Editorial Article
Thirteen Labels a Distillery, Nine Owners for the Names
Thirteen labels per still
The CRT counted 2,661 brand registrations across 202 distilleries as at August 2026. That is 13.2 labels per distillery, and it describes a category that looks fragmented from the shelf and is concentrated at the gate.
Both halves of that sentence are load-bearing. A brand in this category is a registration, a design, a liquid sourced under contract and a route to market; it can be launched, tested and abandoned inside a year. A distillery is a fixed-cost plant with steam, milling capacity and a waste-water problem. One of those is cheap to add and the other is not, and the whole structure of the industry follows from the difference.
The map nobody publishes
There is no official ownership register for agave spirits. The denomination records authorisations — who may make tequila, and where — and the CRT counts brands. Neither records who owns a brand, which is why the ownership question is answered by trade press, annual reports and trackers of varying completeness.
Here is what the primary sources support, grouped by owner:
| Owner | Agave brands |
|---|---|
| Becle (Mexico) | Jose Cuervo, 1800, Maestro Dobel, Gran Centenario, 400 Conejos |
| Diageo (UK) | Don Julio (from 2015), Casamigos (from 2017) |
| Suntory Global Spirits (Japan) | Casa Sauza: Sauza, Hornitos, Tres Generaciones (since 2014 via Beam) |
| Pernod Ricard (France) | Olmeca, Olmeca Altos, Avión, Del Maguey (mezcal), plus majority stakes in Código 1530 and Ojo de Tigre |
| Brown-Forman (US) | Herradura, el Jimador (from 2007) |
| Bacardi (Bermuda) | Patrón (from 2018) |
| Campari (Italy/Netherlands) | Espolòn |
| Constellation Brands (US) | Casa Noble |
| Amber Beverage Group (Luxembourg) | KAH, Rooster Rojo |
Nine groups, roughly nineteen named brands. Against 2,661 registrations that is 0.7 per cent of the register — and the majority of the international value. The long tail is not competing with these companies for shelf space at the top; it is competing for the remaining 99.3 per cent of the register, which is mostly domestic, mostly small and mostly mixto or young.
The incompleteness of the public record is itself the finding. One widely used tracker, brandtree.org, lists 14 agave brands across 7 owners and misses Pernod Ricard and Suntory entirely — two of the largest spirits groups in the world, both with substantial agave positions. Nine of the fourteen it does track are foreign-owned. Any concentration statistic built on a list like that is a floor, not a measurement.
What the denomination does and does not constrain
The appellation constrains where the liquid is made: 181 municipalities, one agave species, certification of every litre. It does not constrain who owns the name. That is why a category whose product cannot legally be made outside Jalisco and four neighbouring states is, by brand, majority foreign-owned.
This is the same structure as Champagne, and it produces the same tension. The place is a public asset held by the Mexican state. The names built on it are private assets held in London, Tokyo, Paris, Hamilton, Louisville and Milan. The divergence between the two interests — protect the place, versus grow the brand — is where most appellation politics happens.
Two books the same size, two different years
The most useful comparison in the category is between the two largest owners, because their agave positions are now almost identical in value and they behaved nothing alike in the same twelve months.
| Measure | Becle, FY2025 | Diageo, FY2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Agave position | MXN 43,087m net sales — USD 2.27bn at MXN 19.0 | Tequila at 12% of USD 19,643m — USD 2.36bn |
| Volume | 24.287m nine-litre cases, −4.4% | Group EU2 volume 227.1m vs 230.1m |
| Revenue | −2.0% reported, −5.5% constant currency | Group organic net sales −2% |
| Profit | EBITDA MXN 11,014m, 25.6% margin, +540bps; net income +118.4% | Group operating profit USD 3,156m vs 4,335m, −27.2% |
| Margin | 25.6% EBITDA | 16.1% operating |
Becle lost volume and nearly doubled its net income. Diageo carried a 12 per cent agave position inside a group whose operating profit fell 27.2 per cent, at an operating margin nine and a half points below Becle’s.
The explanation is not management quality. It is that Becle’s margin came from a line it can influence — the price of agave, which fell 65.7 per cent to MXN 7.62 a kilogram — and Diageo’s came from a diversified portfolio in which agave was one of many categories absorbing a bad year. A pure-play owner of the category captured the input collapse. A diversified owner of the same category captured the demand decline and none of the relief, because its tequila was bought through the same supply chains as everyone else’s.
That is the strategic case for owning the still rather than the name, and it is the only case in this category that survives a full cycle. Becle also owns its production. Diageo, for the most part, does not.
Where the option value actually sits
With 13 labels per distillery, the marginal brand costs almost nothing — which means brand-level competition cannot protect a margin. Whatever premium a label earns is competed away by the next label, and there are 2,661 of them. The two assets that cannot be replicated at that cost are the 202 distilleries and the single denomination.
Which is why the interesting consolidation in this category is not in brands. It has already happened there: nine groups hold the international names and there is little left of scale to buy. The consolidation that has not happened is in capacity — and it is the one that matters, because capacity is what turns a MXN 7.62 input into a 25.6 per cent margin, and because capacity is the only thing in the chain that a competitor cannot launch in a quarter.
A category with 2,661 names and 202 stills has already told you which side of that line the value is on. The brands are the marketing. The stills are the business.