Why Luxury Drinks and Cigars Are Only Half-Visible to AI

What do this week's readings actually show?

The latest AI Visibility Index tracked 11 brands and returned an average readiness of 59 out of 100. That figure is the headline, and it is a modest one. Readiness measures how well a brand's website is built to be found, understood and cited by AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. An average of 59 means the typical brand in this week's reading is roughly half-built for the way people increasingly discover products — through an assistant rather than a search results page.

The spread tells the sharper story. Scores run from 87 at the top down to 32 at the foot of the table. That is a 55-point gap between the best-prepared site and the least, within a single competitive set of whisky and cigar retailers. In AI visibility, that gap is the difference between being the brand an assistant names and the brand it never mentions.

Who is leading, and by how much?

The AI Visibility Index itself sits at the top of the reading with a readiness of 87 — the benchmark the rest of the field is measured against. Among the commercial brands, The Whisky Shop leads clearly at 76, a full 17 points above average and the strongest showing among the specialist retailers. EGM Cigars follows at 66, the only other brand to clear the 60 mark.

After that, the field bunches. Hard To Find Whisky (57), C.Gars Ltd (56) and City Cigars (50) form a tight cluster straddling the halfway line, with The Drink Shop just below at 48. Being clustered around 50 is a precarious place to sit: these brands have done enough to register with AI assistants, but not enough to be the confident, default answer. When an assistant has to choose which retailer to cite, mid-table readiness rarely wins.

What does the bottom of the table reveal?

The clearest warning in this week's data is Turmeaus Cigars at 32 — less than half the readiness of The Whisky Shop and 55 points behind the benchmark. A score in the low thirties suggests an assistant would struggle to extract clear, structured information about the brand: what it sells, who it serves, why it should be trusted. In practical terms, that brand risks being invisible at exactly the moment a buyer asks an AI assistant for a recommendation.

The lower half of the table — Hard To Find Whisky, C.Gars Ltd, City Cigars, The Drink Shop and Turmeaus Cigars — shows that readiness is not a function of category. These are direct competitors in whisky and cigars, yet they span from 57 down to 32. The variation is about how each site is built, not the market it operates in. That is the central lesson of the Index: visibility is earned through structure, clarity and machine-readable content, and it can be improved deliberately.

Why does a score of 59 matter?

An average readiness of 59 is a signal that this category is still early. The brands here sell considered, high-value products — single malts, premium cigars — where buyers research carefully and ask detailed questions. Those are precisely the questions now being routed through AI assistants. A shopper no longer types a product name into a search box; they ask an assistant which retailer stocks a hard-to-find bottle, or which cigar suits a particular occasion. The brand the assistant names captures the intent. The brands it omits never enter the consideration set.

That is why the gap between 76 and 32 is not academic. The Whisky Shop's lead means it is far more likely to be surfaced, quoted and linked when an assistant answers a whisky query. Turmeaus Cigars, at 32, is far more likely to be left out of the same answer. Over thousands of queries, that difference compounds into market share.

What should brands take from this week?

Three things. First, mid-table is not safe. A readiness around 50 feels respectable but leaves a brand competing for scraps of assistant attention. Second, the leaders prove the ceiling is reachable: 76 is a commercial score, achieved by a retailer in the same category as those sitting in the forties. Third, the lowest scores are the most urgent — a brand at 32 is not slightly behind, it is largely absent from the AI conversation.

Readiness is measurable and therefore improvable. The components that lift a score — clear structure, self-contained answers, trustworthy and well-organised product information — are the same signals assistants reward with citations. For the full picture of how categories compare and where the benchmarks sit, see the State of AI Visibility report, and for exactly how we score each site, read our methodology.

This week's 11 brands are a snapshot of a category waking up to AI search. The ones that act on their readings will be the ones assistants name next year.

Run a scan to see where your brand sits — and what it would take to close the gap.