📊 Tequila & Mezcal in the US
Tequila & Mezcal sales quadrupled in 20 years, surpassing American whiskey and rum.
Replacing long-time favorites in a massive market.
The US alcohol market generates an estimated $300B annually and is second only to China in size. Given that China's population is four times that of the US, being close is impressive yet not that surprising. After all, the US has a strong drinking culture and the highest-spending consumer base in the world.
What's surprising is the rise of tequila and, more recently, mezcal in this gigantic market. Big-name celebrities have smelled the opportunity in the past decade and wetted their beaks. George Clooney planted the first seed of this trend when he launched Casamigos in 2013 and sold it for $1B four years later.
Since then, The Rock, Kendall Jenner, and even legendary NBA superstar Michael Jordan have released their brands, sourced from Mexico but marketed towards its rich northern neighbor.
For the greater part of the last twenty years, the growth of tequila and mezcal resembled that of American whiskey. But it was in 2020 that agave-based drinks really took off, growing 12% yearly on average since then. The number of cases sold passed rum, which has stagnated for a while, in 2021, and American whiskey last year.
All in all, tequila and mezcal sales have quadrupled in the last two decades and have reached 284M liters of alcohol a year. You can now walk to most hip bars in NYC or LA and find at least one or two cocktails made with these spirits.
So what's next? Vodka remains the US's drink of choice by a long stretch. More than twice as much is sold as tequila and mezcal. But we might be beginning to see signs that vodka has reached its peak like rum; in the same ‘20-’24 period in which tequila exploded to 12% growth per year, vodka stopped growing.
The road is long, but tequila may just become the top-selling spirit in the US one day.