That recent list of billion-dollar brands isn’t complete without Rockstar, according to information supplied by the brand today, Joey Cannata, the EVP of sales and distribution for the company, told BevNET today that he believed the brand had likely passed the $1 billion retail number over a 12-month period trailing the middle of 2011.

Talk about a whirlwind courtship. It took just four months from organic espresso /coconut water blend Coco Café to go from independent, entrepreneurial beverage company to a strategic piece in the coconut water chess game. The company, which had its first production run in September, had bids from two different potential investors by the end of December and moved into Vita Coco's offices by the end of January.

After 18 months at the Coca-Cola Co., Inc., he vowed he’d never come back to the beverage game. The big sale -- $4.1 billion for Vitaminwater maker Glaceau -- was over, the transition team was largely in place, and he had other goals in mind. "I don't think any human being could put in the energy and intensity that I put into those years," Repole said of the early 2000s. "I don't think it could ever be duplicated."

It might have seen Pepsi-Cola get leapfrogged by Diet Coke for the number two carbonated beverage slot, but PepsiCo did anoint three core holdings as brands that have sold more than $1 billion in the past year, announcing that Diet Mountain Dew, Brisk and Starbucks RTD Beverages had crossed that threshold.

There’s breaking news today concerning the fates of three beverage companies whose financial travails have been touched on frequently on BevNET and in the media at large. RelaxZen, Adina, and New Leaf are all fairly new, entrepreneurial beverage companies run by executives of varying degrees of industry experience.

With the addition of former Vitaminwater president Mike Repole to the board of year-old multifunction beverage Body Armor, the second of three key executives on the team that grew and sold Glaceau to the Coca-Cola Co., Inc. is now back in the beverage business. Repole, has spent the past four years -- and his share of the $4.1 billion Coke paid for Glaceau -- breeding horses and growing both the Pirate's Booty snack brand and Energy Kitchen restaurants.

A trademark infringement lawsuit filed in June by Dr Pepper Snapple Group against Dublin Dr Pepper, the soda's oldest distributor, has been settled, with the larger company regaining control of the brand in Dublin Dr Pepper's six-county area. Dublin Dr Pepper -- founded in 1891 -- had a cult following for its use of unique glass bottles featuring the Dublin name and a recipe that used cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) in its version of Dr Pepper.