Dive Brief:
- Bacardi acquired Louisville, KY-based Angel's Share Brands, maker of Angel's Envy, one of the country's top 10 fastest growing "super premium" bourbon brands. With this acquisition, Bacardi is entering the U.S. bourbon market for the first time.
- After just four and a half years, Angel's Envy shipped 45,000 nine-liter cases in 2014 and predicts "strong but controlled growth" for 2015 and into the future, reports Fortune.
- Over the past five years, U.S. bourbon and Tennessee whiskey saw revenue jump 47%, and the strongest growth in that segment recently has been from "super premium" brands like Angel's Envy.
Dive Insight:
Bourbon has been in the limelight lately, and not just for a 47% boost in revenue growth. Diageo announced plans in May to build a $115 million bourbon distillery in Kentucky, which marks the first bourbon distillation strategy here for Diageo. The company previously only marketed bourbon brands manufactured by others. Also, Brown-Forman Corp. recently handed the reins for the Old Forester bourbon brand over to Campbell Brown, a fifth-generation descendant of the company's founder. This decision marked for the first time in nearly a century that a Brown descendant has taken over the label and its operations.