Spirits
TINSELTOWN TEQUILA HOLLYWOOD MOVIE STARS AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL LEGENDS ARE LINING UP TO CREATE A TEQUILA TO CALL THEIR OWN. BUT BEFORE EVERYONE GETS ‘THUNDERSTRUCK’ BY THE ‘CASAMIGOS EFFECT’, IS CELEBRITY TEQUILA GOOD FOR THE CATEGORY? George Clooney and partners Randy Gerber and Michael Meldman walked away with just shy of $250 million each after selling their tequila brand to Diageo in 2017. The trio says the whole thing was an accident, and all they wanted was a tequila that suited their taste profile criteria they could share with friends. Diageo bought the celebrity-created and endorsed brand for a huge sum with no agave crops and no distillery attached; they just bought the brand.
18 drinks trade
It’s kicked off an avalanche of celebrities starting tequila brands with a Hollywood halo, and although the consumers may be star-struck, not everyone is on board. Guillermo Sauza from Fortaleza Tequila says it might bring people to the category because they want to drink George Clooney’s contract tequila, for example, or The Rock’s contract tequila the emphasis on ‘contract’. He believes celebrities are good for the industry because they convert regular consumers of other categories, such as vodka
or rosé, to tequila. “Those people eventually upgrade into a more authentic and non-contract brand. For us, it’s good because people start with these entry-level brands and eventually move up to authentic familyowned or small brands. It’s on fire in Australia and the United States,” Sauza says. Sauza tells the story of how the Casamigos trio initially approached him to make their tequila.
