From the Wall Street Journal:

The new darling on the dairy shelf is almond milk.

Two brands—Silk Pure Almond, from Dean Foods Co., of Dallas, and Almond Breeze, from Blue Diamond Growers, of Sacramento, Calif.—are waging a Coke-and-Pepsi style market-share battle in the supermarket. Almond milk's appearance in the refrigerated dairy case in 2010 helped fuel 13% growth in milk alternatives, a category where sales were flat the year before, according to SymphonyIRI Group, a Chicago market research firm.

Milk alternatives—creamy liquids derived from non-dairy sources—are on the rise, especially in households where people are lactose-intolerant or dairy-allergic. The food industry is quickly ramping up the options, offering milks derived from soybeans, rice, coconut, hazelnuts and even hemp. The sales growth follows decades of slow, steady decline in consumption of cow's milk in the U.S.

Almond Milk Sparks Fight in Dairy Case; the Cookie Dunk-Off