Happy Monday, folks! Welcome back to Booze In The News, where you’ll find the latest, funniest and most obscure newsworthy, alcohol-related bits all in one place. Have you saved the date yet for Drink Me’s holiday party? It’s going to be held at Madrone on Tuesday, December 1st, from 5:30PM – 9:30PM, but y’all should stay for the band, too.

Anheuser-Busch, producer of Budweiser, is providing 48,000 cans of drinking water to the victims of Tropical Storm Ida in the Gulf Coast. Pfft. What, no free beer? Fail.

Poor champagne. Over one billion bottles are just sitting in storage as sales have dropped 19% in the first half of this year. With champagne no longer in global high demand, producers will dump over 25% of this year’s grape harvest rather than lower prices to stimulate sales.

Beer gift certificates! Starting November 12th, folks in Britain can exchange vouchers for beer in more than 1,000 pubs. This article says this practice dates back to the 19th century, and that this year “drinkers will be able to buy tokens from the Pub Tokens website in £10 and £20 denominations.” Now that’s a stocking stuffer we can get down with.

Ultra-low calorie beers are popping up in the U.S. beer market. While light beers have about 100 calories and 4% alcohol, MillerCoors’ Miller Genuine Draft 64 and Anheuser-Busch InBev’s Select 55 have about half the calories and 3% alcohol.

A wine class called “Sommelier Smackdown” has gotten the attention of the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), who claim that they own the copyright to the word “Smackdown.” They don’t want any confusion between their popular franchise and the American Wine Foundation’s class.

This guy loves his beer to death. His coffin is modeled after a Pabst Blue Ribbon beer can. In 2008, he filled it with ice and his favorite brew for a party.