two observer positions [27]. Mate Rimac's authority expanded rather than shrank: he remains CEO of Bugatti Rimac and now also takes on the title of president, succeeding Christophe Piochon, who steps down from both the Bugatti presidency and his COO role [27]. Marko Brkljačić is expected to move into the COO seat, with Hendrik Malinowski taking over as chief commercial officer [27].

Rimac's own read on the moment was characteristically understated. He said simply that he was glad the deal with Porsche and HOF Capital had closed [27].

What he didn't say, but what's obviously true, is that this is the first time since Piëch put that model car on the table in 1998 that Bugatti isn't answering to a larger automotive parent. Not Volkswagen. Not Porsche. Just Rimac, a venture capital consortium, and whatever comes next.

Ownership turmoil is one thing. Product is another, and this is where Bugatti's position looks a lot sturdier than the corporate drama might suggest.

The brand's current halo car, the Tourbillon, was in final testing when the Porsche deal closed, and its new €4 million-plus price tag hasn't slowed anyone down [27]. All 250 units in the initial production run were already spoken for well before deliveries began in 2026 [28]. Under the skin sits an 1,800-horsepower, naturally aspirated V16 developed with UK engine builder Cosworth, spinning to 9,000 rpm with hybrid assistance and, notably, the brand's first suspension components produced by 3D printing [28]. It's also the first Bugatti hypercar built with zero legacy Volkswagen parts or engineering, designed, as Rimac has put it, from scratch [28]. Reports suggest Bugatti's broader production allocation, across the Tourbillon and its one-off Programme Solitaire commissions, is already sold through 2029 [27].

The timing lines up too well to ignore. Bugatti's new La Manufacture production facility in Molsheim opened in July, on schedule with the ten-year plan Rimac laid out back in 2021 [27][29]. None of that milestone work happened because of Porsche's ownership stake, and none of it is expected to slow down without it [29]. If anything, the product roadmap reads like a company that was already operating on its own logic well before the paperwork caught up.

Ferdinand Piëch, the man who started all of this in 1998, died in 2019, and Bugatti's own statement at the time credited him directly, saying the brand wouldn't exist in its current form without him [30]. It's worth sitting with that for a second while reading this week's headlines: the man is gone, the company he built it inside of no longer owns it, and the cars he dreamed up are still selling out years in advance.

Bugatti isn't stepping into open water. It's stepping into what might be the most competitive stretch the hypercar segment has seen in years.

2026 has already brought a split in philosophy across the segment, purists chasing mechanical drama versus pioneers treating electricity as the ultimate performance multiplier, with a few manufacturers now trying to do both at once [31]. Porsche itself, freshly divested from Bugatti, is reportedly developing its own 918 successor, the Mission X, built around a 900-volt architecture and a roughly 1:1 power-to-weight ratio [31]. McLaren is said to be working on a P1 successor with gullwing doors and a hybrid V8 pushing past 1,000 horsepower [31]. Ferrari has its own hybrid hypercar in the pipeline as well [31].

That's the field Bugatti now competes in without a badge-mate to lean on. The Tourbillon's approach, a huge naturally aspirated engine with hybrid support rather than a ground-up EV platform, reads almost like a statement of identity: everyone else is negotiating with electrification, and Bugatti is still betting that a 9,000-rpm V16 is the more honest flex.

Outro: And thats a wrap for this week! Thank you so much for reading. See you next time!

References